Review of Book Review: Joseph Romm on Monbiot
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.12.07
Joseph Romm is not a book reviewer; he is author of Hell and High Water, Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration, strong critic of the hydrogen hype and a contributor to Grist. Book reviewers read books and review them; not Romm, he is an author of a competitor for shelf space and hardly a dispassionate observer, so he settles for a driveby shooting, saying "short review: You can skip George Monbiot's book Heat"
It gets worse. Romm doesn't actually read the book, he reviews the index. He gets it wrong, accusing George of liking hydrogen for transport (he doesn't) and he is outraged that Monbiot was less than impressed with the Clinton-Gore administration, which of course handled Kyoto so effectively. He doesn't like Monbiot's ideas about electricity generation; Neither do I. But I read the book, not the index, and think that we need every strong and articulate voice for change on the same side of the argument instead of cherrypicking one's own particular bête noire and discounting the rest, or as Laumer calls it, yet another circular firing squad.
Grist's Gar Lipow was more positive in his review here, so was Sami in TreeHugger.
My reply to this silly review can be viewed at
http://climateprogress.org/2007/06/12/review-of-review-of-my-review-of-monbiot/
I reprint it below without links:
Lloyd Cutler at treehugger.com attacks my review of George Monbiot’s book "Hea"t, which was reposted at Grist’s blog. He first questions my motives, saying that because I have a book on the subject, I am “author of a competitor for shelf space and hardly a dispassionate observer.”
That’s hilarious. A typical book store might have, at most, fives copies of my book. I compete with nobody for shelf space, and it certainly doesn’t bias my judgment. In fact, I like most of the books that have been written on global warming — the best one, I think, is Tim Flannery’s "The Weather Makers." But there are way too many climate books for the casual reader — some culling is needed.
I don’t like Monbiot’s book. It is supposedly a book on solutions, but it is riddled with mistakes in almost every chapter.
Cutler says “Romm doesn’t actually read the book, he reviews the index.” No, I just use the index to find out if Monbiot knows what he’s talking about. He doesn’t.
Interestingly, Cutler writes “He doesn’t like Monbiot’s ideas about electricity generation; Neither do I.” Well, gee, electricity is about half of the global warming problem — and Monbiot gets it wrong.
The other half is transportation. Much of Monbiot’s discussion is confused.
Monbiot wants it both ways on hydrogen cars — he is both warm and cold — but in any case he is factually wrong. I couldn’t find any serious discussion of the real transportation solution — plug in hybrids. In his review, Gar Lipow calls the book “flawed” and points out other errors in the transportation discussion.
If you have flawed discussions of both electricity and transportation, you don’t have a very useful book on climate solutions. This is not one of the top 10 books on climate, it has numerous errors of fact and analysis, it has a very UK-centric perspective, and U.S. readers should be forewarned. I stand by my review.