A new father, Hertsgaard (Earth Odyssey) was growing increasingly anxious
and despondent about climate change and the world his child would inherit.
His new book is his investigation into the techniques that could allow his
daughter and her generation "to survive the challenges ahead." This readable,
passionate book is surprisingly optimistic: Seattle, Chicago, and New York
are making long-term, comprehensive plans for flooding and drought.
Impoverished farmers in the already drought-stricken African Sahel have
discovered how to substantially improve yields and decrease malnutrition
by growing trees among their crops, and the technique has spread across
the region; Bangladeshis, some of the poorest and most flood-vulnerable yet
resilient people on earth, are developing imaginative innovations such as
weaving floating gardens from water hyacinth that lift with rising water.
Contrasting the Netherland's 200-year flood plans to the New Orleans
Katrina disaster, Hertsgaard points out that social structures, even more
than technology, will determine success, and persuasively argues that human
survival depends on bottom-up, citizen-driven government action.

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