Al Gore reviews Boiling Point, Ross Gelbspan's second book, for the NYT Book Review:
"Part of what makes this book important is its indictment of the American news media's coverage of global warming for the past two decades. Indeed, when the author investigates why the United States is virtually the only advanced nation in the world that fails to recognize the severity of this growing crisis, he concludes that the news coverage is ''a large reason for that failure.''
"At a time when prominent journalists are writing mea culpas for allowing themselves to be too easily misled in their coverage of the case for war in Iraq, Gelbspan presents a devastating analysis of how the media have been duped and intimidated by an aggressive and persistent campaign organized and financed by coal and oil companies. He recounts, for example, a conversation with a top television network editor who was reluctant to run stories about global warming because a previous story had ''triggered a barrage of complaints from the Global Climate Coalition'' -- a fossil fuel industry lobbying group -- ''to our top executives at the network.''
"He also describes the structural changes in the news media, like increased conglomerate ownership, that have made editors and reporters more vulnerable to this kind of intimidation -- and much less aggressive in pursuing inconvenient truths.
"Gelbspan's first book, The Heat is On
"When Gelbspan addresses the subject of solutions, he first gives a detailed analysis of all the significant plans that have been offered, and then endorses a maximalist approach called the World Energy Modernization Plan, developed six years ago by an ad hoc group that met at the Harvard Medical School. His basic argument is that it is far too late in the game to waste time on strategies that might be more politically feasible but don't actually do enough to begin to solve the problem."
Here's more about Gelbspan's World Energy Modernization Plan. It's good stuff, calling for the shifting of subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables, international efficiency and renewable content standards (as an add-on to the so-called "cap-'n-trade" system), the lowering of trade barriers, and the creation of an international fund to finance the transfer of climate-friendly and efficient energy technologies to the developing world (funded by a "Tobin tax" on international currency transactions). Whether these or other proposals can fly politically is an entirely different question.
