Why does it feel like the world has made so much progress on addressing global warming, but also none at all?
In H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z, Elizabeth Kolbert, a longtime environmental journalist, considers hard questions like this one. Using simple language, she explains that governments are passing climate-friendly laws, clean energy is expanding, companies are creating green technologies, and yet fossil fuel emissions are still, after all these years, rising.
Kolbert’s latest book, a primer brightened by Wesley Allsbrook’s colorful illustrations, is a quick, entertaining read. A is for Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist who wanted to figure out what caused ice ages, landed on the idea of carbon dioxide, and built the world’s first climate model in 1894. Arrhenius imagined that a warmer world would be a happier one for…