A Little Book About Climate Change by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

A Little Book About Climate Change

THIRD EDITION

by

Tom Wallace

A Little Book about Climate Change Other books by Tom Wallace: Conatus

Twenty-One Levels of Self-Deception Three Miles of Rice Pudding Utopia Governance and the Commons Wild Body Wild Nature

Tales from a Distant Shore Dreamtree

Another Pudding is Possible Stories of Place

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 Artwork By Tom Wallace 2026

Posting as ‘abtw777’ across various platforms 2

A Little Book about Climate Change Preface to the Third Edition The difficulty of writing a book such as this is that it may do more harm than good! What I mean is, no matter how careful the author, no matter how well-argued the discussions and no matter how respectful the author tries to be, there’s always the danger that some readers will be offended. Some will see my attempts to convince them of the dangers of climate change as patronising and some will re-act by being more determined not to try to make changes in their lives to help address our problems. The reactions of people around the climate crisis can be complex and unpredictable. So even folk who agree with what’s said in this book might nonetheless respond by resisting the changes they claim to believe we need!

If I’m honest with you, I think things could go either way! As such, it’s a bit of a gamble that the folk who really do get something positive out of what I’ve written will outnumber those who are put off.

I’m taking that gamble this time, again, in this third of edition of the book.

But meantime the clock is ticking. It still seems we may have a few years to turn things around, but then we’ll come to a threshold where only the most drastic interventions would stop the climate warming up further just through nature’s own processes. It will likely not be immediately obvious that the threshold has been crossed. It might be 20 years before we can be sure. But, looking back from that future time, a year will likely reveal itself as having been the decisive moment – be it 2020, 2025 or 2030.

Given where the world now sits, there may be a 3

A Little Book about Climate Change lot more emphasis on adaptation efforts rather than further mitigation. The good thing about adaptation is that it’s at least fairly obvious what work needs to be done. (Mitigation, by contrast, is like preparing for an accident that will not happen if we are successful!) The difficulty with adaptation – on the other hand – is that few, if any, of the countries in the world could afford the work that would need to be done to secure them against the impacts they will experience.

So questions of flood defences, heatwaves or whatever actually morph into questions around food security, civil and geo-political defence, migration and immigration.

The dilemma for many governments at the moment is whether to try and implement adaptation

measures

at

all.

Given

that

timescales are uncertain and the fact that there may be some international agreement some time in the future to make a large-scale planet-wide

intervention

to

the

climate

then

governments face the prospect that their adaptation

measures

may

be

rendered

unnecessary. But given what I’ve said above, the dilemma for government will shift, before long, to trying to balance their increasing problems with food security, defence and immigration

against

pressure

to

try

to

implement

one

of

the

drastic

climate

interventions that will be explained in the text.

So, let me be honest with you, this is the last time this book will go out in its current format.

The story is shifting quickly to the scenario I’ve explained above. So, our priorities will be shifting, and the actions of governments and individuals will likewise be changing.

Once again, dear reader, I recognise that you 4

A Little Book about Climate Change may be thinking, who is he to tell us what we should do or how we should think? And let me tell you – I am no-one – just a concerned citizen who is thinking about the changes happening in the world and wants to share his concerns.

So I ask you to forgive my presumptions, stay with me, stay with the issues raised in this book and be part of the conversation.

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A Little Book about Climate Change Table of Contents