There is a hopeful, upbeat message in this book: There is still time to stop and reverse climate change! However, it is going to require large, wide, systemic societal changes. These are done through governmental actions and agreements with intergovernmental organizations. This is in the face of there being some malevolent large corporate and petrostate actors who require continued inaction to ensure their future profits. The longer we wait, the more expensive in money and human suffering they will be. They act using a set of powerful Ds: disinformation, deceit, divisiveness, deflection, delay, despair-mongering, and doomism. Indeed, despair and doomism work as well as denialism – we don’t do anything, we don’t support anything. Divisiveness is another tool used, and can be seen in the great political divide seen in the US as well as other countries where there is a political divide among fascists, individualist libertarians, and socialists. Carbon pricing need not be a “regressive tax” which is disproportionately paid by the poor. When it comes down to it, we all want the same things – especially a planet habitable for the rest of our lives and those of our children – but disagree on the details of HOW to accomplish this. Individual actions are not enough, and they lead to purity tests and divisions on lifestyle, and leads to worse than doing nothing. Division and disagreement makes for more inaction, and “agreeing to disagree” creates more problems. We’re not talking about whether we prefer roses or daisies, pizza or tacos, or the colors pink or yellow. We’re talking about our very existence.

There are some encouragements about not getting dragged into a divisive spat with others who basically agree with you. Especially, don't use the differences that amount to purity and virtue signaling to alienating you from working together to affect real change.

I will admit to being a doomer. I disagree that this necessarily leads to inaction. Taking any action effective to slow down or stop climate change is beneficial to everyone on earth. Yet, I will agree that it technically and scientifically possible to solve this problem. I disagree that we have the societal will to do it – especially in the face of extremely well-funded, weapons-grade propaganda leading to inaction and even tribalistic behaviors leading to societal unrest. I agree that taking individual, symbolic measures is useless, and worse if it is used as a divisive purity test. I also disagree that having less children and encouraging and enabling others’ family planning must be a form of genocide – the fewer children we have, the more we can cut back on the whopping 8.2 billion population, the less carbon we’ll use, and the fewer there are to have to deal with some of the needed changes or environmental changes if we do nothing effective.

The New Climate War is a climate change book by a climate scientist but it is not a science book. This book is about the war around climate change between climate activists and climate deniers/doomsdayers. Michael Mann spends this book talking through the strategies that deniers and doomsdayers are using and how they come straight out of big tobacco's playbook. Mann also talks about not getting pulled into the newest methods that are being used. What I found very interesting is hearing about the geoengineering arguments that are being made and how climate activists like Bill Gates are spending large amounts of money to come up with solutions to engineer our way out of this problem instead of focusing on making alternative energies more accessible and affordable. Mann also discusses the use of bad science that places more emphasis on personal responsibility instead of industry. One of his big examples is a movie that Michael Moore produced as a climate activist that was riddled with bad science and came to bad conclusions as a result.

This book is coming at a time when there are several books coming out about how to notice authoritarianism and tyranny so this fits right in there as it discusses the methods that are being used and how to notice them. So much of this issue is about perception and getting people to not believe the lies and bad science. While I liked the book I will say it took longer to read (even though it is not super long due to end notes) because the writing is very dense. It not full of science so don't think that but the concepts and examples can take up a lot of time and space. I think this is definitely something that people should read so they can be more aware of what is happening in the battle and not just the science behind the war.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free early copy of this one.

This is such an important topic. I follow the author on Twitter and was excited to see a new book by him. The book gave a thorough view of the issue and made me also feel hopeful about the future. If we can make industry wide changes maybe we can make some progress.

Overall a good read for anyone that wonders about the health of our planet.

In a surprisingly optimistic take on progress and potential for slowing the climate crisis, Michael Mann highlights a four point plan to generate political and social momentum in this comprehensive and sharp critique of climate propaganda and uninformed discourse.

1. Disregard the Doomsayers: I never would have predicted that The New Climate War would lessen my climate change-related anxiety, but it did. While emphasizing that the climate crisis is urgent, Dr. Mann also drives home the point that it is still entirely actionable. He highlights environmental policies that have already worked, citing the Montreal Protocol's shrinking effect on the hole in the ozone layer and the Clean Air Act, among others.

2. A Child Shall Lead Them: I felt like this case was not made as strongly as the rest. While he did talk extensively about the attention Greta Thunberg has so effectively brought to the issue, his point here seems to mostly rely on how much of the impact of business-as-usual warming will not be felt for at least another generation, if not two. It seemed to me to kind of let older generations off-the-hook, which seems problematic if you're espousing systemic policy change as the solution when overwhelmingly policy makers are two to three generations ahead of Ms. Thunberg.

3. Educate, Educate, Educate: While climate change deniers absolutely still exist, they are not as plentiful as some media outlets would have you believe. If you try to engage your friends and neighbors on this issue, you may be surprised to find more common ground than you may have anticipated. And for those who decry the cost of climate action, Dr. Mann supplies a slew of talking points to the contrary, including that "climate change now threatens our economy to the tune of more than a trillion dollars a year," "the greatest opportunity for job growth in the energy industry comes with renewables, not fossil fuels," and that "renewable energy costs are now competitive with fossil fuels--even with the incentives that are currently skewed against them."

4. Changing the System Requires Systemic Change: While supporting several positive impacts of individual action such as veganism and electric vehicles (including health benefits and cost savings) and even referencing entire industries that blame their dramatic losses on the individual action of millennials (like fast-food chains), he really drives home the point that the climate crisis cannot and will not be solved by individual action alone. In his words, "consumer choice doesn't build high-speed railways, fund research and development in renewable energy, or place a price on carbon emissions. Any real solution must involve both individual action and systemic change."

A couple minor critiques:

1. Dr. Mann's rhetoric in this volume is exceedingly populist. The takeaway is that corporations (and specifically fossil fuel interests) are self-serving and evil and not to be trusted and ordinary people must stand up and assert their rights and needs. While his argument is cogent and he provides ample evidence, it does come off as the same type of deflection he points the finger at corporations for engaging in. He talks a good talk about enhancing demand-side pressures for renewable energy and reducing demand for animal agriculture, etc. But it really seems like his heart isn't in it. He gets so focused on rebutting the arguments of industry that his own arguments don't always seem consistent. For example, when cows belch methane, it's apparently not a big deal because it has a much shorter half-life than CO2, but when it comes to fugitive methane from fracking, that's a hugely potent concern that absolutely must be addressed by policy. All in service of the argument that it's ok to eat meat but it's not ok for the government to support natural gas as a bridge fuel. You just have to be an attentive and discerning reader in this book.

2. Dr. Mann really, really does not support nuclear energy. But his argument against it is not based in science. He has fallen prey to the same uninformed discourse he loathes when it intersects with his own field. My grandfather was a nuclear reactor safety engineer who played a significant role in the cleanup of Three Mile Island and in the Yucca Mountain Project and predicted the Fukushima meltdown decades before it happened. So call me biased, but there is tremendous potential in nuclear energy and it absolutely can be done safely. Human error and susceptibility to natural disasters (like the tsunami that contributed to the Fukushima meltdown) are absolutely not intrinsic to harnessing nuclear power. That said, there is a strong argument to be made from a social justice perspective that uranium mining and processing is hazardous and exploitative, and that the risks associated with nuclear reactors and waste operations have a significant disproportionate impact on underresourced communities and communities of color. It is also currently much less cost-effective. But it should not be discounted on scientific and engineering merit.

Overall, an exceptionally accessible and insightful read that successfully grounds discussion of the climate crisis as one that remains urgent but fully actionable and solvable within the current resources and technological advances available. Highly recommend.

Much thanks to NetGalley and PublicAffairs for the eARC in exchange for the review.

Climate change has evolved its own universe, complete with leading characters, heroes, villains, critics, trolls, bots, character assassins, misinformation, misdirection and backroom plots. It is a world largely unknown to most readers, who probably think of it as an argument among scientists. Michael Mann, arguably at the center of the vortex, tries to explain it in The New Climate War.

Mann and his co-authors published the paper showing carbon pollution as a hockey stick, rising sharply after centuries of trivial growth. The name stuck and made their finding famous, and infamous. Attacks began soon after, and have continued – for nearly 25 years now. Mann has a thick skin and deals with it all in its turn. He is fighting the good fight – the one with the data, the sciences and the resolve.

He tackles the naysayers head on. When hears the Green New Deal will cost too much, the answer is inaction will cost far more. He wants everyone to know real progress is being made, doom can be avoided, and sitting on the sidelines is tantamount to criminal negligence.

He is constantly correcting misinformation, as trolls, bots, and conservative politicians are forever pulling a figure out of context and using it to damn the entire issue. Or worse, an incorrect or fraudulent figure. From temperature rise to sea levels, from carbon in the atmosphere to carbon in the oceans, the constant flow of false claims makes scientists in general look bad. It takes total vigilance to get back to a level playing field. Mann says the models have proven reliable, the predictions are coming true, and action is required, right now.

Unfortunately, the Russians make their living selling oil and gas. Between them and American Big Oil, the war with climate science will continue, and it’s a dirty war.

As a child, Mann was inspired by the telegenic Carl Sagan and his Cosmos TV series. He has taken that passion and media-savvy onto his own back, and is constantly on the front lines, battling the climate change deniers, doomsayers and inactivists. He knows all the players, their strengths and weaknesses, their pluses and minuses. A lot of the book is his own reviews of their performances on the global stage. This alone is worth the price of admission, as most of the names, while possibly familiar, are largely unknowns to most readers. Their value or lack thereof is instructive. Readers can now know who to trust and why, at long last. If readers want to know more about Bjorn Lomborg and David Wallace-Wells, and how they present their “findings”, this is the place to look.

The evil villain in this play is the fossil fuel industry, taking its tactics from the tobacco story. “It includes an array of powerful Ds: disinformation, deceit, divisiveness, deflection, delay, despair-mongering, and doomism” he says. And like tobacco, oil’s war chest is bottomless.

It is consciously delaying the inevitable, even as its own scientists and executives acknowledge Big Oil’s responsibility for the climate mess. It influences lawmakers to stave off the alternatives: electric Teslas have been banned in several states at the behest of the fossil fuel industry. It has also promulgated the rumors that wind turbines cause cancer, lower property values and even UFO crashes. Anything to slow the inevitable shrinking of the problem – Big Oil itself.

My own favorite Big Oil tactic is deflection. In deflection campaigns, spokespeople – and bots – claim the industry is not to blame. It is customers who are to blame. It is redolent of the 1920s tactic of guns don’t kill people; people kill people. With the climate, it’s a choice, a lifestyle, a negligence, a luxury. Pick your reason, it is not the fault of the industry. Until and unless everyone in the world changes their way of life, the oil industry doesn’t want to hear about it. This of course has the marvelous effect of generating conflict and promoting finger-pointing, behavior-shaming, virtue-signaling, and purity tests.

One of the results is a new class of players, the inactivists. These are people so upset with what they read from the industry, they withdraw to the sidelines, taking them out of the battle. This is different from the doomists, who claim it is too late so we might as well burn all the carbon we want. The inactivists have sidelined themselves because of the deflection (it is their own fault), and the misinformation (is there any truth to any of it?). Mann seeks to reactivate them with a dose of truth and a positive outcome to cling to.

He explores the arguments around carbon taxes and the fake argument about the Gilets Jaunes in France protesting against theirs. He is also concerned that the left in the USA is coming out against carbon taxes, sometimes adding that America needs a complete banning of fossil fuels, period. Carbon taxes play no role in that scenario.

Mann cites Alex Steffen coining the phrase “predatory delay” by the oil industry, as they seek to extend their revenue stream as long as possible and without further taxes. That the left has bought into this argument is quite stunning. Personally, I still like the quote from Jeff Mulgan (2013): “Communism collapsed because it didn't let prices tell the economic truth, and capitalism will collapse because it didn't let prices tell the ecological truth.” As Mann says, the Paris Accord sees a carbon tax at about $2 per ton, but it would take $75 a ton to achieve the Paris commitments. That’s the extent of the free ride Big Oil has had on the back of the global economy.

Big Oil has the right wing media in its hip pocket. Mann asks: “What’s the real reason that Germany’s solar industry is doing so much better than the solar industry in the United States? Simple: It doesn’t have Fox News, the rest of the Murdoch media, the Koch brothers, and fossil fuel interests all joining forces to destroy it.”
He debunks, for the nth time, geoengineering, in which entrepreneurs want to deploy planet-scale engineering experiments to deflect sunlight and otherwise cool the Earth. Not only will they not work, they are also impossibly expensive and no one has any idea what the unintended consequences will be. Further screwing around with the ecological balance is not the answer. Stopping the use of fossil fuels is the real answer. Worse still, geoengineering can be weaponized, making it into a whole new problem.

Blissfully, Mann’s Conclusion is different from all the other bland and pointless concluding climate change chapters I have reviewed in the past 20 years. Typically, they devote a paragraph to various pilot projects that are climate-friendly, and then express hope that more of these experiments will take place and eventually be rolled out as real options. But that’s all to come – later.

This Conclusion is far more positive. And real. Mann shows how the fossil fuel complex is suffering at the hands of students and finally, of Wall Street. Students have been pressuring their universities to disinvest from fossil fuel firm shares, and the movement is not merely successful, but spreading. Mann says it is over a thousand schools now.

Greta Thunberg and the whole generation of teens who follow her are an existential threat to the biggest industry in the world – fossil fuels. It has said so publicly. They will do anything to discredit her, down to criticizing the boat she took to New York to avoid a flight – because the plastic hull wasn’t recyclable. Clearly, she’s got Big Oil is on the run.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is withholding funding of fossil fuel projects because it is keenly aware of the “transition risk” as more and more energy projects are of the renewable kind. Exxon Mobil was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average because its future prospects won’t help the Dow advance any more.

He also sees staunch Republican deniers coming around. They see the inevitability of action, and are at long last willing to buck the party stalwarts and vote in favor. This has a lot to do with public acceptance, which Mann sees as potentially jumping into a solid majority as more and more catastrophic weather events pile up. Even some of the right wing climate change denying “think tanks” are suffering from withdrawal of support, right down to pathetic attendance at their conferences.

Wind and solar power now account for 250 gigawatts of energy, some 20% of US output, as coal is clearly on its way out in the USA. Even without the levels of subsidies seen elsewhere in the world, renewables have a more than firm footing in the economy.

He also thinks there are lessons being drawn from the COVID-19 pandemic. The deniers have proven to be totally incorrect, while the models and scientists have proven to be reliable. Maybe Americans will actually listen to their climate scientists, too. Mann likens it to the massive increase in support for gay marriage, which happened in a truly remarkable short period. He hopes it can happen again.

I don’t mind saying I have never felt so good about a climate change book before reading The New Climate War.

But let me end with a quote from Mann’s inspiration, Carl Sagan (1996): “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

This guy got it. And so does Michael Mann.

David Wineberg