Green Earth (The Science in the Capital)

by Kim Stanley Robinson

Paperback, 2015

Call number

SPEC FICT ROB

Collection

Speculative Fiction

Genres

Series

Science in the Capital (omnibus with updates)

Publication

Del Rey (2015), 1088 pages

Description

"The landmark trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of climate change--updated and abridged into a single novel. More than a decade ago, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson began a groundbreaking series of near-future eco-thrillers--Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting--that grew increasingly urgent and vital as global warming continued unchecked. Now, condensed into one volume and updated with the latest research, this sweeping trilogy gains new life as Green Earth, a chillingly realistic novel that plunges readers into great floods, a modern Ice Age, and the political fight for all our lives. The Arctic ice pack averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter when it was first measured in the 1950s. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year. It's a muggy summer in Washington, D.C., as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler and his scientist wife, Anna, work to call attention to the growing crisis of global warming. But as they fight to align the extraordinary march of modern technology with the awesome forces of nature, fate puts an unusual twist on their efforts--one that will pit science against politics in the heart of the coming storm. Praise for the Science in the Capital trilogy. "Perhaps it's no coincidence that one of our most visionary hard sci-fi writers is also a profoundly good nature writer--all the better to tell us what it is we have to lose."--Los Angeles Times. "An unforgettable demonstration of what can go wrong when an ecological balance is upset."--The New York Times Book Review. "Absorbing and convincing."--Nature"-- "For the first time, the entire Science in the Capitol trilogy (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting) is available in a single trade paperback, abridged and updated, with a new introduction by the author"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Venarain
Great? Good? It was a fun read with some truly insightful moments, but it got long and a little too pat. Read New York 2140 instead
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LibraryThing member quickmind
I liked this massive tome a lot, and even though Kim Stanley Robinson is a hopeful writer and the book ended on a hopeful note, this still left me sad. I knew going into this book, that it would probably have this effect on me, because this book is about climate change in contemporary times. Its
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 actually a little bit earlier, probably takes place in the late 2000s - early 2010s. What is depressing to me about it is that in this version of the US, we actually have politicians who have the will and means to do something about climate change, unlike in our country at the moment. The characters in this book are not afraid to challenge the status quo, they are not afraid to try big things to combat the effects of man-made climate change from putting too much carbon into the atmosphere. Just earlier this week, there were headlines about how the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation current could collapse as early as 2025, but more likely over the next 75 years. This happens because too much less dense freshwater is melting from Greenland, causing the more dense saltwater to sink. This will have broader impacts on the climate, making northern Europe's climate much closer to that of Canada's, drying out and heating up Northern Africa even more, and doing the same with the American midwest. This will make growing adequate amounts of food even harder. Well, in this novel, to combat this, they come up with a plan to salinate the freshwater, pumping millions of tons of salt into the ocean to match the density of the saltwater already there. Many countries work together on this problem, and are willing to share in the costs because they understand that not taking action is going to be more expensive than taking action, even if it was risky. So it was particularly depressing to see this headline this week, after reading about how it could have been handled in this novel. There's also a few subplots in this book about Buddhism and acceptance of things changing, but also about multiple black ops government agencies who are basically operating without much oversight and how they are spying on citizens and operating a futures market based on who they think has the most social capital to change society. It was very strange and didn't mesh as well with the overall story about climate change, but was an important look at what our government and society have grown into. In that aspect, this book was more about current times (or slightly before now), and provided a sort of blue-print of how we can overcome the current problems by having a strong vision and not being afraid to experiment and using the government as a force for good. I found it depressing because I know we will never have that in this country. There were a lot of good ideas here, some that I would like to revisit later, but I don't know if I would ever read the whole thing again. It was originally a trilogy of novels, but they were edited together to create one novel about a decade after they were first published. It wasn't heavily plot driven and ambled about a lot, and that was okay, because its more like true life, but I could see how this would be a struggle for many people to get through.
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Pages

1088

ISBN

1101964839 / 9781101964835

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