Rating: 7
The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell You About Global Warming
Roger A. Pielke Jr. | 2010
The Climate Fix is perhaps the only book strictly about climate policy that I’ve read. Although I enjoyed it, I figured I’d hedge this review by mentioning that I have little else to compare it to and that my general focus and interest in climate change has less to do with policy than with influencing public perception (which then, ostensibly, leads to legislative change). Regardless, Pielke did an excellent job at tackling some of the political challenges in implementing climate policy and ultimately formulated some possible future actions. Despite the book being published in 2010 (which can classify it as outdated by some metrics), Pielke focuses on broader approaches to addressing these problems and I found his observations to be as relevant as ever. He emphasizes how the iron law of climate policy—that when “environmental and economic objectives are placed into opposition with one another in public or political forums, it is the economic goals that win out”—must be considered in shaping any effective legislation. Pielke expertly deconstructs popular arguments for methods of decarbonizing the economy, describes why they won’t work, and then uses these reasons to build stronger recommendations. His logic and mastery of these topics is evident, refreshing, and made me completely reconsider some of my thoughts on climate policy.
“However, one perhaps counterintuitive consequence of increasing research, at least in the short term, is that bringing in more perspectives, more methods, and more scientists can easily lead to more uncertainties. This situation would seem to call out loudly for robust, no-regrets-type decision making in the face of irreducible uncertainties and ignorance; in fact… demands for certainty in climate science have contributed not to finding a solution but to the problematic politicization of climate science.”