NZSM Online

Get TurboNote+ desktop sticky notes

Interclue makes your browsing smarter, faster, more informative

SciTech Daily Review

Webcentre Ltd: Web solutions, Smart software, Quality graphics

Under The Microscope

RESPONDING TO GLOBAL WARMING by Peter Read; Zed Books Ltd, 1994; 304 pp; $59.95; ISBN 1-85649-161-7, 1-85649-162-5

Books on global warming seem to divide into two camps -- the generalist and the detailed. The first tries to be all things to all people and is often doom-laden; the second goes overboard on a small area such as meteorology or energy, and may fail to see the wood for the trees. I have found none, until now, to be satisfying. In this book, Peter Read attempts to bridge the gap, with a treatment that is sensible yet has plenty of hard facts. The result is largely successful and certainly thought-provoking. It also provides raw material for more detailed policy-related work.

Read, an engineer and economist at Massey University, has been working in this area for some years. He has combined his professional skills to address, with substantial documentation, three main policy areas: (a) the need for a precautionary approach when addressing issues of global warming; (b) progressive replacement of fossil fuels by biomass fuels; and (c) appropriate political-economic instruments to shift the economy in the necessary directions.

Many of the specifics of the data and economic arguments used by Read are not familiar to me, so I cannot pronounce on them. Nevertheless, the picture he paints makes a great deal of sense.

This is probably the most important, and most detailed, response yet produced on the global warming issue in the New Zealand context, yet is at the same time highly relevant to many other countries. It is an issue that we must address, and soon, if opportunities for building a more sustainable society are not to be squandered.

John Peet is in Canterbury University's Engineering Department.

John Peet is a senior lecturer in chemical and process engineering at the University of Canterbury, and author of "Energy and the Ecological Economics of Sustainability".