Some books are scary.
As a child The Hobbit scared me. As an adult I could understand that the likelihood of running into Sméagol was slim and the story turned from scary to fantastical.
While the powers that be may want you to believe that climate change is a modern day fantastical Sméagol, this book will open your eyes ... and terrify you in a way Tolkien never could.

I was shocked by this book. How did I not know that 200,000 people die annually in Bangladesh due to river erosion. That seems like the kind of thing people would be talking about, everywhere, all the time.

This book touches on many points, all of them important.
From bumblebees to the fresh water crisis.
It is important that we all know and understand the state our planet is in.
We use to wonder "What kind of world are we leaving for our grandkids".
We are ruining our planet at such an expediential rate that we don't have to wonder, we know that in 7 years the fresh water crisis will be at our doorstep. We know that the animals we use to draw and read about in Elementary school will be gone... extinct. How did we get to a point where killing off an entire species is something that is happening over and over again.
As a kid I learned about the dodo bird, and how we killed all of them, and we all wished we could have seen a real live dodo bird... now replace dodo bird with Elephant.
That's Earth now.

What happens on the other side of the planet will ripple over to us, it's not a debate.
It is fact and it's happening right now.

One of the things a reader might hope for when reading about current and very likely environmental catastrophes is some guidance from the author about what the reader can do to help remedy the situation. The ability to take meaningful action is a buttress against despair when reading such a book. While the author makes some suggestions aimed at institutions and government agencies, there are no suggestions given to the common reader who is not working for or with large institutions and/or government agencies. I find that to be a real fault with the book, and it makes me question who the intended reader for the book is. I suspect the hope is that the book will be read by and influence people in positions of power. That is fine, and it also limits the book's effectiveness for me, a common citizen.

I also question the author's praise for environmental leadership of companies like Nestle, Monsanto, Amazon and Walmart. Nestle has repeated gone into local communities in the United States and gotten agreements from local officials allowing them bottle local water for free and then sell it- no doubt in part to those same communities. While I have no proof, given the things Nestle executives have said and their actions attempting to control access to local water supplies, I suspect they know that water shortage crises are coming, and rather than have a humanitarian response I suspect their intent is to control water supplies and make money trying to sell bottled water to desperate people.

Lauding Monsanto for environmental activism is a complete joke because Monsanto manufactures Roundup, an extremely toxic pesticide. Amazon pays its workers low wages so that many employees work under harsh conditions and have difficulty making a living while Jeff Bezos is one of the richest men on earth. Walmart is famous for underpaying its employees, who then seek and receive welfare assistance that you and I pay for because the family who owns Walmart refuses to consistently pay a living wage.

To mention these companies and laud them for their environmental activism without noting their negatibve behaviors toward people and the environment is not fair and unbiased reporting.

Reading this book I felt like I was in an airplane flying over the problems and concerns discussed in the book. I really wanted and needed some grounding to connect with these issues in a very personal way rather than wanting to give in to the feeling of wanting to crawl into a fetal position and mutter about how hopeless it all seems to be. I am going to make some unusual suggestions here that I am sure will be criticized as more appropriate for children's books than for a book aimed at adults. When you tell me about an animal that is endangered I would like to see a picture of that animal. Make it real for me. Give me a URL where I can go and see what the life of that animal is like. Give me something close to direct contact with that animal so I get connected to and care about its fate more than I will if I just read text about it.

For the countries and communities where there are water shortages, give me more than an airplane view. Make that real too. I would like to see pictures of people in those communities who are fighting for the lives of their communities and environment. Point me to a URL where I can see a film clip of local environmental activists making a difference. (Hopefully I will be convinced that I can make a difference too.) When it is discussed in the book that local farmers who mingled crops with trees were successful, when just planting rows of trees were not- show me one of those farms where that worked. Let me see a film of someone talking to the farmer about what he did, how he feels about it, and how the success of his work benefits himself, his family, his commnity, his country.

More than anything I amazed that Mr. Nesbit mentions Nestle multiple times and gives them a complete pass regarding their water grabbing activities in Southern California and the Great Lakes area. How could he not know about how communities have struggled to keep Nestle out their water supply in multiple locations around the United States? And if he did know- why doesn't he mention it? Certainly taking water for free and then selling it is an environemtal concern.