Book Review
Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World —
by Gary Braasch
Reviewed by Yuwei Zhang
Melting glaciers in Antarctica, drought in China and flooding in Tuvalu are only some of the consequences of climate change that impact our lives. Photojournalist Gary Braasch, a recipient of the Ansel Adams Award for conservation photography, illustrates with both pictures and texts how global warming is changing human lives in his book Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World.
The almost 300-page book documents the ongoing environmental changes around the world, including efforts to reduce them, with more than 100 eye-popping photographs taken in 22 countries from four continents. Starting in 1999, Braasch, on a self-assigned photographic project called “World View of Global Warming”, crossed the Arctic and Antarctic circles and photographed from beneath sea level to above 15,000 feet, including many other environmental assignments. His works were also featured in the 2007 Rio Conventions Calendar, issued by the UN Convention Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Earth Under Fire, published by the University of California Press in October 2007, is a well-researched book with in-depth texts on the science behind climate change and how it impacts people’s lives worldwide, including its larger implications for businesses, Governments, and societies. Many of the pictures selected represent dramatic before-and-after comparisons of places that have been affected for years by global warming. Braasch records communities, landscapes and animals at risk due to the melting glaciers, eroding coastlines, rising sea levels and thawing permafrost alongside compelling texts for these images.
Just like what Braasch himself said, whether we feel global warming, directly or not, we live with it everyday. “As a witness to climate change, I have stood in the empty rookeries of displaced Adélie penguins and felt the chill as huge icebergs separated from an ice shelf in Antarctica. I have seen the jagged fronts of receding Greenland glaciers and observed subtle changes on the tundra. … Global warming is affecting the whole world, from the tiniest ocean plankton to humans in their cities and the flora and fauna of entire river basins and mountain ranges. … This is truly a global challenge. Its consequences might well affect more people than did war in the past century”, he wrote in his introduction of the book.
“Pictures are not science; they can, however, provide direct evidence that global warming is happening now, all over the world”, says Braasch. More than a warning guide on climate change, Earth Under Fire also illustrates how science can measure and help lessen human’s dependence on energy and other resources. The final section of the book, “Choosing a Safer, Cleaner and Cooler World”, lists the alternative energy sources and how they are currently being used. It cites the examples of Chicago’s rooftop gardens, Portland’s eco-friendly mass transit systems, the wind turbines in Germany and the Netherlands, and other green initiatives. Besides the compelling images and texts, the book also includes informative essays of other environmentalists.
Gary Braasch is an Ansel Adams Award-winning photojournalist and a fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. Some of his photographs were featured in the UN Chronicle, Issue 2, 2007 titled Green Our World! (http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2007/issue2/0207cont.htm)
