Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley [Hardcover]

Stephan Faris (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 23, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0805087796 | ISBN-13: 978-0805087796 | Edition: First Edition

A vivid and illuminating portrayal of the surprising ways that climate change will affect the world in the near future—politically, economically, and culturally

While reporting just outside of Darfur, Stephan Faris discovered that climate change was at the root of that conflict, and began to wonder what current and impending—and largely unanticipated—crises such changes have in store for the world.

Forecast provides the answers.

Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. Italy has already experienced its first climate-change epidemic of a tropical disease, and malaria is gaining ground in Africa. The warming world will shift huge populations and potentially redraw political alliances around the globe, driving environmentalists into the hands of anti-immigrant groups. America’s coasts are already more difficult places to live as increasing insurance rates make the Gulf Coast and other gorgeous spots prohibitively expensive. Crops will fail in previously lush places and thrive in some formerly barren zones, altering huge industries and remaking traditions. Water scarcity in India and Pakistan have the potential to inflame the conflict in Kashmir to unprecedented levels and draw the United States into the troubles there, and elsewhere.

Told through the narratives of current, past, and future events, the result of astonishingly wide travel and reporting, Forecast is a powerful, gracefully written, eye-opening account of this most urgent issue and how it has altered and will alter our world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The latest communiqué from the emerging genre of traveling the world in the footsteps of climate change is an intelligent, nuanced report on the complex relationships between increasingly unstable weather patterns and politics, ecology and lifestyles. Journalist Faris shows how the genocide in Darfur has roots in desertification and may be a canary in the coal mine, a foretaste of climatically driven political chaos, and how the resulting emigration of Africans to Europe is causing economic pressures that are being met with fascistic movements in Italy and Britain. Locals are abandoning Key West and New Orleans due to unsustainable insurance premiums; Bangladesh is likely to be flooded out of existence; and drought may wipe out the Amazon rain forest within 70 years. Faris cites a study predicting a world depicted by Mad Max, only hotter, with no beaches and perhaps with even more chaos. But, depressingly, he admits that his travels researching this book released nine times an average person's annual carbon use and that the world many have opened its eyes to climate change, but we're far from taking effective action. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

A journalist concerned with on-the-ground evidence of global warming, Faris reports on what he learned in visits to various regions around the world. A global climatic component is involved in local environmental situations, Faris finds, the details of which he expands in presenting the explanations of scientific or policy experts. What counts most in this work, however, are the impressions of climate change Faris gathered from his interviews with local inhabitants. They make tangible the abstractions of the issue in Sudan, Key West, Brazil, California, Canada, and India. In addition to covering local people’s observations about desertification, coral bleaching, and the temperature-sensitive wine-making industry, Faris looks into local political ramifications, especially those concerning people forced to move because of environmental stresses. He presents background to the violence in Darfur and notes the concerns of insurers about America’s hurricane-prone southern coasts. Faris’ reportorial techniques work well in his narrative, priming readers for his recommendation for urgent action on climate change. --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (December 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805087796
• ISBN-13: 978-0805087796
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,748,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A different rhetorical take on warming January 12, 2009

By Stephen Swartz

Format:Hardcover

I found this book interesting and well-written. It is not a book by a scientist or someone pretending to do science writing -- it is a book by a journalist who traveled extensively, learned some things on the ground, and reported back on what they learned. It avoids questions about why there is warming, and it avoids speculation about the future: it talks about impacts that warming is having on the world today. It would be a good book to give to someone who was inclined towards being argumentative around warming: it avoids all the standard arguments and just reports on what is.

The book shares structure and perhaps a "type" with Jared Diamond's Collapse: a series of chapters illustrating different aspects of a larger phenomenon. It does not pull off the same grand abstract sense of wonder that Diamond is capable of, but it has a greater warmth.

I found the sections on Dafur, Bangladesh, and Kashmir chilling: the book does a great job of describing the political/social situation on the ground, sketching out how these complex and fragile places are particularly susceptible to climate change, and then talking about the terrible consequences that are already playing out. In the US, the book describes the reaction of the insurance industry to our increasingly chaotic weather, and how that effects communities like New Orleans and the Florida Keys. The section on how the wine industry is being effected by warming was interesting: tough luck France, I guess.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book to give to global warming skeptics. February 15, 2009

By Nic E. Korte

Format:Hardcover

I enjoyed "Forecast" and have recommended it to several people. What I liked most about the book, is that it was not designed to convince anyone about climate change, but simply described impacts. The book is very well-written -- easy to read. I think it can do more to convince people of the truth of climate change and the overall lack of debate in the scientific community than books that rely heavily on climate data.

Because I am a physical scientist who reads several scientific journals; I was aware of most of the facts and expected impacts presented. However, I don't know that anyone has put it altogether so nicely without any inclusion of politics. So, I hope a lot of people read it.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read just one book on the climate crisis... March 8, 2009

By William Kowinski

Format:Hardcover

There are plenty of books on the climate crisis, but a readable one is rare enough to fetch a Nobel Peace Prize. Though solutions depend on specific and possibly boring knowledge and actions, political and public support requires general understanding and passionate attention. This book is written not by a committee nor as the result of group findings, but by an individual writer--not a scientist or a politician but an astute and acute journalist. It is that rarity: excellently reported and written, very readable and therefore an important book on the most significant topic of our time.

It's a post-Inconvenient Truth treatment that doesn't analyze or speculate but describes. This isn't about the far future, but changes already underway that are bound to increase in the next few decades: "impacts that range from the subtle and sometimes benign to the horrific and potentially catastrophic...Yet we don't have to guess at the consequences of a warming world...The future of our planet can be found now, on the frontiers of climate change."

My one note of warning is that dealing with the effects of the climate crisis, as described in this book, are going to become more and more important. But it is just as crucial to continue trying to deal with the causes, so that there aren't much, much worse consequences for the future.

That said, if you read just one book on the climate crisis this year, "Forecast" should be it.