Forecast - by Stephan Faris (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The revealing and highly praised portrayal of the surprising ways that climate change will affect the world in the very near future

Climate change has already been altering lives on our planet for a generation: the critically acclaimed Forecast shows, through Stephan Faris's vivid on-the-ground reporting, that there are unanticipated and surprising effects--some catastrophic and some positive--right around the corner.

Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. The warming world will shift huge populations and potentially redraw political alliances around the globe, driving environmentalists into the hands of anti-immigrant groups. America's coasts are already more difficult places to live as increasing insurance rates make the Gulf Coast and other gorgeous spots prohibitively expensive. Crops will fail in previously lush places and thrive in some formerly barren zones, altering huge industries and remaking traditions. Water scarcity has the potential to inflame and draw the United States into multiple conflicts.

Told through the narratives of current, past, and future events, the result of astonishingly wide travel and reporting, Forecast is a powerful, gracefully written account that opens our eyes about this most urgent issue and how it has altered and will alter our world.

Review Quotes

"Bad news is good news if it gets us to act. Forecast should--it shows that this is not a crisis for our children, but the central question of our time." --Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and The Bill McKibben Reader

"Stephan Faris has traveled everywhere, holding his journalist's looking glass up for everyone to see the same carbon-crazed climate monster looming in every reflection. Reader, that mirror is now in your hands: Your world, too, is peering from these pages. Better pay attention." --Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us

"Stephan Faris has written a superb, first-hand account of the imminent results of climate change. His exceptional writing provides a vivid sense of the impact of global warming happening now. Forecast is a must read for all those who want to understand the seriousness of this growing problem threatening our planet." --General Anthony C. Zinni USMC (Retired), author of The Battle for Peace

"Forecast takes us beyond the computer-generated doomsday maps and Mad Max-like theories, giving us instead real stories of the devastating effects climate change has already had on our most precious resource--ourselves. Through compelling and vigorously-researched storytelling, Stephan Faris shines a light in uncomfortable places, tracing calamities as varied as the Darfur conflict and grapes withering on their Napa Valley vines back to global warming. Forecast makes it clear that this crisis has been upon us for way longer than we realize, and the stakes are raised with every carbon-laced breath we take" --Kelly McMasters, author of Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town

"The possible effects of global warming can seem vague and far away: will ocean levels rise six inches or six feet, and in twenty years or two-hundred? But as Stephan Faris's Forecast so powerfully illustrates, global warming is already playing a crucial role in a number of issues besetting the planet, in everything from the explosion of illegal immigration into Europe, to the brutal conflict between nomadic and agrarian tribes in Darfur. With a very deft hand, and even a touch of ironic wit, Faris shows that global warming comes at real cost to real people - and the future is already upon us." --Scott Anderson, author of The Man Who Tried to Save the World

"An intelligent, nuanced report on the complex relationships between increasingly unstable weather patterns and politics, ecology and lifestyles." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Stephan Faris is a journalist who specializes in writing about the developing world. Since 2000, he has covered Africa, the Middle East, and China for publications including Time, Fortune, The Atlantic Monthly, and Salon. He has lived in Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey, and China. He now lives in Italy with his wife and son.