Eric Pooley

The Climate War is not a book advocating the science of climate change nor a book proclaiming the perils of global warming though both make cameo appearances. It is a book detailing the gory, messy, intractable, chaotic process of trying to pass legislation in the US dealing with carbon emissions. It makes sausage-making look like a clean and quaint pastime in comparison. In that regard, Pooley's reporting succeeds in telling the cacophonous, boisterous, bombastic, and in its own way, wildly glorious tale of some of the players involved.

There are mercenary lobbyists, pragmatists, unbending ideologues, irascible grand-standers, tireless self-promoters, and power grabbers. There are true believers on the left, on the right, and true believers in the middle. Some live in the world of hundreds of millions of dollars yearly budgets while others survive in near poverty but still try to influence policy. Many have spent their entire careers on this issue. Some remain resolute to their beliefs while others find themselves changing positions over time. The battles end up the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House and then onto the global stage. There are numerous entities trying to have their voice heard on those legislative journeys. NGOs, industry, grassroots movements, pseudo astro-turf movements, and dozens of other organizations involved. Strange bedfellows are routinely made. Coal manages to make the strangest bedfellows of all. Money is spent by the truckload. It takes an supreme effort to keep all the acronyms straight.

Reading the book is like watching a heavyweight fight go fifteen rounds and ending in a draw. It's ongoing and the scheduling for rematches are being laid. Day after day, month after month, and year after year. No conclusion is reached but the first stages of the war are covered. If policy, lobbying, political wrangling, and posturing are not to your liking or if you need a definite winner or loser I'd read something else. In this battle not one iota of information ever goes unchallenged. As for me, I finished it a bit black and blue but strangely wishing the next episode in the soap operatic tale of the climate war for the wonkishly inclined had already been penned by Pooley. It ends right before the Deepwater Horizon spill.… (meer)