In his new book Fire and Flood, Eugene Linden starts with the 1980s and tells the story of climate change decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag further still; and, perhaps most important, business and finance. Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and Fire and Flood shows how effective moneyed climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of a collective awakening.
Eugene Linden is an award-winning journalist and author on science, nature, and the environment. His previous book on climate change, Winds of Change, explored the connection between climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations, and was awarded the Grantham Prize Special Award of Merit. For many years, Linden wrote about nature and global environmental issues for TIME where he garnered several awards including the American Geophysical Union’s Walter Sullivan Award.