Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis -- And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster [Hardcover]

Ross Gelbspan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 20, 2004

If left unchecked, climate change will ultimately swamp every other issue facing us today. Indeed, what began as an initial response of many institutions--denial and delay--has now grown into a crime against humanity. In Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan reveals exactly how the fossil fuel industry is directing the Bush administration's energy and climate policies. Even more surprisingly, Gelbspan points a finger at both the media and environmental activists for unwittingly worsening the crisis. Finally, he offers a concrete plan for averting a full-blown climate catastrophe.According to Gelbspan, a proper approach to climate change could solve many other problems in our social, political, and economic lives. It would dramatically reduce our reliance on oil, and with it our exposure to instability in the Middle East. It would create millions of jobs and raise living standards in poor countries whose populations are affected by climate-driven disease epidemics and whose borders are overrun by environmental refugees. It would also expand the global economy and lead to a far wealthier and more peaceful world. A passionate call-to-arms and a thoughtful roadmap for change, Boiling Point reveals what's at stake for our fragile planet.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, offers no less than a call to arms in this treatise on how global warming is a threat and how it can be avoided. Gelbspan expands the argument about global warming: not only is the current U.S. administration to blame, but journalists and activists are as well. Journalists, he says, are culpable because they are minimizing the story; activists, while well-meaning, are so busy trying to form alliances and make compromises that they lose sight of a problem that Gelbspan believes could ultimately compromise the planet. Gelbspan writes clearly, and he argues that Republican members of Congress have latched onto theories of the few scientists who don't believe that global warming is a major problem. He lays out three of the plans being discussed to attack the problem, as well as one of his own (which focuses on changing energy subsidies from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, funding the transfer of renewable energy sources to developing countries and greatly tightening emission standards). But at times, he adopts an apocalyptic tone—the first sentence of his first chapter contains the words, "global climate change is threatening to spiral out of control"—and that may limit this work to true believers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Denouncing the oil and coal industries as "criminals against humanity," Gelbspan justifies his use of that label by communicating his sincere belief that human civilization is in mortal peril from global warming. Yet he recognizes that the American public is not as alarmed as he is, so the first half of his work dissects the forces he alleges are keeping Americans in ignorant thrall. They are the fossil fuel lobby, the current Bush administration, and journalism. An ex-member of the Fourth Estate, Gelbspan denounces it for inadequate coverage of global warming, and when covering it, for giving equal weight to the arguments of skeptical scientists. In the second half, after criticizing local environmental gestures and proposed free-market solutions as insufficient, Gelbspan presents his proposals for separating civilization from its hydrocarbon appetite. Key to the program is the establishment of an international organization to fund green technologies, financed by a global tax on international currency transactions. If ExxonMobil is your enemy, Gelbspan is your champion. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1St Edition edition (July 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 046502761X
• ISBN-13: 978-0465027613
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,399,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, August 26, 2004

By 

Ted Nace (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis -- And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Hardcover)

When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, she was widely attacked for advocating the elimination of DDT. But Carson had done her homework well. Her book was meticulously documented and it withstood the inevitable assaults from those who believed that behind her opposition to DDT lay some sort of covert left-wing agenda.

I predict that Ross Gelbspan too will survive such assaults. Like Carson, he is a journalist who writes with passion but also with full documentation.

Even today, there are scientists who deny that DDT poses environmental problems. The same will likely be true of global warming: there will always be deniers. But reviewers like "Chaxford" mischaracterize the nature of the debate within the scientific community. For example, the Harvard-Smithsonian study, which he cites as an example of mainstream science undermining the human-driven global warming hypothesis, does nothing of the sort. That study merely documents that non-human global warming has occurred before -- hardly a surprising fact! (...)Or Google on the title: "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal."

Those interested in the true nature of the debate should also read another source mentioned by "Claxford," NASA's James Hansen (note: not Hanson), rather than accepting at face value Claxford's characterization of Hansen. Hansen does suggest a somewhat different approach than Gelbspan -- and yes, he has been criticized by "political types." But Hansen is hardly in the camp of the deniers. (...)
Or Google on the title of the article: "Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?"

The closing paragraph of Hansen's article actually provides as good a defense of Ross Gelbspan's work (and refutation of critics like "Claxford") as any. Hansen writes: "The bottom line. How can I be optimistic if, as I have argued, climate is now in the hands of humans and it is closer to the level of "dangerous anthropogenic interference" than has been realized? If we compare the situation today to that 10-15 years ago, we realize that the main elements required to halt climate change, as summarized above, have come into being with remarkable rapidity. I realize that it will not be easy to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, but I am optimistic because I expect empirical evidence for climate change and its impacts to continue to accumulate, and that this will influence the public, public interest groups, industry,and governments at various levels. The question is: will we act soon enough. It is a matter of time."

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In case you thought there was no ecological crisis..., September 5, 2004

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis -- And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Hardcover)

You may have noticed climate changes in your cubby hole area. They should have warned you through 'normal channels' but they seemed to have all been wiped out. They used to say the crisis of the environment was only a matter of time, now the time has come and this book should be essential reading for anyone glued to standard sources of (dis)information. You know the time has come when Bush starts hemming and hawing on this issue. It's not a prearranged signal, but it's alarmingly indicative. In another decade they may change their story. Meanwhile, all the important measures are starting to spike and major lifestyle changes are on the table.
Very important reading.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wake Up Call, August 20, 2004

By 

J. Kava (Boston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis -- And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Hardcover)

The world has known about global warming for years, but it's time to wake up and do something about it. This well-written, revealing book should add much to the effort. We cannot afford the rabid political diatribe of global warming naysayers that don't have any facts to stand on. There are no more legitimate papers refuting global warming then there are good papers in support of Creationism. The world must awaken.