Peter Spinks reviews Flannery's 'Atmosphere of Hope'

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s the December UN Climate Change Summit in Paris draws near, talk about saving our planet from a lengthening list of woes is becoming increasingly shrill. And not without reason: the size of humans' environmental footprint has grown slowly but surely since the Industrial Revolution and much faster after World War II.

As Tim Flannery suggested in “The Weather Makers”, which was translated into 23 languages, humans have become a global force to be reckoned with. As ecological costs mount, the world is entering a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, so named because of the profound effects we have had on the Earth's natural cycles of biology, chemistry and geology.

Read a review of “Atmosphere of Hope” by Peter Spinks in The Sydney Morning Herald - “Atmosphere of Hope review: Tim Flannery's plans for our climate's future”.

Tim Flannery's 'hero-like' status was evident at book launch

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im Flannery’s hero-like status was evident at last night’s launch of his new book, “Atmosphere of Hope”.

Tim Flannery signs a book for
one of his many fans after
last night's book launching
at the University of Melbourne.
 

Some who had been admirers and supporters since Flannery wrote “The Weather Makers” a decade ago were almost breathless when the scientist, chief of Climate Council and author walked by.

Some 400 people were in the Basement Theatre in the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne to hear Flannery talk about why and how despair after the dishevelment of the Copenhagen United Nations climate summit in 2009 had changed to hope.

The world, as Flannery pointed out, has had a levelling-off of greenhouse gasses in 2014, something he attributed many things – “like an army of mice nibbling away at a very big problem” – and that gives him hope.

Although he was optimistic about many things, such as carbon-negative cement, Flannery was still a realist and said: “There is no doubt that in the lead up to the Paris meeting our focus needs to be firmly on cutting back on fossil fuels, that’s really the name of the game, we need to reduce emissions from greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels if we are to have any hope of stabilizing our climate.”

Flannery saw humanity as having little chance of avoiding the two degree “guardrail” that has been broadly accepted throughout the world, but pinned his hopes on mitigating the worst changes our damaged climate will bring by adopting what he is calling “the third way”.

And although the ideas, such as deliberate growing of seaweed, are largely nascent and in some instances still little more than computer simulations they, as he said about solar energy, riding your bicycle or simple using less energy, like the ”army of mice” chewing at the problem.

The full audio from last night’s launch will soon be on the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute website.