Sarah Englander

Book Review Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer

A World We Deserve, Not One We Want
In many ways, Gwynne Dyer is a pessimist. Climate Wars is a
book about global warming predicated on the idea that people, as a
whole, are not going to get any better in terms of energy consumption,
meat consumption, or desire to have cheap energy fund their lives,
and Dyer is much more interested in changing peoples fundamental
attitude towards climate change, instead of the turn off your phone
for a few hours every day type of awareness However, while you may
think that this doom-and-gloom outlook may lead to a depressing read,
Climate Wars is lively and engaging, albeit sobering and disturbing,
read, and is as much of interest to political science majors as it is to
physical science ones.
Dyer is clearly well versed in science, and Climate Wars is made
up of documented facts, as well as extensive interviews with
geopolitical leaders around the world and flash-forwards to a dystopian
(though not impossible) future where we stay on our current path, with
disastrous results. However, more excitingly, Dyer is a journalist, and;
through his interviews with prominent security leaders, he shows us
that things can and should be different firstly, the military and top
echelons in most developed countries are very aware of the security

risks that global warming poses, and secondly, we have the technology
and a fair amount of the infrastructure necessary to make the changes
we need to make to mitigate, if not totally avoid, disaster. However,
whats missing is a concerted push, a consciousness that we are
headed for a point of no return that could literally wipe out the human
race.
Sometimes there are specific villains who prevent the changes
we need. For example, Dyer points to Bush, noting that he specifically
forbade treating climate change with the gravity it deserves. However,
its often just the fact that there are more immediate priorities for
governments if we opened the closed American auto plants, we could
get 40% of our energy from wind by 2020, but there are social and
economic obstacles that cannot be overcome without a huge push.
Also, because of the nature of reducing dependence on cheap but
polluting sources, any country that unilaterally decides to cut
emissions will be economically disadvantaged.
But what a world if we dont! These are just some of the not-sospeculative speculations Dyer has: mass starvation. Nuclear arms
races. A bloody Mexico-US border war. Immigration issues. Sulphuric
oceans. In short, a worldwide crises for humanity, because global
warming does not affect all countries equally, and but nobody wants to
see their children starve.

I think this is a really important book for everyone to read

because Dyer makes the consequences of global warming impossible
to ignore. Think its a scientists issue? Think again: if global warming
isnt stopped, and were hurtling towards that point alarmingly fast,
there will literally be no safe place left on Earth. First there will be
widespread societal breakdowns, and then there will be natural
disasters of dizzying proportions.
I think when scientists offer a relatively easy fix, like turning
down your heat or driving better cars, its both good and bad: good
because people really should do those things, but bad because if the
fix is so easy, people begin to think the problem isnt so bad. Dyers
book puts things in a starker light: what would you do to avoid mass
starvation? What would you to do avoid a bloody border war between
the US and Mexico? I think the answer is a lot, and we should be
grateful that were at a point where things are still reversible,
potentially, with minimal effort. However, in order to get people on
board, we really have to replace fossil fuels totally, because Dyer is no
romantic: he knows that if you ask people to live a significantly more
uncomfortable life, theyll just walk away.
The consequences of the small, polluting things we do every day
are hard to imagine, but the consequences of nuclear war is both easy
and terrifying to imagine,. Dyer writes well, and is clearly a journalist
but has an eye for the dramatic; he has has really cool access to

military and other sources who are preparing game-day scenarios, and
while this wasnt exactly a light read, its engrossing and galvanizing. I
really recommend this book to people who have a hard time
connecting models and statistics to the way they live their lives.