Equipping Leaders for the Climate Crisis: A Must-Read for Policymakers and Scholars

Vinod Thomas has compressed an astonishing scope of research and thinking into an exceedingly compact volume in “Risk and Resilience in the Era of Climate Change” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2nd edition, 2024). The work seems more for academic and research professionals than the average reader, and it would be useful for courses and study groups looking for solid research and thinking about this most important challenge of the 21st century. I recommend it for honors work at the high school level and as a basic text for graduate courses.

Every chapter is followed by a section for “Conclusions” and “References,” which document nearly every statement with the paper or other publication that served as the source. Clearly, Thomas seeks to encourage readers to delve into deeper and more detailed reports and analyses than he could provide in a thin volume, with a minimal environmental footprint.

While I applaud Thomas’s concern to produce a compact book representing the minimum of resource depletion, I often found myself mystified by such shorthand. I recommend that the serious reader of this book set up a table of acronyms and definitions to decode them. Recourse to the references section at the end of each chapter usually provided the full name abbreviated, but at the cost of losing the thread of the text. 

This book would work well for groups and classes seeking to delve into the science and policy aspects of climate change and for the staff members of elected officials, who are expected to legislate or execute policy on matters beyond the education and practical experience in the backgrounds of most of us. 

Climatologists are just now concluding that their models are incomplete, resulting in worst-case climate change forecasts that routinely underestimate climate severity. As Thomas points out, we have a general reluctance to spend what is needed to mitigate climate disasters, while we have no reluctance to spend whatever it takes to recover, insofar as possible, when a climate disaster strikes. Yet mitigation costs far less than recovery from climate disasters. This unfortunate human trait is evident right here in the Winooski River watershed. 

We can do better. To do so, we need to equip ourselves with new knowledge and a willingness to do what is required. In the right hands, this book can result in understanding, policy, and strategies that may actually spare our little region from the full possibility of climate catastrophes. I would like to see the book in the hands of planning agencies, legislators, and leaders at all levels of government. The sooner we face climate change with an understanding of how our economic systems exacerbate the climate chaos our species has caused, the better our chances of adjusting to a changed world in the long run.