Hacking Planet Earth

January 1, 2020
An enthusiastic guide to reversing global warming. As award-winning science journalist Kostigen (National Geographic Extreme Weather Survival Guide, 2014, etc.) points out, humans add 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year, an amount that's rising steadily despite current efforts to curb it. Since grassroots endeavors have not worked, the author proposes that "industry, the sector of society responsible for much of human-caused global warming...has to turn things around and lead the charge to help mend our climate." Innovators--entrepreneurs, scientists, and technologists--must "do what they do best: invent, pioneer, disrupt the same old ways of doing things." Traveling the world, Kostigen turns up individuals and organizations that are doing just that. A proposed giant laser will zap clouds, producing rain where it's disappearing. Warming oceans produce more hurricanes, but ingenious machines can mix the hot surface and cool depths. Millions of artificial trees (invented 10 years ago) would soak up carbon dioxide as fast as it is being produced. By the halfway point, the author has turned from preventing global warming to proposing how humans might live in the future, whether hot or not. Kostigen provides plenty of intriguing accounts of underground cities, vertical farms, artificial meat, genetically modified food, and the quest to effectively turn sewage into drinking water. We are a problem-solving species, so, as conditions worsen, we will go into action--though much more should have already been accomplished--but many of Kostigen's projects require spectacular technological advances, worldwide cooperation (to raise the trillions of dollars necessary), or the wisdom to avoid the disastrous side effects of tampering with nature that occurred followed previous tampering. Still, since self-denial has failed and national governments refuse to inconvenience carbon-producing industries--including the United States, even under Barack Obama)--many experts besides Kostigen are pinning their hopes on technology. A highly optimistic, sincere account of those leading the charge to solve a grave problem that some still choose to ignore.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 6, 2020
Journalist Kostigen (Extreme Weather) reviews dozens of projects designed to mitigate global warming’s deleterious effects in this stimulating survey. Some of the plans—solar and wind farms—are quotidian, but others—a laser that can make it rain, an outer space parasol that would deflect the sun’s energy before it reaches Earth, and metal trees that capture carbon emissions—stretch the imagination. Joven Santos’s whimsical sketches and Kostigen’s interviews with the “mad geniuses” behind these bizarre ideas together provide food for thought and cause for optimism that some climate disasters might be avoided. Some of the projects, such as shingles made with “smog-reducing granules,” get only a brief mention as Kostigen casts a wide net, exploring projects throughout the globe, in China, Morocco, and elsewhere. What’s missing are reality checks, such as how much investment would be needed to put these prototypes into action and how effective they would be. Some ideas—for example, a Brazilian tunnel project to move water over hundreds of miles to drought-prone regions—sound potentially more environmentally harmful than useful. Overall, though, this is an intriguing overview of what science and engineering could do to help keep the planet livable.