The Great Disruption: Why The Climate Crisis Will Bring On The End Of Shopping And The Birth Of A New World (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Gilding is evidently in between the strong environmentalist and climate change denying camps. He's worked for Greenpeace but has also been an environmental consultant for many a major corporation. So, I tend to think of him as coming from a somewhat fair and balanced place.This book is disturbing in its implications that climate change as well as issues related to overpopulation and overconsumption will have dramatic and inevitable impacts on the world, its environment, its species, and our economic and social systems. Gilding says that you don't have to believe the changes are coming, but the world must prepare to do something about the changes once they start happening in a way that catches people's attention.One way is what he outlines as the "one degree war" where he compares a global response to climate change and resource scarcity to the global response to WWII. This is a comparison he makes frequently with, I think, convincing reasoning. His idea is that global governments will lead the charge in demanding changes to manufacturing and creating regulations that will help keep temperature rise to one degree. He acknowledges that many people are pessimistic that such changes can occur given the utter failure to respond to climate change thus far despite decades of evidence and warnings, but he is ultimately somewhat optimistic about the possibility, in part because to be pessimistic is to admit failure and simply write off the future of the world. Note that even his optimistic view still has perhaps a billion people (1,000,000,000) starving and becoming refugees that destabilize the world as we've come to know it.As part of this "optimism," Gilding spends the last third or so of his book painting scenarios of success and recommending things that can be done now to help lessen the effects of the impending changes. These are the parts I find inspiring, though in the 3 years since the book's publication I see that some of his recommendations have failed to catch on or have actually failed, like a company called E+co, which was supposed to improve energy efficiency in developing countries and provide good return on investment but which suffered major losses and had to be reorganized. Still, I hope to look at some of his other recommendations and predictions and see how they've done since his writing.One final thought - Gilding sees an "end to growth" as inevitable given that we're using resources faster than the Earth can sustain. This changed to a steady state economy is intriguing and sounds quite logical if only enough people would embrace it. I'm ready to give it a try.Overall, this is an important, if somewhat flawed (could use some editing), book that shows at least one path by which civilization can lessen the impacts of the coming changes. I hope my political representatives and leaders of companies I support will read (enough of) it to start thinking about what they can do to prepare for the future. While the writing isn't noteworthy, Gilding's ideas are still provocative, reasoned, and greatly accessible. Some of his claims are thinly supported through vague appeals to "the evidence" or "the science" or the even more mysterious "history" -- but most of his work is thorough and engaging, especially that based on his personal experience as the CEO of a prominent eco-consulting firm. I would not recommend it for pleasure reading, but I would as an introduction to these ideas in a modern context.
What do You think about The Great Disruption: Why The Climate Crisis Will Bring On The End Of Shopping And The Birth Of A New World (2011)?
A fresh perspective. A downer though. Easier to get through than I expected
—joe
