High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis

While governments debate and scientists test ever-more complicated hypotheses, ordinary people all over the world are starting to notice the effects of global warming. In High Tide, British journalist Mark Lynas visits global hot spots to record people's reactions and sound a clarion call for action. Readers looking for a "we are the world" approach to climate change may be taken aback by Lynas' flat expression of the uncomfortable truth: "Every time America votes, the world holds its breath.... Climate change begins and ends in America." Lynas damns the George W. Bush administration for undermining global efforts such as the Kyoto Protocol as well as actively preventing innovation within the United States that would reduce auto and industrial emissions. But High Tide isn't the firs or the best book to do that; instead, its narrative strength is in the riveting stories of how small towns, islands, riverside cities, and rural areas are being slowly destroyed. Gardeners in England will be unable to grow heritage plant species within the next 75 years. The Alaskan permafrost is melting, as temperatures there increase "ten times faster than in the rest of the world." An entire Pacific Island nation--Tuvalu--will soon disappear beneath the rising sea, leaving its people homeless. Lynas visits Alaska, Tuvalu, Peru, China, and the east coast of the United States, documenting the lives, places, and cultures that will be lost in the decades to come. Thankfully, just when hopelessness threatens to overwhelm the reader, High Tide offers a five-step plan to mitigate the most catastrophic effects of global climate change. Every step in the plan involves action by United States citizens and their elected representatives, offering American activists and visionaries a chance to do penance for wrecking parts of the world far from our own driveways. --Therese Littleton