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BOOK REVIEW: Climate Change for Football Fans by James Atkins
Front cover Climate Change for Football Fans
OK so let me set one thing straight first: I don’t like football! Sorry for all the football fans out there but I’ve never been and never will be a fan of soccer, apart for maybe the occasional happy glimpse at sexy men in shorts. That being said, I loved James Atkins’s book and I have to admit that the football metaphors, even for a football dummy like me, made some of the more complex issues relating to climate change real easy to understand.
Climate Change for Football Fans is a funny book, which takes the edge of things, even of such a serious matter as global warming and the uncertain future we are facing. In a series of conversations between Joe (a real football fan) and Igor (a professor obsessed with climate change) the truth about climate change and the underlying forces stopping us from solving the problem come to light. Throughout the book, parallels between the game of football and the way we act and react towards climate change allow the author to examine why preventing climate change is so difficult and what needs to happen to turn the tide around.
James Atkins (Chairman of Vertis Environmental Finance, an emissions trading company in Hungary) gives a very critical perspective on cap-and-trade, current accepted carbon emission reductions figures (like 20 percent by 2020) and any other “truth” about climate change known to us today.
While reading through Igor’s conversations with Joe, slowly a very important and intriguing message arises: everything we know today will have to change in order to put a stop to climate change and everything we have been told so far is bogus and won’t get us anywhere. What we need is a different society, a modest one, where we all self-restrain. Shopping and consumption are things from the past in this new society, as are holidays outside the country, abundance of goods and financial ambitions.
I don’t want to spoil everything, so I’ll stop here. I do feel this book is a must read for everyone who is concerned about global warming. James Atkins is not afraid to challenge everyone and everything when it comes to climate change. And I believe he does so with a lot of insight and comprehension about the problem. So if you want to know more about the science of climate change and the policies and schemes surrounding it, you have to read this book!
And don’t be shocked in the end as although there is a solution to the problem, it’s a very tough one!
Buy the book online at Amazon: Climate Change for Football Fans: A Matter of Life and Death
Tags: book review climate change, cap and trade, Climate Change for Football Fans, global warming, James Atkins
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