The Revenge of Gaia or Blue Dixie

The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity

Author: James Lovelock

In The Revenge of Gaia, bestselling author James Lovelock- father of climate studies and originator of the influential Gaia theory which views the entire earth as a living meta-organism-provides a definitive look at our imminent global crisis. In this disturbing new book, Lovelock guides us toward a hard reality: soon, we may not be able to alter the oncoming climate crisis. Lovelock’s influential Gaia theory, one of the building blocks of modern climate science, conceives of the Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, as a single living super-organism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of the combination of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from “flipping” into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, and force migration to the poles. The Revenge of Gaia explains the stress the planetary system is under and how humans are contributing to it, what the consequences will be, and what humanity must do to rescue itself.

The Washington Post - Tim Flannery

Minor technical blemishes fail to tarnish this luminous, challenging and timely work. Because it is so full of vital and interesting facts, The Revenge of Gaia is essential reading for anyone interested in climate change. And whatever your politics, it's sure to offend.

Publishers Weekly

The end is all but nigh for Mother Earth's inhabitants unless drastic measures are soon taken: that's the rueful prognostication delivered by Lovelock (Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth), intuitive originator of the theory that the world is a self-regulating system that, over the eons, has been able to sustain an equilibrium between hot and cold so as to support life. Now, propelled by global warming, Lovelock says, a tipping point has almost been reached beyond which the Earth will not recover sufficiently to sustain human life comfortably. Lovelock dismisses biomass fuels, wind farms, solar energy and fuel cell innovations as technologies unlikely to mitigate greenhouse gases in time to save the planet. Instead he sees nuclear energy as the only energy source that can meet our needs in time to prevent catastrophe. Chernobyl was a calamity, he notes, but nuclear power's danger is "insignificant compared with the real threat of intolerable and lethal heatwaves" and rising sea levels that could "threaten every coastal city of the world." Lovelock's pro-nuke enthusiasm, unexpected from one of the mid-20th century's most ardent environmental thinkers, is the well-reasoned core of this urgent call for braking at the brink of global catastrophe. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

Lovelock proposes a theory of the Earth as one giant living organism (Gaia) that has a limited lifespan and that is reaching the end of the heat cycle. Add to the natural cycle the enormous amount of damage humans have done to the Earth, especially in the last 200 years, including deforestation, farming too large a percentage of the land, ejecting huge amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere, and using up fossil fuels. Lovelock compares the Earth to an old lady living in an old house besieged by a number of unruly and disruptive teenagers. That analogy is typical of Lovelock, who alternates solid science with images that bring the message home. As a geophysicist, he knows and understands the science and uses charts and photos to prove his point. He believes that nuclear energy is the only way to extend Gaia's hospitality to humans and dismisses the most commonly promoted solutions such as wind power or solar power as too little, too late. The book concludes with a final image of the last survivors living in hot deserts at either pole of the Earth. This book will certainly stir up interesting discussions in the classroom. Age Range: Ages 15 to adult. REVIEWER: Nola Theiss (Vol. 42, No. 1)

Interesting book: Advancing Womens Careers or Restaurant Management

Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority

Author: Bob Moser

A powerful case for a new Southern strategy for the Democrats, from an award-winning reporter and native Southerner

In 2000 and 2004, the Democratic Party decided not to challenge George W. Bush in the South, a disastrous strategy that effectively handed Bush more than half of the electoral votes he needed to win the White House. As the 2008 election draws near, the Democrats have a historic opportunity to build a new progressive majority, but they cannot do so without the South.

In Blue Dixie, Bob Moser argues that the Democratic Party has been blinded by outmoded prejudices about the region. Moser, the chief political reporter for The Nation, shows that a volatile mix of unprecedented economic prosperity and abject poverty are reshaping the Southern vote. With evangelical churches preaching a more expansive social gospel and a massive left-leaning demographic shift to African Americans, Latinos, and the young, the South is poised for a Democratic revival. By returning to a bold, unflinching message of economic fairness, the Democrats can win in the nation’s largest, most diverse region and redeem themselves as a true party of the people.

Keenly observed and deeply grounded in contemporary Southern politics, Blue Dixie reveals the changing face of American politics to the South itself and to the rest of the nation.

The New York Times - Chris Suellentrop

Bob Moser falls squarely in the camp that thinks the South is just waiting for the Democrats to remind her of all the good times they used to have together before she shacked up with the Other Party. The party of Franklin D. Roosevelt needs to stand on the Mason-Dixon line, hoist a portable stereo over its head and blast the song that brought the two of them together in the first place—that old-time New Deal religion—into the South's bedroom window, Moser suggests. In Blue Dixie: Awakening the South's Democratic Majority, he doesn't succeed in making a persuasive case that this plan would work, but he does achieve a secondary goal: convincing Democrats that the South is a lot more complicated and interesting than they have made it out to be. It just might be a worthy object of their affection.

Publishers Weekly

This arresting analysis from Moser, political correspondent for the Nation, debunks the belief in an "enduring Republican South," which he terms "the single most destructive myth of contemporary politics." The author wades into the "swirl of stereotypes" to challenge the conventional wisdom of many Democratic strategists, that the South is a Republican stronghold. Moser examines polls and voting trends that belie the idea of a conservative, fundamentalist, inherently racist voting bloc, looking instead at the history of the South as a breeding ground for progressivism and populist economic policies before proposing that the Democrats should stop trying to be "the party of 'Republicans Lite' " in order to win over Dixie. Moser details Jim Webb's and Barack Obama's successes in the South, praises Howard Dean's "fifty-state strategy" for re-energizing the Democratic Party in the region and gives insightful suggestions for how the party can continue the trend. Well-written, well-researched and perfectly timed with this year's election cycle, this fascinating read is highly recommended to anyone interested in unraveling political fact from fiction and detecting the myriad complicated relationships that knit a nation together. (Aug.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents:

Introduction Mess of Trouble 1

1 The Solid Southern Strategy 9

2 The Lite Brigade 32

3 Dixiephobia 54

4 The Donkey Bucks 78

5 Color Codes 106

6 Big Bang 142

7 Getting Religion 165

8 Cornbread and Roses 205

Notes 237

Selected Bibliography 255

Acknowledgments 261

Index 263