From a writer and climate-change expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than
thirty years a brilliant big-picture reckoning with our shocking failure to this point
focusing on the malign power of key business interests and arguing that those same interests
could flip this story very quickly if a looming economic catastrophe doesn't happen first
Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change for Time magazine in 1988 it was just
the beginning of his investigative work exploring all ramifications of this impending
disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why
we have arrived at our current dire pass closing with his argument that the same forces that
have confused the public's mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with
astonishing speed as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff's edge is
now within view. Starting with the 1980s Linden tells the story 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 farther still and arguably most importantly 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 devilishly effective monied climate-change deniers have been at
slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means
certain but future disaster but addressing it means losing present-tense profit capitalism's
response has been sadly predictable. Now however the seasons of fire and flood have crossed
the threshold into plain view. Linden focuses on the insurance industry as one loud canary in
the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California among other regions are now
seeing what many call climate redlining. The whole system is teetering on the brink and the
odds of another housing collapse for starters are much higher than most people understand.
There is a path back from the cliff but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why
and how.
