| Summary: | Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action David Spratt and Philip Sutton Scribe, 2008 Reviewed by Peter W. Newton THIS is one of a growing number of books about climate change. Its title incorporates the key words “code red,” a medical term denoting a patient needing immediate and advanced life support. It is a powerful metaphor for our planet in relation to the symptoms beginning to materialise in relation to the “virus” of climate change (after Al Gore) which will rapidly accelerate as our planet progressively heats by one, two, three and possibly more degrees Celsius in the decades ahead. This would represent its most significant transition of the past 10,000 years - from an era of “remarkably stable climate that has allowed the whole period of human development to take place” (as the authors put it) to a future world with temperatures where livability as we know it becomes highly uncertain. The book is organised in three parts. The first reviews the scientific evidence related to global warming and climate change, especially issues of magnitude and speed. The authors are of the view that change will be more rapid and pervasive than most other commentators are suggesting, based primarily on the implications of an accelerating rate of ice-sheet disintegration, sea level rise, and the extent to which current models underestimate the impacts of slower feedback loops in our ecosystems. The vulnerability of our cities and regions is likely to be significant. The authors unfortunately are light on in relation to painting a picture of what two, three or four degrees of increased temperature could mean for communities in different parts of Australia. If Spratt and Sutton had an objective of driving change in behaviour among the Australian population, then they needed to provide more detailed and regionally specific information that would be capable of engendering concern in the reader based on how climate change would affect them and their locality (stage two in behaviour change theory) as a necessary precursor ...
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