In my book, Hope for a Heated Planet, I tell the story of hunting for my friend Gus Speth’s book in my local Barnes & Noble. Gus is the Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a former official from the Carter and Clinton years. He has plenty to say. I also confess how I drove around looking for parking, enjoyed the air conditioning, drank at Starbuck’s and committed other environmental sins. Finally, as he had ruefully predicted, I found Speth’s book -- which spans history, politics and policy, environment, and economics -- tucked away in the basement between the cats and the dogs. It was under “Nature and animals.”
That is where you should probably look for my book, too. But as it turns out, it is really a book about hope and about citizen engagement in the most important issue of our time. Now that we have entered a new, audacious era of hope with President Barack Obama, I should warn you and give away my ending. President Obama alone will not save us from the destruction of the planet, nor will the new 111th Congress. Those of you who follow politics (or history or religion or the economy) will recall that those full-throated crowds at Obama rallies were not shouting “Yes, HE can!” They were shouting “Yes, WE can!” Obama made it clear, too, as he put it over and over again, that “change happens from the bottom up.”
It is one of the key lessons that I and other national environmental leaders learned the hard way. We got as far as a triumphant climate treaty conclusion in Kyoto by talking with and pushing our cautious, but sympathetic allies Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But when we got home, we got whupped. We had not engaged and involved Americans from all walks of life in our environmental crusade. That’s when we began to work to reach out beyond environmentalists – to parents concerned about their kids’ health if they lived near a coal plant, to labor, business, religious Americans, academics and youth. We needed to redefine what environmentalism is, to drop our backpacks and our jargon, and to talk in new ways.
That’s what I’ve tried to do in Hope for a Heated Planet. It’s got the basic science and public health, history from the Clinton years and after, practical advice on how you can help and get involved, and a thorough look at why I believe we can solve our climate crisis with clean, renewable energy. It is not a nature book. There are no cats and dogs in it. Like every author, I believe everyone should read it, every class should assign it. If we are to save ourselves, we will need to start from, yet move beyond, our specialties. A renewed, broader, more inclusive and interdisciplinary environmental movement helped create the hope and the grassroots passion that has led to President Obama. But now what happens next is really up to us. That is why I wrote Hope for a Heated Planet. Of course I hope you will buy it. But, more importantly, I hope you will use it.
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