Description

Mistaken assumptions persist in our understanding of climate change, including a misapprehension of the nature, speed and severity of what is to come, as well as how it will affect our lives. The most common myth is that the climate will change slowly and predictably, and that the worst effects will not seriously impact us. The truth we must reckon with is that climate-change crisis will be upon us sooner than we have been led to imagine. Two recent books attempt to lay out the scope and timeline of the host of challenges facing us. One anticipates the effects of rising heat on human society at a global scale, and the other focusses on local solutions to ecological crises that have unraveled in India, a country that is currently the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.