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McKenzie Funk
Windfall
The Booming Business of Global Warming
Penguin Press, 2014
What's inside?
For many investors and firms, global climate change offers an existential threat and a financial opportunity.
Recommendation
While environmentalists implore humanity to curb carbon emissions, the smart money bets that humanity will do no such thing. Environmental journalist McKenzie Funk profiles investors, entrepreneurs and corporate leaders who see global warming as an opportunity. They sell desalination machines to arid countries, snowmaking machines to melting Alpine resorts and storm barriers to coastal cities. A Dutch architect even designed a floating metropolis to be built on top of rising oceans. Funk notes that such schemes reinforce the developed and developing worlds’ unequal vulnerability to climate change. Wealthy nations that rely on these technological fixes have little incentive to reduce energy consumption. As a result, their enormous greenhouse gas emissions continue to worsen conditions in poorer countries. Funk offers a colorful world tour of characters and ideas. His witty, lucid writing makes for a great read, although sometimes his focus on detailed storytelling can obscure how various ventures operate. getAbstract recommends his report to policy makers, entrepreneurs, environmental activists and investors.
Summary
About the Author
Deca journalism cooperative founder McKenzie Funk won the Oakes Prize for Environmental Journalism and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award and the Livingston Award. He has written for Harper’s, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Outside and The New York Times.
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