The End of the Long Summer

Over roughly twelve thousand years a stable climate let human civilization flourish, and environmental journalist Dianne Dumanoski argues that this long summer is an anomaly now ending. Modern industrial civilization, she contends, is disrupting the planet's metabolism, and the greater danger lies less in single disasters such as Hurricane Katrina than in systemic global shifts, including abrupt climate swings and possibly a return to ice ages. Combining history, science and culture, she shows how core doctrines of modern society and economic globalization have deepened human vulnerability. She rejects faith in a last-minute technological fix or in human control of nature. The question she leaves is how civilization can survive climate change, not merely how to stop it.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, endorsed it, saying few people grasp as well as Dumanoski the scale of change a warming planet brings and the scale of change required in response.