Book reviews: Requiem for a Species by Clive Hamilton & Miscellaneous Voices #1

Hugely disparate in impact and quality:

• Books that change one’s life are rare (by definition!), so I’m privileged to report the second such in the month of April. Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change, by Australian author and think-tanker Clive Hamilton, is a tour de force of compression and analysis that cannot help but shift climate change thinking. For Hamilton argues, persuasively in my view, that while globally nations resist the required emissions reductions policies, the earth’s climate itself is not providing signals of an irreparably warmer future world. Recent science makes clear that +2º C is locked in, 4º is likely, and even higher is quite possible. Hamilton’s analysis of why humankind assiduously avoids corrective action is fascinating. The final call to action is muted, but so it should be after such an alarming yet rational prognosis. Required reading (but some foreknowledge would help). 4½ stars
• A physical book comprising many authors’ blog post? Sounds to me like a mismatch designed to fail to impress most readers. So I came to Miscellaneous Voices #1: Australian Blog Writing, edited by Karen Andrews, only because it contains a friend’s piece. Of the 36 posts of varied length, five – by Angela Meyer, Solid Gold Creativity, Damon Young and James Bradley (he has two) – proved to be interesting and well-written. And four of those five I’d read on the Internet. The remaining 31 were too ephemeral or eclectic (I avoid poems, for example) to hold attention. A beguiling concept but a flop. 1½ stars