"The Winds of Change" places the horrifying carnage unleashed on
New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama by Hurricane Katrina in
context.
Climate has been humanity's constant, if moody, companion. At
times benefactor or tormentor, climate nurtured the first stirrings
of civilization and then repeatedly visited ruin on empires and
peoples. Eugene Linden reveals a recurring pattern in which
civilizations become prosperous and complacent during good weather,
only to collapse when climate changes -- either through its direct
effects, such as floods or drought, or indirect consequences, such
as disease, blight, and civil disorder.
The science of climate change is still young, and the
interactions of climate with other historical forces are much
debated, but the evidence mounts that climate loomed over the fate
of societies from arctic Greenland to the Fertile Crescent and from
the lost cities of the Mayans in Central America to the rain
forests of Central Africa. Taking into account the uncertainties in
both science and the historical record, Linden explores the
evidence indicating that climate has been a serial killer of
civilizations. "The Winds of Change" looks at the present and then
to the future to determine whether the accused killer is on the
prowl, and what it will do in the future.
The tragedy of New Orleans is but the latest instance in which a
region prepared for weather disasters experienced in the past finds
itself helpless when nature ups the ante. In the closing chapters,
Linden explores why warnings about the dangers of climate change
have gone unheeded and what is happening with climate today, and he
offers perhaps the most explicit look yet at what a haywire climate
might do to us. He shows how even a society prepared to absorb such
threshold-crossing events as Katrina, the killer heat wave in
Europe in 2003, or the floods in the American Midwest in the 1990s
can spiral into precipitous decline should such events intensify
and become more frequent.
"The Winds of Change" places climate change, global warming, and
the resulting instability in historical context and sounds an
urgent warning for the future.
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