[4] Fight Global Warming Now: Bill Mckibben - Review

Talk about a quick read.

This is what you read if you're super motivated but don't know where to start when engaging your local community about climate change. It gives you practical, sometimes insanely obvious, advice on who to talk to and how. It describes the efforts of the "Step It Up" campaign in 2007 to get a U.S. carbon emissions cutback of 80% by 2050. It doesn't try to act like more than it is. You'll feel marginally connected to the efforts of some area or wonder if you can try something similar in your area. It doesn't shoot to be THE BOOK you go to figure out how you're going to structure your next rally.

In its specific goal of offering advice at the local level, it makes you want more. Do the rallies, speeches, and 50 mile walks translate into effective legislation? Learning how to goad the media into covering you might be great for telling someone you got on USA Today, but what is the tangible effect of feeling motivated and informing people with your catchy email titles? This is a guidebook for connecting with all the people around you who feel global warming is a problem, but it doesn't play too heavily into how much you can get organized and how little that can still speak to the overall problem.

The information comes in quick mini paragraphs and subsections verses drawn out paragraphs, so it's easy to look up information again or keep pocket mental notes. You do get the sense that you can create something, no matter how small, and that it can at least play the part of "spreading the message." There are so many links of the different collaborators that it's pointless to point them out here, but if you want to get lost in the array of different local efforts, the appendix lists them all.

If you show up to a rally one day and get to small talking with one of the organizers, they'll inevitably reference this book and talk about how every little bit counts. I no less wonder more about influencing the bigger picture and the actual gears that need to turn at the national and global level. To the extent that a thousand independent organizers spread awareness and help focus the conversation, it's great. It's efficacy and ties to changing the big picture remain tenuous.