Human Cost Of Climate Change Summary

Book review

OVERHEATED The Human Cost Of Climate Change Andrew Guzman Starring the role players in climate change, Andrew T. Guzman talks about the earth being overheated which is a real happening. He picks up with an optimistic approach by supporting the predictions of climate scientists, “the earth will warm 2oC during this century”. The consequences humans really are concerned about are those that directly affect them. The author in his book, instead of venturing into the complex science of climate change, focuses on how it affects nations and societies. He believes that climate change is the only greatest common international problem of this century.

The author feels that it is important to have a pluralistic approach with regards

In a straight forward manner, the author shows in vivid details that a game of climate change is on a real roll. May be in a few years, the island nations like Indonesia may sink, food belts of Bangladesh destroy and countries and states set over their river system. The whole scenario projects that sooner or later the whole world could end up in famines, floods and wars; wars with political grudges on environment. This means we, the desperate people, will all land up fighting even for our basic resources i.e., food, water and energy. A change of 1.5oC instead of 2oC in global temperature would certainly be a reason of joy but if it is 2-2.5oC, impacts may be havocking. He compares global warming to a game called ku plunk, where loss of many sticks at the beginning may not let the marbles roll down but towards the end, that one crucial stick if pulled out, the whole system collapses. Thus greenhouse gases represent sticks here. During our phase of industrial revolution, greenhouse gases were released in an uncontrollable manner. But now the situation has changed. It has started heating up the planet. Although technologies have evolved to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, much of it doesn’t seem to be implemented. If we fail to slow down the rate at which greenhouse gases are released, we may

He has beautifully humanized the concept of climate change with concrete stories. His professional knowledge as being an economist is quite helpful in explaining carbon tax, cost of fossil fuels etc. He convinces people about the concerns for national security. The only thing that can be taken as a fault to his book is that he very nicely convinced people, but could not provide satisfactory alternatives to the problems discussed in the book. Also being a lawyer, specialized in international relations, he has discussed about the climate change as a common global issue, however domestic approach is a little different from the one given in the book. Domestic laws in many contexts differ from international laws, whose consideration and appropriate understanding is very important while dealing with climate issues. The author lacks in providing the correlation between these two approaches. He could have provide such information about how domestic and international laws can be interlinked and can be effectively used to change the scenario of climate of earth. It is always better to make a multidisciplinary approach than one sided