A Review of a Book Review: The Case of Mark Herstsgaard's "Hot"

This will be an envious, petty (but informative) blog post.  My Climatopolis was not reviewed in the NY Times when it was published last fall.  Today, Herstsgaard's "Hot" is reviewed.  Our books cover very similar material but he is a journalist and I am academic economist. Who has the edge on writing the better book on the broad theme of "optimism concerning our ability to adapt to the real threat of climate change and why such optimism isn't merely wishful thinking"?  The NY Times has spoken. The journalists have selected the journalists!

I haven't read his but book but the I've read the review! Permit me to quote:

"Hertsgaard, to his credit, refuses to sugarcoat these facts. For all the justifiable fears about flooded coastlines, he writes, the “overriding danger” in the coming years is drought. “Floods kill thousands, drought can kill millions,” one expert told him. Within two decades, the number of people in “water-stressed countries” will rise to three billion from 800 million.

And yet Hertsgaard also knows that we cannot allow fear or despair, or even anger, to be our only response. To face this challenge, we need reasons to believe the task is doable. Hertsgaard makes a valiant effort to provide them."

The review continues;


"Adaptation — strengthening levees and sea defenses, safeguarding water and food supplies, preparing for more intense heat waves — has long been a touchy subject among advocates, who warn that it signals resignation, or a false sense of security (that we can continue adapting indefinitely), and that it steals resources from the all-important focus on mitigation. But the debate is shifting, and climate adaptation is starting to get the attention it deserves.

There’s not much new in what Hertsgaard advocates on the mitigation front — a “Green Apollo” program with an economy-wide price on carbon, vastly increased energy efficiency, huge investments in clean-energy technology, and other mainstream ideas. His significant contribution is his ground-level reporting on adaptation efforts around the world, from American cities to Bangladesh to the Sahel. All the stories are sobering, but many are also surprisingly hopeful: the Netherlands’ bold 200-year plan to save the country from a devastating sea-level rise; the utterly unexpected success of farmers in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in reclaiming huge areas of arable land from desertification; China’s research on large-scale ecological agriculture.

But most important, what Hertsgaard finds is that the ability to adapt to climate change depends as much on “social context” — defined as “the mix of public attitudes, cultural habits, political tendencies, economic interests and civic procedures” — as on wealth and technological sophistication. Wealth and technology clearly matter, but politics and culture may trump them."

SO, the difference between Herstsgaard and Climatopolis is that he offers "on the ground reporting" as he does a travelogue ---- describing things he has seen.    In contrast, in Climatopolis -- I stay in my cool, Los Angeles UCLA office and think. I think about how capitalism and forward looking investors see the same facts that Mr. "Hot" sees.  My book is a celebration of capitalism's evolutionary ability to reinvent itself as households and firms learn and invest.

The only piece of controversy between me and "Mr. Hot" regards the role of "culture". How does he know that culture matters in determining the speed of adaptation?  How did he test this hypothesis?   This is an interesting hypothesis but it merits a formal empirical test.

To get a sense of my book, please read this or watch this.