Jelmer Mommers: Our Future on a Hot Earth
If climate change is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced, why are we doing so little? Will the Covid-19 pandemic make it worse or better? And where do we go from here? Join climate journalist Jelmer Mommers from Amsterdam as he discusses his new book How Are We Going to Explain This? with Caroline O’Doherty, environment correspondent with the Irish Independent.
In this revised translation of How Are We Going to Explain This? which includes responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, and drawing on the latest climate science, Jelmer Mommers sets out to answer these questions and many more. He describes how we got here, what possible futures await us, and we can all help to truly make a difference. He also manages to find much to be hopeful about.
Climate change is a great way to ruin a conversation. That is what Jelmer learned over five years immersed in the subject. Most people prefer to look away, which is understandable when we portray climate change as the apocalypse. But this crisis does not offer a definitive end. We decide how bad (or good) it’s going to get.
This is the reality:
- Civilisation as we know it is in great danger because of global warming.
- If we don’t take a lot more action soon, we will slide into a heat age: an earth that is ‘uncontrollable and dangerous’ and ‘inhospitable to today’s human societies and to many other contemporary species’.
- How are we going to explain that we knew this, and we did so little?
This is a book for everyone, and especially for those who prefer to look away or are resigned to an imagined fate. And, unlike so many other climate change books, it promises to leave you with both hope and a plan, showing you what role you can play and why your actions matter. No one is too small to help. We’re not lost yet and it’s not ‘too late’. How bad it gets is up to us.
- Date: Monday 26 July 2021
- Time: 7:00 pm
- Location: Zoom
- Admission: Free
- Website: West Cork Literary Festival
About the author(s)
Jelmer Mommers (b. 1987) reports on climate change for De Correspondent. In 2017 he made world news when he unearthed an old climate film made by Shell. In 2018 he published internal Shell documents, which later provided the basis for Milieudefensie’s (Environmental defense) lawsuit against the Dutch company. Previously Mommers...
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