A Brief History of Climate Folly

An outrageous story of dreamers and schemers, and a warning for the present

For millennia, humans have been trying – or claiming – to influence the weather. We have thought up ever more audacious and technologically advanced ways to change our climate to suit our needs, from performing human sacrifices, to drawing up plans to drain the Mediterranean, create a ‘second moon’, or even drop nuclear bombs on polar ice caps. Yet these pale in comparison with the unplanned experiments of the fossil-fuel companies that have had profound effects on the Earth’s ecosystems. Despite past failures and wasted resources, our hubris remains undiminished, with new initiatives – like pumping saltwater into the Arctic and injecting sulphur into the atmosphere – being explored to bring us back from the brink of climate collapse.

In this book, Tim and Emma Flannery provide an entertaining overview of the most outrageous historical attempts – from the utterly ridiculous to the not-so-sublime – and they address a very serious question: can we do any better?