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December 21st, 2013

Reading LisT: Most-Read Environment and Climate Change Reviews of 2013

2 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Blog Admin

December 21st, 2013

Reading LisT: Most-Read Environment and Climate Change Reviews of 2013

2 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Since launching in April 2012, LSE Review of Books has published reviews of over 900 books from across the social sciences. Here are the top five most-read environment and climate change reviews from 2013, covering climate politics, oil and energy options, and natural disasters. Thank you to all of our generous reviewers for their time and enthusiasm.

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What’s Wrong with Climate Politics and How to Fix It by Paul G. Harris

chris shawPaul G. Harris prescribes several remedies for the failed politics of climate change, including a new kind of climate diplomacy with people at its centre, national policies that put the common but differentiated responsibilities of individuals alongside those of nations, and a campaign for simultaneously enhancing human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. Ultimately, Harris’s book offers some very sensible reasons for reducing consumption amongst the most wealthy, but the book repeats the same mistakes of the majority of texts arguing for changes in patterns of consumption, writes Christopher Shaw.

In this analysis of our dysfunctional climate politics, Paul Harris identifies three barriers to reducing greenhouse gas emissions: self interest of nation states in general, the self interest of US and China in particular, and the self interested behaviour of individuals. For a student or interested citizen wishing to delve deeper into some of the issues behind the current climate policy impasse, this well researched book offers an accessible and engaging read. However, the book does not quite live up to the promise of telling us how to fix it. This is because Harris draws heavily upon a pre-existing stock of ideas which have already failed. In presenting these ideas as the limit of the possible, Harris’ book risks doing as much to entrench the problem as solve it. Read the full review…

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Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton argues that conservatism is far better suited to tackle environmental problems than either liberalism or socialism. He shows that rather than entrusting the environment to unwieldy NGOs and international committees, we must assume personal responsibility and foster local sovereignty. Sarah Lester finds this book offers an accessible and thorough review of a literature rarely discussed in conservative politics.

In Green Philosophy, Roger Scruton aims to give a voice to the political right who wish to “think seriously about the planet”. Scruton is an English philosopher and writer who has published widely on the topic of conservatism and political philosophy. Green Philosophy is both admirably structured and well referenced — it is obvious Scruton has read more classic environmental texts than many of us could ever hope to read. Alongside reviewing the literature, the author argues that conservative right politics are more suited to addressing environmental problems than leftist social or liberal approaches. The book is extremely timely given its publication in 2012 amid a Conservative-Liberal coalition government which aims to marry economic efficiency and environmental protection. Read the full review…

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Oil Sands, Heavy Oil and Bitumen: From Recovery to Refinery by Dwijen K. Banerjee

Joel Krupa headshotUnlike conventional oil resources, “unconventional” oil resources such as oil sands, heavy oil, and bitumen have been known to exist only for the last few decades and are found primarily in the western United States, Canada, and Venezuela. Only recently has serious consideration has been given to North American resources for meeting the increasing demands for transportation fuel. In this book Dwijen K. Banerjee discusses the importance of these unconventional oils and provides an introduction for those beginning their journey in the still unexplored unconventional hydrocarbon resources of the world. Joel Krupa finds that Banerjee has some excellent conclusions in terms of improvement opportunities.

With the accelerating integration of ‘unconventional’ oil and gas supplies into interconnected global markets, many believe that the complex world of energy policy has changed forever. New geopolitical configurations, environmental impacts, and social structures continue to emerge under this new normal, and some knowledgeable optimists argue that even the most ardent peak oil and peak gas apologists will now need to concede that the market is shifting inexorably towards greater aggregate fossil fuel production as a new cadre of dominant extraction countries are rising to the top. According to these utopians, the problems that the world must now face are not so much those of resource availability (geological assessments suggest that potential global proven, probable, and possible reserves are nearly limitless). Instead, appropriate price points to ensure sufficient extraction are apparently all that stand in our inevitable path towards useful energy ubiquity. Read the full review…

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Water: All That Matters by Paul Younger

The world’s population is increasing; but its supply of water is not. Empires have grown and declined due to discovery and exhaustion of their water sources, and now the West is at last catching on to the fact that abundance of water can no longer be taken for granted. In Water: All That Matters, Paul Younger takes in scientific studies, the social impact of water wars, and development projects gone awry. Reviewed by Stacy Edgar.

“Water is life,” hydrologist Paul Younger reminds us in this short volume, which overviews the geological and cultural importance of water for day to day life. A world class hydrologist now based at the University of Glasgow, Younger straddles the worlds of academia and international aid programs, as he is also Chair of the Global Scientific Committee of international NGO the Plant Earth Institute. Water: All That Matters presents the fundamentals on key themes right from the basics of the water molecule through to water’s linkage to so many human activities and the concerns around climate change, virtual water, and hydrological change. Read the full review…

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The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters edited by Debarati Guha-Sapir and Indhira Santos

Since the turn of the millennium, more than one million people have been killed and 2.3 billion others have been directly affected by natural disasters around the world. Economic Impacts presents six national case studies (Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Nicaragua, Japan and the Netherlands) and seeks to show how household surveys and country-level macroeconomic data can analyse and quantify the economic impact of disasters. Tom McDermott finds that this book provides a useful set of starting points both for policy debates and further research on the economics of natural disasters.

So-called natural disasters are defined by their impacts on society. “Nature creates hazards, but disasters are largely man-made”, according to the new book The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters, edited by Debarati Guha-Sapir and Indhira Santos. Indeed, natural hazards that have no impact on human society – such as a hurricane that never makes landfall – are not recorded in the standard disaster databases, such as EM-DAT. This latest collection of essays on the topic attempts both to quantify impacts, and also to illustrate the factors that turn natural hazards into human disasters. Read the full review…

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This work by LSE Review of Books is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales.