BuzzFlash Reviews

March 9, 2006

Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Hardcover)
by Elizabeth Kolbert

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Forget for a moment about Karl Rove's war on Americans through a campaign of fear mongering about terrorists.

Why? Because the Democrats should be conducting a legitimate war to galvanize Americans against a greater threat that they should fear for them and their children.

Quite simply, it is now accepted by almost every major climactic scientist that the earth's environment is near a catastrophic "tipping point."

As a nation that doesn't generally look beyond the comforts and threats of the current moment, the entrenched powers in Washington D.C. are helping to make the world defenseless against natural forces that are going to wreak havoc on the earth.

Natural forces, yes, but caused by the unnatural damage we are doing to the environment. Al Gore predicted this in his seminal book, "Earth in the Balance," which was roundly ridiculed by the GOP and their corporate media shills. But Gore outlined well the environmental disaster we are creating, which will cause far more deaths and loss of life than 9/11.

Elizabeth Kolbert began this book as a series of articles for the New Yorker. She is fearless in pulling the fire alarm about the storm clouds of a catastrophic situation that the Bush Administration denies even exists -- and is taking steps to worsen every day with their policy of corporate negligence.

Here is the last paragraph of the book: "Ice core records also show that we are steadily drawing closer to the temperature peaks of the last interglacial, when sea levels were some fifteen feet higher than they are today. Just a few degrees more and the earth will be hotter than it has been at any time since our species evolved. The feedbacks that have been identified in the climate system...take small changes to the system and amplify them into much larger forces. Perhaps the most unpredictable feedback of all is the human one. With six billion people on the planet, the risks are everywhere apparent. A disruption in monsoon patterns, a shift in ocean currents, a major drought -- any one of those could easily produce streams of refugees numbering in the millions. As the effects of global warming become more and more difficult to ignore, will we react by finally fashioning a global response? Or will we retreat into ever narrower and more destructive forms of self-interest? It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."

Bush isn't just destroying democracy, he's enabling -- in his ignorance of scientific evidence -- the destruction of the world. That may sound shrill, but this March, 2006, book is just further proof of the truth.

On the morning this review is being posted, the NASA website posted a story revealing that the "Impact of Climate Warming on Polar Ice Sheets [Has Been] Confirmed." The Bush Administration will probably have the article pulled off the site.

If Americans realize what they should really be fearing, it might slow down Armageddon and disappoint the radical right wing fundamentalist base that keeps Bush in the White House.

"Field Notes from a Catastrophe" is a must read, because it details what we should fear and do everything possible to prevent -- instead of letting the barbarians in the White House deny the reality of the looming disaster to our eco-system.

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