Atmosphere of Hope (Tim Flannery)

I have just finished reading ‘Atmosphere of Hope’ by Tim Flannery, a 2015 follow-up to his well-known book about climate change ‘The Weather Makers’. Flannery is an acknowledged global expert on climate change and, in particular, how nations and individuals are, or are not, responding to and trying to mitigate it.

Atmosphere of Hope is an interesting, albeit slightly odd, book. It is written in short chapters of 6-7 pages (which I like – I hate books with long chapters) that, at times, seem to be a bit thrown together. It is a little like he decided to rattle off a book but couldn’t quite be bothered to craft a really good one. However, he writes well and knows his stuff so despite this weakness, the book still works and is highly informative.

There is a lot of bad news in Atmosphere of Hope. Flannery spells out how, despite some progress, we are simply not doing enough to ensure that we have a better than 50% chance of 2 degrees Celsius warming. But, as the title of the book suggests, he also offers some hope, in particular highlighting advances in third-way technologies – ones designed to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere – and the huge potential for renewable energy sources (primarily solar and wind) coupled with electric vehicles to form a major part of a climate change mitigation solution. Overall, I was left reasonably optimistic – the advances in technology are massive and the rate at which use of renewables is advancing whilst economies are still growing offers considerable hope. I was most interested, and surprised, to read about how electric vehicles could act as the battery storage mechanism to even out the unsteady supply of energy associated with most renewable sources. I had never really thought about this idea before and how excess energy generated at times of high supply could be stored in millions of small vehicle batteries which could then feed energy back into the grid at other times.

One issue with the book, which is not the fault of the book itself but rather with the time that I read it, is that it was written before the Paris climate conference in 2017 and, perhaps even more importantly, in the pre-Trump era. It would be interesting to read Flannery’s thoughts taking into account these developments – I ought to have a look online sometime to see what I can find. Or I could just wait a few years for his next book!