Eugene Linden : endangered animals, rapid climate change, global deforestation, fragging

Climate has been humanity’s constant, if moody, companion. By times benefactor or tormentor, climate nurtured the first stirrings of civilization, and then repeatedly visited ruin on empires and peoples. Winds of Change reveals a recurring pattern in which civilizations become prosperous and complacent during good weather, only to collapse when climate changes, either through direct effects of climate such as floods or drought, or indirect consequences such as disease, blights, and disorder.
The science of climate change is still young, and the subtle interactions of climate with other historical forces remain controversial, but there is mounting evidence that climate has loomed over the fate of societies from arctic Greenland to the Fertile Crescent, and from the lost cities of the Mayans in Central America to the rainforests of Central Africa. Acknowledging the uncertainties in both climate science and the historical record, Linden uses the conceit of a courtroom trial to explore the evidence of whether climate has been a serial killer of civilizations. The book then looks at the present and future to explore whether this accused killer is active today, and what it might do in the future.
Winds of Change places the horrifying carnage unleashed on New Orleans, Mississippi and Alabama by hurricane Katrina in this context. The tragedy of New Orleans is but the latest instance in which a region prepared for weather disasters experienced in the past, finds itself helpless when nature ups the ante. In the closing chapters, Linden explores why warnings about the dangers of climate change have thus far gone unheeded, what is happening with climate today, and offers perhaps the most explicit and evocative look yet at what a haywire climate might do to society and the economy. Using examples taken from the recent past, Linden shows how even a society prepared to absorb such threshold-crossing events as Katrina, the killer heatwave in Europe in 2003, or the floods in the American Midwest in the 1990s, might spiral into precipitous decline should such events intensify and become more frequent.
In The Future in Plain Sight Linden chose climate change as one driver that might unwind the unusual stability of the post World War II era. Winds of Change places that force for instability in the context of history, and, with the weather changing at an accelerating and ominous pace, warns that we must learn from the past to avoid the coming catastrophe.