By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change—including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story.
...a crisp, absorbing but still slim book ... Losing Earth is essential reading ... This is no science book; there are no charts, let alone equations. This is a well-told tale that grapples with Aristotle’s fundamental insight that humans are political animals—and asks whether we can finally, collectively, rouse ourselves to act.
Rich's writing is compelling and clear, even as he lays out details of 1980s international environmental policy. Reading like a Greek tragedy, Losing Earth shows how close we came to making the right choices — if it weren't for our darker angels.
... gripping, depressing, revelatory ... Climate change is a tragedy, but Rich makes clear that it is also a crime — a thing that bad people knowingly made worse, for their personal gain. That, I suspect, is one of the many aspects to the climate change battle that posterity will find it hard to believe, and impossible to forgive.
