climate change

Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future, Thomas Homer-Dixon, ed., Toronto: Random House Canada, 2009, 224 pages. Reviewed by Peter Robinson.

Cimate change, climate forcing, global warming – all these terms frame a collective public debate about the future of the world as we know it. Since that “world” is dynamic and geographically diverse, it is not surprising that political responses range widely from hand-wringing to commitment and resignation, to disbelief and reticence, or even outright denial.

When the chief executive officers from some of Canada’s most influential corporations encourage government intervention to tackle climate change, you know change is in the air. And in this case, the change involves a tax shift, a green tax shift, that is.

When I began writing A Scientific Romance 15 years ago, I pictured the ruins our civilization might leave behind if it died from its own folly like so many others. My tale is set in Britain and told by an archaeologist who travels to the year 2500. I made satirical extrapolations from things in the news. A character dies of mad cow disease, climate change turns wintry London into a tropical swamp, genetically modified organisms run amok. Such risks were still moot in the early 1990s.