Two climate change firebrands will be teaming up next year to try to cool off the debate over global warming and start a new conversation on finding solutions.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, former head of the Sierra Club, will be co-authoring a book due out in April that seeks to reboot the climate change debate in Congress and elsewhere.
The book, called “Overheated: How Cooler Heads Can Cool the World,” seeks to get away from the partisanship that has come to dominate the topic once the dust has settled from the election.
“We are writing this book because we believe that it’s time for a new type of conversation about climate change,” the authors said Wednesday in announcing the book release. That new conversation should be “focused on the immediate economic and health benefits of climate action, which are too often lost in a sea of hyperbole and partisanship.”
Bloomberg, a former New York mayor, and Pope said that only by “lowering the temperature of the debate,” can the country “raise the bar for what we can accomplish.”
“Cooler heads can produce a cooler world,” they said.
Bloomberg has been a key financial supporter of the Sierra Club and its campaign to shut down the nation’s fleet of coal-fired power plants to transition to more renewable energy. The campaign has stoked the ire of Republicans who see the effort as spurring job loss in coal states, which they also saw being affected by the Obama administration’s environmental regulations.
Many scientists blame the greenhouse gas emissions created by burning fossil fuels, such as at coal-fired power plants, for driving manmade climate change.
The book attempts to show how taking steps to address climate change will help “increase the number of jobs in communities” while improving the “long-term stability of the global climate,” according to a statement from St. Martin’s Press that is scheduled to publish the book April 18.
The book also will explain “how and why” taking actions to curb global warming “can reduce the number of children who have asthma attacks, save thousands of Americans from dying of respiratory disease,” while cutting energy bills, increasing energy security and improving transportation, according to the publishing company.
“Their approach is to treat the changing climate as a series of discreet, manageable problems that should be attacked from all angles, each with a solution that can make our society healthier and our economy stronger,” the company said.
The publisher also tries to show that Bloomberg and Pope are of “very different backgrounds and perspectives,” but are coming together to face “the challenge of climate change from the same side,” even though they have been collaborators on environmental issues for years.
“We don’t agree on every point,” they said in a joint statement. “But we share a strong sense of responsibility for taking on this fight, and a deep sense of optimism that we can win it.
“This book is our effort to convince more people — of equally diverse backgrounds, and of all political persuasions — to join us,” they said.
