The Climate War -Summary

Martin Lewis analyzes Eric Pooley's book, The Climate War, in the article "Contesting climate: The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth." The main points analyzed are the contents and importance of the ideas in the book, as well as the criticism of the author's tone and characterization of people. He starts by explaining how the issue of global warming has taken a backseat to the economic issues occurring. There is a definite need to safeguard the planet, but the economy and industry must be maintained in order to have revenue to fund any sort of transition and discovery of new energy sources. He says that some sort of legislature must be passed, and the pro-environment, pro- business Americans have the potential to rally enough support to pass some sort of legislation. There have been attempts to pass laws. The key organization was the Environmental Defense Fund, own by Fred Krupp. James rogers of Duke Energy was one of the leaders in cleaner energy technologies. The author compares these men to heroes, and then states that there must be villains. The villains are those who deny global warming. They seek to derail the efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They have proposed useless, manipulative legislations that would make money. After one proposal to auction off licenses to electricity companies to have a certain emission level, it was decided that this would in turn increase the money spent by those companies, and electricity rates would increase. A resolution was then agreed upon that any legislation passed could not increase gas or energy prices. The author of the article then criticized Pooley, the author of the book, for the way he introduces people. Those how disagree with him are shown in a negative light and he disrespects many people. He also doesn't acknowledge counterarguments. The article concludes with the authors opinion that the book is very important to informing people about what is being done to pass legislation, while being a bit biased and unfair towards global warming denialists.

Source Citation:

Lewis, Martin W. "Contesting climate: The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth." Issues in Science and Technology 27.2 (2011): 91+. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 9 Mar. 2011.

Document URL
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