THE NEW CLIMATE WAR: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen
• Position: Crimes Against Nature: Capitalism and Global Heating

THE NEW CLIMATE WAR: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet

Author: Michael E. Mann

Published by: Scribe, Melbourne, 2021, 351pp, $35.

CRIMES AGAINST NATURE: Capitalism and Global Heating

Author: Jeff Sparrow

Published by: Scribe, Melbourne, 2021, 232pp, $29.99.

Taken together, these two books offer trenchant diagnoses of the threat of global warming and of the motives and methods of those who perpetrate it for profit. Although they ultimately converge, each book makes a unique assessment of causes and sets out distinct policy prescriptions, so this review will consider them separately. Each is highly recommended.

Michael E. Mann is a veteran, and sometimes victim, of the 'climate wars'. A respected climate scholar and inventor of the widely cited 'hockey stick' graph time-line portrayal of sudden global temperature rise after millennia of relative stability, Mann found himself attacked by spokespeople for the fossil fuel industry. This book is his comprehensive, informative and reasonable reply, his answering salvo in 'the climate war'. It addresses not only criticisms of his own warnings of global warming and advocacy of alternative energy sources but also exposes fallacies, misinformation and deliberate deception that have confused the public debate and undermined effective policy remedies.

Mann begins by documenting the fact that not only scientists but also corporate fossil fuel researchers in ExxonMobil were aware early of global warming and of its cause: rising greenhouse gas emissions arising from the increasing burning of coal and oil. He shows how the researchers' findings were deliberately suppressed by corporate executive decision-makers whose profits would be threatened by emission-control regulations. The industrial leaders mounted advertising campaigns emphasising their contribution to the community by supplying inexpensive energy and providing jobs. They sponsored environmental initiatives that Mann found to be tokenism at best, but more often deliberate deflection and deception.

The public debate was muddied by corporate co-optation of a handful of pliant scientists who denied first that global warming was occurring and then that fossil fuel emissions were a significant cause. This allowed the industrial interests to claim that the scientific community was divided and that policies to curb emissions were premature. Mann names complicit scientists-for-hire such as Frederick Seitz and S. Fred Singer and seemingly 'neutral'...