Life in the hothouse

Award-winning ex-journalist turned academic, Melanie Lenart sets out in Life in the Hothouse to see what lessons from the past, including from the two especially hot periods of the Cretaceous and the Eocene, can teach us about our present-day situation and about how we can prepare ourselves for our future on what promises to become an increasingly hot planet. Her intention is to show how we can work with the planet to limit some of the potentially disastrous impacts of global warming. Though she is convinced that life on Earth will survive, Lenart’s key concern is that many species and individuals might not. True to her previous role as an investigative reporter, Lenart relates personal experiences of those affected by natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina. She includes quotes from interviews conducted with leading experts in the field, as well as excerpts from relevant e-mail exchanges. Her skill in expressing the most scientific and complex phenomena enables her to convey her message so clearly that even someone with only a very basic knowledge of how the planet functions will be able to understand what she has to say. No surprise, then, that Lenart also teaches environmental writing at the University of Arizona (check out her webpage on their site, which contains details of her schedule), as well as conducts workshops in her field. In this comprehensive and entertaining text, Lenart helps to bring contemporary thinking in America in line with the age-old thinking of the Native American people, citing many of the latter’s strongest voices. She shows her humane side as a scientist by revealing anecdotes of how her own life has been affected by climate change, whether it has meant cowering under an overturned couch during a hurricane or sweating profusely on an unexpectedly muggy July day. Though she refers to leading bodies that are concerned with monitoring climate change, such as to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she does not overwhelm one with countless names. After all, this is not an academic treatise, but rather a text that sets out to explore the implications of global warming for the average person. In straightforward, jargon-free prose, Lenart simply and objectively tells of life-threatening climate changes, such as that of rising winter temperatures in Alaska, which is leading to the need to relocate entire river-side towns. By assuming that the average reader has

שנה

2010

שפה

English

הוצאה

University of Arizona Press

מהדורות

1

עמודים

236

ISBN

9780816527236

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata