Book co-author Jon O’Riordan

Book co-author Jon O’Riordan

The Georgia Straight featured our new book “The Climate Nexus” in a recent article.

“Former senior civil servant Jon O’Riordan says human beings can no longer count on natural processes to absorb the impact of people on the Earth.

 “In a new book he coauthored with Canadian water expert Robert Sandford, O’Riordan argues that the “nexus” of the challenge is where water, food energy, and climate all come together. Human beings are consuming resources in such a way that they’re pushing the Earth’s systems to the brink—and there’s no predicting the degree to which people will have to adapt to the planet’s response.

“‘This nexus lies at the very heart of current civilization; it is ground zero in the fight on climate and hydrological change,’ they write in The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity in a Changing World.”

The article focuses on the book’s assessment of soil in a changing climate:

“The Climate Nexus includes some ominous information about the effect of higher temperatures and droughts on the capacity of soil to store carbon dioxide. That’s because research has suggested that when alpine soil becomes 2° C warmer over a period of time, it can release a quarter of its stored carbon. In fact, the book states that humanity has “just a half metre of soil standing between prosperity and desolation”.

Read more from the article here.