Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming (Brookings Focus Books) |  | Authors: William Antholis, Strobe Talbott
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $9.99
as of 9/5/2010 08:54 CDT details
You Save: $12.96 (56%)
New (19) Used (12) from $7.89
Seller: DBA Books
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 249,645
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 144
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.9
ISBN: 0815704690
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.738740561
EAN: 9780815704690
ASIN: 0815704690
Publication Date: May 15, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780815704690 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Those of us alive today are the first generation to know that we live in the Age of Global Warming. We may also be the last generation to have any chance of doing something about it. Our forebears had the excuse of ignorance. Our descendants will have the excuse of helplessness. We have no excuse.
—From Chapter One
Fast Forward is equal parts science primer, history lesson, policy prescription, and ethical treatise. This pithy and compelling book makes clear what we know and don t know about global warming; why the threat demands prudent and urgent action; why the transition to a low-carbon economy will be the most difficult political and economic transaction in history; and how it requires nothing less than a revolution in our sense of civic responsibility.
William Antholis and Strobe Talbott guide the reader through two decades of climate change diplomacy, explaining the national and international factors that have influenced and often impeded the negotiations. Their brisk narrative includes behind-the-scenes coverage of Barack Obama s impromptu meeting with key leaders in Copenhagen that broke a logjam and salvaged an agreement. The near-disaster of that summit demonstrated how the United Nations cannot move forward fast enough to produce a global deal. Instead, the Big Four of the United States, the European Union, China, and India must drive the next stage of the process. Antholis and Talbott also recommend a new international mechanism modeled on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that would monitor national commitments and create incentives for other countries to coordinate their efforts to cut emissions.
Antholis and Talbott put their recommendations for immediate congressional and diplomatic action into the larger context of our obligation to future generations. They note that this theme is stressed by a diverse coalition of religious leaders who are calling for ambitious political action on climate change. The world we leave to our children and grandchildren is not an abstraction, or even just a legacy; we must think about what kind of world that will be in deciding how live and act today.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 When Historians Look Back in 75 Years... August 23, 2010
R.T. in DC (Washington, DC)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
...they'll wonder why we didn't heed the cogent and thoughtful message of Antholis & Talbott's brilliant book. I'm no global-warming expert, and I found myself riveted right up to the sobering final pages. (The global-warming expert I *do* know is using this book in his Princeton class this fall.) With Cassandras this pitch-perfect, we can no longer say we weren't warned about our destructive habits. And if policymakers heed the reasonable prescriptions here, those historians' generation will salute rather than despair.
A must read for people who want to make changes in US environmental policy! July 5, 2010
Carla82
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is an exceptional book. It is clear and concise, a fairly quick read that packs a powerful knowledge punch. It has some really fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits that any reader can enjoy, no matter how much (or little) one knows about politics. Lays out clear goals (and the reasons for those goals) for short and medium term US environmental policy. Helps to explain the political deadlock on this issue and the reasons why not-so-subtle pressure TODAY has a chance to make a real difference. Read it, then call up your representatives and demand that they make energy and climate legislation happen NOW, while we still have a chance to preserve our climate as we know it for our children and grand children.
 Same old climate hysteria based on faulty science. July 5, 2010
cedar
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Back in the 60s, when I was a liberal hippie, I was very much into Earth Day and the need to abolish the evils of corporations and capitalism. For decades now the liberal environmental movements have dreamed of a giant bureaucracy that could regulate the industrial production of the whole world and in the process force all of us to live by what they imagine is an ethically correct and natural lifestyle. This giant bureaucracy would have the power to control the evil corporate entities and their devilish pursuit of the root of all evil; yes I speak the unspeakable, that demon called profit. It would have the power to redistribute wealth and level the economies of the world so that all of us would be "equal"; no one having more wealth than the other. "Climate change" and the hysteria behind it are the tools that those at the top of this movement are counting on to make this possible. The problem is that it's a scam pure and simple.
Talbott simply dismisses the skeptics of CO2 driven global warming as a fringe group and asserts that the issue is settled and the overwhelming scientific consensus supports Al Gore and his ilk. Well that assertion is the biggest lie in the history of science. The scientific establishment that pushes Gore and Talbott's view is so contaminated by politics that it is almost beyond the ability of one to imagine. But even if Talbott were correct, he has no practical plans to control CO2. Even if we destroyed the economies of ever industrialized nation on earth trying to hold back CO2 it would amount to no practical alteration of the climate. What it would do is nothing less than the destruction of civilization as we know it and plunge the whole world into an Orwellian climate bureaucracy that would control every aspect of our lives and make prosperity virtually impossible. It would kill far more people with devastating economic fallout than all the horrors the climate alarmists can project.
|
|
|
