The true cost of the car and a drive for change — new environment books

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":8.88,"text":"If someone invented a product that killed as many people as the first and second world wars combined, maimed at least 50mn more each year and swallowed up to 70 per cent of your lifetime earnings, would you want one? Would you ever."}],[{"start":29.83,"text":"That’s what the car is estimated to have cost us since the first one hit the road more than a century ago, write social anthropologist Henrietta Moore and urban designer Arthur Kay, in Roadkill: Unveiling the True Cost of Our Toxic Relationship with Cars (Wiley, £22/$28). Yet our hunger for them remains boundless. We have one for every five people today, mostly in cities that have been designed around them that, this book argues, could otherwise be safer, quieter and better places to live."}],[{"start":71.47,"text":"Moore and Kay don’t think cars are morally bad, but they make a compelling case that we are “car blind” to the way we’ve become dependent on a “car-industrial complex” that shapes and constrains our choices. That includes electric cars, which the authors agree are better than fossil-fuel vehicles, yet imperfect thanks to the carbon footprint of their components and their prevalence on streets that could be more vibrant public spaces."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":102.82,"text":"The answer is not to eliminate cars completely, but rather cut our needless dependence on them. We need better public transport and cities designed in a way that encourages more use of bikes, scooters and better yet, our legs."}],[{"start":120.27,"text":"Swedish historian Sverker Sörlin addresses another profound environmental problem, the loss of snow, in Snö: A History (Doubleday, £16.99). Sörlin grew up in a part of Sweden where there was often snow for most of the year. As a boy, the thermometer in his kitchen window on winter mornings regularly read -37C. He was in his forties when the largest amount of new snow in a year was recorded in Washington State, in the winter of 1998-99."}],[{"start":158.8,"text":"But as global temperatures rose, he watched snowfalls recede, ski resorts close and funerals held for glaciers. His sense of loss permeates this eclectic meditation on a substance that, he writes, first fell on Earth 2.5bn years ago and led humans to make skis 5,400 years ago. It has since preoccupied poets, scientists, military planners and, increasingly, environmentalists. "}],[{"start":193.65,"text":"Snow’s ability to reflect sunlight means it does a lot of work on behalf of the climate. “If there were suddenly no snow at all,” he writes, “the continents and oceans would warm up even faster than they already are.” The effects would be profound, and humanity would have lost something immense and irreplaceable."}],[{"start":216.53,"text":"US environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben brings far more cheering news in Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (WW Norton, £22/$29.99). McKibben concedes he does not have a reputation for sunny optimism. One of his early books on climate change bore the title The End of Nature."}],[{"start":245.81,"text":"But now he thinks we have a chance of a better future because we are on the brink of understanding that the sun can power our lives instead of fossil fuels. McKibben argues it is still not common knowledge that the cost of producing power from the sun recently dropped below that of fossil fuels. We still think of solar panels as if they were nice but pricey goods from Whole Foods Market, he writes, when they’re actually the Costco of energy: inexpensive and available in bulk."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":284.11,"text":"That’s why solar is now growing faster than any power source in history, and more than 90 per cent of new electricity brought online around the world last year came from solar and other renewables. There is no guarantee this momentum will continue, McKibben writes. Even if it does, current rates of renewables growth won’t be enough to stop the global warming we have already unleashed. But it does offer a chance to prevent a lot more damage."}],[{"start":317.05,"text":"Damage is what academic Susannah Fisher tackles in Sink or Swim: How the World Needs to Adapt to a Changing Climate (Bloomsbury, £18.99/$28). Work on adapting to a warming world was long thought tantamount to giving up on the climate problem. Efforts to cut the emissions that caused the problem took centre stage. But this has changed as emissions have continued to rise and climate extremes have become impossible to ignore, from floodstruck Pakistan to fire-ravaged California and beyond."}],[{"start":357.1,"text":"Fisher, who has spent years working on adaptation with governments and international bodies, says it’s obvious the past decade of measures have been too incremental and inadequate. For one thing, there isn’t enough money. The UN last year estimated the gap between the funds needed and the international public finance available for adaptation is at least $187bn a year."}],[{"start":389.78000000000003,"text":"Many hurdles are less obvious, such as the fact that adapting often involves hard choices on, say, relocating people from crumbling coastlines, or trying to shift diets to less carbon-intensive foods. Political leaders and voters alike hesitate to make these changes. This readable book shows why, as with so much else in environmental policy, we need action nonetheless."}],[{"start":424.52000000000004,"text":"Pilita Clark is an FT business columnist"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":428.46000000000004,"text":"Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café and follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X"}],[{"start":446.20000000000005,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftmailbox.cn/album/a_1756721293_8308.mp3"}