HEAT: How to Stop the Planet From Burning
by George Monbiot
Pages: 304
ISBN: 978-0-89608-779-8
Release Date: 2007-04-23
Publisher: South End Press

Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning marks an important moment in our civilization’s thinking about global warming. The question is no longer Is climate change actually happening? but What do we do about it? George Monbiot offers an ambitious and far-reaching program to cut our carbon dioxide emissions to the point where the environmental scales start tipping back—away from catastrophe.

Though writing with a “spirit of optimism,” Monbiot does not pretend it will be easy. The only way to avoid further devastation, he argues, is a 90% cut in CO2 emissions in the rich nations of the world by 2030. In other words, our response will have to be immediate, and it will have to be decisive.

In every case he supports his proposals with a rigorous investigation into what works, what doesn’t, how much it costs, and what the problems might be. He wages war on bad ideas as energetically as he promotes good ones. And he is not afraid to attack anyone—friend or foe—whose claims are false or whose figures have been fudged.

After all, there is no time to waste. As Monbiot has said himself, “we are the last generation that can make this happen, and this is the last possible moment at which we can make it happen.”

“Avoiding disastrous climate change is the central challenge of our time. George Monbiot addresses it with wit, verve, and rigor. He shows that all of our excuses for inaction are just that—excuses. If you care about the future of the planet, you should read Heat, and then give a copy to a friend.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

“George Monbiot is one of the real heroes of the fight against global warming; he has faced the reality of climate change much more squarely than most, and written a book that offers true hope precisely because it deals with the true facts, not a make-believe set that would be easier to work around. A courageous and a necessary book!”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

George Monbiot is the best-selling author of The Age of Consent and Captive State, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, and No Man’s Land. In 1995, Nelson Mandela presented Monbiot with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), and East London (environmental science). Currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University, Monbiot writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.