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Mauritius: The Weather Makers
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L'Express (Port Louis)
18 March 2008
Posted to the web 18 March 2008
- By Tim Flannery
Port Louis
Climate change has never been this fascinating
If Al Gore's "An inconvenient truth" was the film to propel climate change into mainstream consciousness (and win the ex-US vice-President an oscar and Nobel Peace Prize along the way), Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers: Our Changing Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth" is its literary equivalent.
Tim Flannery who is described as an "an acclaimed naturalist, conservationist, philosopher and adventurer" (presumably not all at once), has crisscrossed the planet to pen an incredibly clear and gripping exposé on climate change and the far-reaching effects it will have on the planet and, scarier still, its inhabitants. More importantly, Flannery provides practical ways of reducing our energy use and thus our impact on the climate.
The book, divided into five parts - Gaia's Tools; One in Ten Thousand; The Science of Prediction; People in Glass Houses and The Solution - recounts how 'the slightest imbalance now has the power to shape our future and that of the entire world - and what we can do about it'.
Tim Flannery seamlessly guides the reader through 300 million years of History and easily transmits facts and ideas without ever seeming to impose them. He expounds passionately, for example, on the dynamism of the Earth's atmosphere or "The Great Aerial Ocean" (a phrase coined by Alfred Russel Wallace who co-confounded, with Charles Darwin, the theory of evolution by natural selection).
What sets 'The Weather Makers' apart from other books on the subject of climate change is Flannery's prose, which is occasionally funny, always limpid and never condescending.
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His writing is, in fact, so pleasantly clear and unassuming that it should be compulsory reading for English students, as well as budding biologists; a comprehensive example of how any scientific book should be written.
Just like the key tothe success of "An inconvenient truth" resided in Gore's extraordinary ability to present some incredibly complex scientific facts in an accessible and attractive way, "The Weather Makers" turns climate change into an eminently readable subject. The "Financial Times" reviewer put it best when he described Flannery as "Indiana Jones crossed with Charles Darwin".
Al Gore's mantelpiece might be adorned with an oscar statuette and an important-looking certificate from the Nobel Committee, but Tim Flannery can rest assured that his seminal oeuvre will continue to define how we think about climate change for a long time to come.
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