Escaping Nature: How to Survive Global Climate Change

Industrial and agricultural greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly warming Earth’s climate, unleashing rising seas, ocean acidification, melting permafrost, powerful storms, wildfires, floods, deadly heat waves, droughts, tsunamis, food shortages, and armed conflict over shrinking water supplies while reducing nutritional levels in crops. Billions of people will become climate refugees. Hotter temperatures will allow tropical diseases to spread into temperate regions. Higher levels of CO2, allergens, dust, and other particulate matter will impair our physical and mental health and even reduce our cognitive abilities. Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s poor. It also harms Nature, and could ultimately trigger a sixth mass extinction. In Escaping Nature, Orrin H. Pilkey and his coauthors offer concrete suggestions for how to respond to the threats posed by global climate change. They argue that while we wait for the world’s governments to get serious about mitigating climate change we can adapt to a hotter world through technological innovations, behavioral changes, nature-based solutions, political changes, and education.

Orrin H. Pilkey is Emeritus James B. Duke Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Duke University and the author and coauthor of many books.

Charles O. Pilkey is a former geologist turned freelance sculptor, writer, and illustrator.

Linda P. Pilkey-Jarvis is a geologist and coauthor with Orrin H. Pilkey of two books.

Norma J. Longo, a geologist and photographer, is coauthor with Pilkey of several books on coastal issues.

Keith C. Pilkey, an attorney concerned with legal issues of coastal development, is coauthor with Orrin H. Pilkey of two books about sea level rise.

Fred B. Dodson is a real estate developer who manages his organization’s affordable housing development activities.

Hannah L. Hayes is a scholar of climate justice, sustainable development, and disaster capitalism.