Scribe Publications: New Releases Section

Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

In this meticulously documented call-to-action, David Spratt and Philip Sutton reveal extensive scientific evidence showing the global warming crisis is far worse than official reports and national governments have indicated — and that we’re almost at the point of no return.

Serious climate change impacts are already happening, more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. As the USA’s most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen, told 15,000 of his colleagues at a conference in December 2007, significant climate 'tipping points' have already been passed. These include large ice-sheet disintegration, significant sea level rises of up to five metres this century, and devastating species loss. The Arctic will soon be free of summer sea-ice — a century ahead of projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — and the Greenland ice sheet is in imminent danger.

The tipping point for the loss of the Arctic sea-ice was around two decades ago, when temperatures were about 0.3°C lower than at present. Climate Code Red shows that further temperature increases of 2 degrees are effectively already in the system. Even a temperature increase cap of 2–2.4°C, which is proposed within the United Nations framework (and is far below what most governments are prepared to aim for), would take the planet’s climate beyond the temperature range of the last million years.

David Spratt and Philip Sutton show that the unofficial projected speed of climate change — with temperature increases greater than 0.3°C per decade, and a consequent rapid shifting of climatic zones — will result in most ecosystems failing to adapt, causing the extinction of many species. The oceans will become more acidic, endangering much marine life.

The dangers we all face are already much greater than the headlines indicate. According to climate scientists such as James Hansen, it is no longer a case of how much more we can ‘safely’ emit, but whether we can stop emissions and produce a deliberate cooling before the earth’s climate system reaches a runaway trajectory that is beyond any hope of human restoration.

These imperatives are incompatible with ‘politics as usual’ and ‘business as usual’. Climate Code Red argues there is an urgent need for all of us to recognise that we face a sustainability emergency requiring a clear break from the politics of failure-inducing compromise. Even scientifically moderate goals (such as reducing emissions by 25–40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020) now require immoderate rates of technical and social change that are only achievable by shifting formally to an emergency footing.

Spratt and Sutton believe we now need to think the unthinkable, because the case for emergency action is not so much a radical idea as an indispensable course we must embark upon if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.

The Writing Class: a novel

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

A darkly comic novel about a writing class with a killer in its midst.

Amy Gallup is a reclusive widow whose only bright spot is the evening writing class that she teaches at the university. This semester’s class is full of the usual suspects: the overly enthusiastic student, the slacker, the prankster, and the undiscovered talent. But there’s something different about this class — and the clues begin with a scary phone call and obscene threats instead of peer evaluations. Amy soon realises that one of her students is a very disturbed individual indeed. When a student is murdered, everyone becomes a suspect.

As she dissects each student’s writing for clues, Amy must enlist the help of everyone in her class, including the murderer, to find the killer amongst them. Suspenseful, extremely witty, brilliantly written, unexpectedly hilarious, and a joy from start to finish, The Writing Class is a one-of-a-kind novel that rivals Jincy Willett’s previous masterpieces.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

It’s time for eighteen-year-old James Sveck to begin his freshman year at Brown. Instead, he’s surfing the real-estate listings, searching for a sanctuary—a nice farmhouse in Kansas, perhaps. Although James lives in twenty-first-century Manhattan, he’s more at home in the faraway worlds of Eric Rohmer or Anthony Trollope—or his favourite writer, the obscure and tragic Denton Welch. James’s sense of dislocation is exacerbated by his wilfully self-absorbed parents, a disdainful sister, his cryptic shrink, and an increasingly vague, D-list celebrity grandmother. Compounding matters is James’s growing infatuation with a handsome male colleague at the art gallery his mother owns, where James supposedly works at his summer job but where he actually plots his escape to the prairies.

In the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye, Peter Cameron paints an indelible portrait of a teenage hero holding out for a better grown-up world.

Bottlemania: how water went on sale and why we bought it

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

Bottlemania is an incisive, intrepid, and habit-changing narrative investigation into the commercialisation of our most basic human need: drinking water.

Having already surpassed milk and beer, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the United States. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we’re hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we’re drinking and why.

In this intelligent, eye-opening work of narrative journalism, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? What happens when a bottled-water company stakes a claim on your town’s source? Should we have to pay for water? Is the stuff coming from the tap completely safe? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What’s the environmental footprint of making, transporting, and disposing of all those plastic bottles?

A riveting chronicle of one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth century as well as a powerful environmental wake-up call, Bottlemania is essential reading for anyone who shells out money to quench their daily thirst.

We Might As Well Win: on the road to success with the mastermind behind a record-setting eight Tour de France victories

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

This is a first-time look behind the scenes and inside the mind of Johan Bruyneel, the team director with the most wins in cycling history, and the strategist, confidant, motivator, and coach behind Lance Armstrong’s amazing success.

Johan Bruyneel knows what it takes to win. In 1998, this calculating Belgian and former pro cyclist looked struggling rider and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in the eye and said, ‘Look, if were going to ride the tour, we might as well win.’

In that powerful phrase, a dynasty was born. With Bruyneel as his team director, Lance Armstrong seized a record seven straight Tour de France victories. In the meantime, Bruyneel brought innovation to the sport of cycling and went on to prove he could win without his superstar: in 2007, he took the Tour de France title with a young new team and a lot of nerve, sealing his place in sports history forever.

We Might as Well Win takes us behind the scenes of this amazing nine-year journey through the Alps and Pyrenees. We witness Bruyneel’s near-death crash and comeback as a rider. We are privy to the many ways he and Armstrong outsmarted their opponents, and we hear the secrets of eking the best out of a disparate team. We learn that not winning isn’t always losing, as Bruyneel struggles to prove himself post-Armstrong with new riders, new strategies, and sceptics around every corner.

Readers will relish this inside tour.

Walking the Camino (B-format edn): a modern pilgrimage to Santiago

2008-06-30T00:00:00Z

In May 2006, armed only with a small rucksack and a staff, Tony Kevin, an overweight, sedentary, 63-year-old former diplomat, set off on an eight-week trek across Spain. But this was not just a very long walk — it was a pilgrimage.

From Granada, in the southeast, to Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest, Tony followed the Via Mozarabe and the Via de la Plata, two of the many pilgrim trails that crisscross Spain and Portugal and that all lead to a single destination. In the Middle Ages, the cathedral city of Santiago de Compostela was Europe’s most famous centre of pilgrimage, and in recent years it has enjoyed a remarkable revival; every day towards noon, hundreds of hot, tired, and dusty pilgrims stream into Santiago Cathedral for the daily Pilgrim’s Mass.

What, in our busy, materialistic 21st century, is this apparently anachronistic phenomenon all about? What drives tens of thousands of people of all nationalities and creeds to make long, exhausting walks across the cold mountains and hot tablelands of Spain, to take part finally in a medieval Christian liturgy of spiritual renewal and reconciliation with God?

Walking the Camino beautifully captures the flavour of what it was like to walk the camino, and is filled with fascinating observations and anecdotes about the nature of contemporary Spain. And because pilgrimage is such a deeply personal experience that has the potential to unlock the deepest recesses of hidden memory and conscience, it is also a profound personal meditation on the nature of modern life.

It will be of interest to people who contemplate making, or who have made this walk; to those interested in the politics and culture of contemporary Spain; and indeed anyone who appreciates fine travel writing.