Our Choice

Customer Reviews

• Our Choice: the Solutions Sequel  Nov 3, 2009 (99 of 117 found this helpful)

  Our Choice is wonderfully accessible and pragmatic. Its eighteen chapters are a lavishly illustrated menu of choices which is at once expansive and credible. Our Choice clearly conveys the scope of solutions to the climate crisis, solutions which are promising, practical and potent. The solutions taken together meet the challenge, with speed and at scale.
  
  It is the perfect sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.
  
  I'm particularly struck by Gore's tone in Our Choice: he is sober and thoughtful and opinionated but not pedantic. This is not a superficial, how-to "101 Ways to Go Green," or an encyclopedic compendium of mind-numbing minutiae.
  
  Rather, Our Choice is a survey at just the right level of detail. It covers our sources of energy, how we use it, and the obstacles we must overcome. An important highlight is the discussion of living systems, our forests, soil, and population, which is missing in most writing about climate crisis.
  
  Gore's work comes at a crucial moment in time. The U.S. is vigorously debating climate legislation. Policy makers and parents, students and teachers, entrepreneurs and scientists are all energized. For example, fully one-third of the faculty at MIT wants to work on clean energy technologies. Our Choice will tempt and magnify those passions. It is a manual and manifesto for change, a good guide with a clear view of both the forest and the trees. It comes on the road to Copenhagen, but its best use is the path beyond.
  
  OK, I'll admit (with pride) I'm a huge fan of Al Gore's. But not withstanding our friendship, this remarkable work IS the real thing. It is the product of countless hours of research and interviews, reading and listening, writing and rewriting, debate and critical thinking.
  
  My daughter said "Dad, your generation created this problem. You'd better fix it." Our Choice is the Field Guide to fixing the climate crisis, a set of solutions worthy of your consideration.
  
  Read this book. If you must, burn (and sequester) the others. And recycle the rest!
  
  When mankind confronts and conquers the climate crisis it will be because one man made Our Choice clear.
  

• An important book about our future  Nov 4, 2009 (46 of 58 found this helpful)

  This is a creative and useful book on the subject of climate change.
  
  Al Gore has been a true profile in courage since he won the popular vote for President in 2000 but was denied the Presidency. In 2002 he was one of the few leading Democrats who had the courage to oppose Bush's disastrous plans for war in Iraq in a forceful manner.
  
  His actions on global warming have been historic. He truly deserved the Nobel Prize.
  
  I found the best chapters to be Chapters 9 and 10, dealing with forests and soil. How many people know that the third and fourth largest problem nations are Brazil and Indonesia due to their huge levels of deforestation?
  
  Page 210 is a particularly disturbing page. Check it out. Look what happens if the Siberian permafrost gets too warm.
  
  Page 335 is very useful in showing the true value of nature in economic terms.
  
  For some strange reason there are no footnotes in the book for the sources of information in each chapter. However, they do exist. They are in the web site for the book. The address of the web site is listed in tiny print in the lower left hand corner of the back cover. You can also reach it via Al Gore's web site. A nice thing about the notes on the web is that they are often live links which enable you to go directly to studies that he cited.
  
  I would also recommend a related new book for 2009 Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised). This helps place the issue of climate change in the context of the global environmental situation.
  
  

• A hopeful sequel to Inconvenient Truth  Nov 7, 2009 (9 of 11 found this helpful)

  Except for it's last chapter, the book reads like a particularly engaging text book. Most of the information on clean technology was familiar. I think the book shines the most in its chapters on political and psychological barriers to addressing climate change as well as its final chapter -- an imagined speech to future generations.
  
  People on the right like to score easy points by bashing Gore instead of actually grappling with his arguments. This book demonstrates that Gore is no slouch. He knows what he's talking about when he says we can reduce the atmosphere's carbon overload.

• A recommended reading, whether your concern is global warming or energy independence  Nov 6, 2009 (15 of 20 found this helpful)

  First, do not be confused, this is not a book dealing with the science or the GW controversy like the An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (AIT), of which back then I wrote a critical book review here at Amazon because of Gore's exaggerations and some flagrant inaccuracies. Our Choice is a well-research and comprehensive treatise written for the general public (there is even a children's version - Our Choice: How We Can Solve the Climate Crisis (Young Reader Edition)) This time Gore did his homework very thoroughly, and all possible options regarding low-carbon fuels and energy are examined, to a level of detail only found in more technical books. Also, and for the benefit of the layman, for each of the options he briefly explains how energy production works. The chapters on natural resources, deforestation, and population are quite good.
  
  What most impressed me is the fact that Gore does not pick any winners beforehand, as many environmentalist groups love to do; instead he presents the whole menu of options, even the potential of nuclear energy is discussed, and surprisingly, also bioethanol, as both of these options are rejected by many environmentalist advocates. He even goes into the details explaining why Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is sustainable and a low-carbon fuel as compared to American corn ethanol, though his favorites are second and third generation biofuels. He also presents quite a fair discussion of the food vs fuel debate. Gore recognizes the importance of clean low-carbon fuels and electricity in order for the new electric and hybrid plug-in vehicles to actually contribute in reducing greenhouse gases. It also called my attention that right from the beginning Gore now relates the urgent need for low-carbon energy not only to climate change but also for national security and energy independence reasons.
  
  Despite a more technical and moderate approach, every time Gore talks about climate change he insists on remind us about the "scientific consensus" and the "fact" that the debate is over. I find this repeatedly preaching really annoying because it feels like scientism, in the omnipotence sense. In the first place, avoiding such unnecessary repetition could have helped the book to be attractive also to the "non believers" but concerned with energy independence and national security. Moreover, he seems to be trying to convince the reader that these assertions are an absolute truth not to be questioned, reflecting his blind faith on scientists, particularly climate scientists. However, free inquiry and lack of dogmatism are among the key features of any scientific enterprise, so his implicit assumption that scientists are infallible is completely out of place. And please, climate science has not the predictive accuracy of Newtonian physics, and particularly climate simulation models are not as precise nor reliable as he thinks, e.g. see the recently published SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance which has a controversial and politically incorrect chapter discussing the limitations of climate change predictions and proposes a more cost-effective solution. For a more in-depth analysis read Simulating Nature: A Philosophical Study of Computer-Simulation Uncertainties and Their Role in Climate Science and. For a concise take on this issue see The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so, Chapter 8 presents criticism by renowned physicists Freeman Dyson and Antonino Zichichi, questioning the confidence and validity of climate simulation forecasts, particularly regarding the use of parametrization or "fudge factors". Also look for Hendrik Tennekes arguments regarding the lack of falsifiability from Popper's philosophical point of view.
  
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• Solid book and a good read  Nov 6, 2009 (10 of 13 found this helpful)

  Al Gore (and team) has produced a very comprehensive and well-written book on the potential responses to climate change. I'm not usually a huge A.G. fan but I liked this book. It is serious, well-argued and offers a balanced approach to one of the most important issues facing our generation.
  
  The book contains little new for those who live-and-breathe energy policy and climate change on a daily basis. But it is a very useful read for those with a keen non-expert interest in the subject.