The Weather Makers

The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change is a 2005 book by Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery. Split into thirty-six brief essays, it uses a variety of analytical methods to make projections about the course of climate change on several time scales, from the twenty-first century into the distant future. It also looks back on the history of climate change research, comparing past attitudes and beliefs about the mutability of climate to the current state of research. Flannery’s main argument is that if the current rate of the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere continues, it will lead to a greenhouse effect that causes the mass extinction of many species. Flannery also points to examples of climate degradation due to human activities that have already desolated certain regions of the earth, such as the Sahel region in Africa. Flannery projects that these events will only increase in scale and magnitude, warning his readers of a dire fate for the planet should humankind not take radical and immediate action.

The Weather Makers begins with a look at the failures of political and educational systems to accept scientific truth. Though over a century has passed since the publication of Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking On the Origin of Species, many school curricula still bend to parents and politicians who reject the theory of evolution. Recently, even more resistance has emerged in response to the rigorously obtained scientific facts of climate change. Flannery suggests that the best way to encourage people to accept scientific theories is, paradoxically, not to focus primarily on teaching their intricacies; but rather, to show how they directly affect people’s lived experience. As an example, he points to the contentious debate over the existence of a hole in the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, a phenomenon that was rigorously confirmed with data by 1974. Few non-scientists believed in its existence until stories emerged the following decade about people living in southern Chile, which is situated just below the ozone hole, developing skin cancer. When people hear stories that trigger their empathy rather than abstractions from data, they tend to be more compelled to take action.

Next, Flannery argues that climate change has already sickened, displaced, desolated, or otherwise harmed many human populations. For example, the increase in the water temperature in the Indian Ocean has led to devastating droughts in Africa’s Sahel region, a place that once flourished due to a heavy monsoon season. Flannery rejects climate change deniers’ frequent argument that these phenomena are due to fluctuations in weather. In fact, climate change represents changes to environmental patterns that endure across large spans of time. Flannery shows that climate change’s effects on critical human resources like food, water, and shelter also feed into political strife. In the same region of Africa, race-based genocide has recently broken out over different groups’ intense competition over arable land resources.



Flannery spends the remainder of his book proposing ways to mitigate the threat of climate change. He exhorts his audience to take individual measures to reduce their negative impact on the climate, but also argues that it is ultimately up to large institutions, such as governments and corporations, to stop wreaking systematic havoc on the environment. He laments the fact that most public discourse about climate change has recently been controlled by natural gas, oil, and coal lobbyists, as well as industry executives whose continued successes depend on problematic policies. The silver lining to this reality is that humankind can likely stop much of the damage they are causing by focusing their energies on reforming these few key industries and players.

Flannery, highly critical of the Bush administration in power at his time of writing, suggests that President Bush suppresses climate change reform because fossil fuel lobbyists donated over 40 million dollars to his campaign. Flannery nominates the Kyoto Protocol as the most feasible, if not comprehensive, current policy measure to propose a solution for climate destruction. Thus, while The Weather Makers advances a condemning analysis of the fate of the earth should climate change continue, it offers some hope that it might be prevented through radical action.