A Climate of Truth by Mike Berners-Lee – Book Review
Judith Allinson of Settle Methodist Church writes… (& do be aware that this is as much about comments on the times as it is about facts from his book. I encourage you to get a copy and share it at your church – and it you live near Settle come and hear him speak at Settle Methodist Church on 10 May.)
On Wednesday 26 March my copy of Mike Berners-Lee’s “A Climate of Truth” arrived at our local independent book shop – Limestone Books, Settle. Its official publication date was Thursday 27 March 2025.
I ordered it because his earlier book “How bad are Bananas?” about the carbon footprint of everything – including bananas – is so good, hence I know this one will be good. (I heard him speak in Bentham in 2010 about that book). Indeed, inserted into the wall display in Settle Methodist hall about Carbon Fast suggestions for Lent are copies of “How Bad are Bananas?”.
He writes with nice short sentences. This is very helpful (unlike some other authors, even some contributors to this website.)
He is coming to speak 10 May organised by Settle ACE (Action on Climate Emergency) at Settle Methodist Hall – I have been told that he wants the event to have a large part discussion and only a smaller part of him talking – so it will be useful to read the book beforehand.
He came to speak at a meeting here organised by the Justice and Peace group of Churches Together in Settle in July 2019 to talk about his book “There is No planet B” – I give lots of useful facts and quotes from it in my post on this website here
See picture of the meeting – Berners-Lee is front right, setting up the projector.
So, what is in the book?
First of all, at the very front, there are 6 pages of “Blurbs” / reviews by fellow famous environmentalists – that is, as well as “blurbs” by 6 more on the back cover.
I was quite amused by this – I had just met Amy-Jane Beer a local(ish) nature writer two days previously. In an attempt to find out more about her, I read her Instagram video post. She bemoans the fact that publishers are expecting people in the book-writing-community to read each other’s nature books and write complimentary paragraphs. It takes a lot of time to read a book before you say something about it.
Well, first of all I dug out a protective plastic cover from a set I had once bought, to protect the book’s thin cover. Then I realised that because the nice white pages were so thin there must actually be rather a lot of pages to read. 370. Well actually only 300 because there are 70 pages of notes, useful references and comprehensive index. The printing is clear and big.
And Content?
First of all he talks about the Polycrisis.
“This book is about the fact that humanity is accelerating into a deadly Polycrisis”
This is VERY helpful. – the use of the word Polycrisis. I am frustrated by people talking about the “Climate emergency” and forgetting about Species Extinctions and Reactive-Nitrogen Pollution and other Stockholm Limits, or else including it all in the title “Climate and Nature Emergency” which is a bit of a mouthful.
He puts in bold the sentences he wants us to remember:
Your actions matter: They do make a difference
Great! I will carry on reading the book and not give up.
If what you are doing is consistently not working it is time to do something different.
(At this point (page 15) I take a break.. Why is it that I have consistently failed to clear my Living room of junk? Over years. And years. What do I need to do differently?)
Back to our world, our finite earth. None of the things we have done so far have delivered the change we need.
He says
“I want you to view everything you look at within this book through the lens of honesty.“
Chapter 2 Starts off with
“Why are Efficiency Gains Adding to the Climate Emergency?”
I am happy he deals with this topic. for a long time whilst other environmentalists have spent ages putting effort into “How can we source renewable energy?” as the be all and end all, I have been morosely thinking “Well once we get more energy, we will just use it to deplete the world more quickly of other resources.
Now Berners-Lee spells it out much more clearly —
“When we find a more efficient way of producing or doing something we usually increase the amount of it that we do by a bigger proportion than the efficiency gain itself. So the total usage of the resource and environmental burdens associated with it go up instead of down.”
He says this is known as the “Jevons Paradox” or the “Rebound Effect”. In the case of the global economy, a 15% efficiency improvement leads to a 20% increase in demand and therefore a 5% rise in inputs and associated environmental burdens.
Yupp.. I finally took my very slow laptop in to my very helpful laptop person at Burton in Lonsdale – and he fixed the problem.. But does that mean I spend less time on the laptop? No. Here I am at 3.25 am writing this article.
There are lots of very interesting scientific facts and graphs in the chapter explaining how the world works ..showing we really are accelerating into a Polycrisis. Fascinating science. I am going to enjoy this chapter.
So I’ll stop here. Still only at page 32.
We can see why a significant branch of Green Christian’s work has become the project and website “Borrowed Time/Deep Waters”.
Perhaps you might like to join me in reading the rest of this book? Maybe give your comments in the section at the end of this post?. Or contact me to have a joint zoom meeting to discuss the rest of chapter 2. And then maybe the other chapters.
And if you live close to Settle come to our meeting in May.
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