Anyone who was in Australia in the second half of 2006 would have felt the ‘tipping point’ of public concern on global warming that followed the triple whammy of Tim Flannery’s The Weathermakers, Al Gore’s An Invonvenient Truth and the Stern Report-not to mention the worsening drought in many areas. The turning tide has been so swift that even climate-change action groups have been caught out, wrong-footed by a public suddenly eager for solutions rather than further convincing of the seriousness of the situation. The shift has brought to the fore the divisions over how we should fight the climate war: market-based versus government-driven solutions; renewable versus nuclear; those who think the change to a carbon neutral economy can be achieved at little cost, or even a profit, and those who are convinced it requires all-encompassing change to current western lifestyles. Hogarth ranges over these debates and as an adviser to businesses such as the carbon-trading start-up Easy Being Green, comes down firmly on the side of the market as a necessary answer to our woes. Anyone hoping that this may be an Australian answer to UK journalist George Monbiot’s painstaking examination of possible emission-reduction solutions Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning will be disappointed, as will those already well read on the issue for whom not a lot here will be new. However, as a round-up of the past year of events and media developments, a canvassing of some of the core debates and an introduction to many of the main Australian business players, this is a good recommendation.

Matthia Dempsey is the deputy editor of BOOKSELLER+PUBLISHER

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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