The results of climate change make the headlines almost daily. All across America and the globe, communities have to adapt to rising sea levels, intensified storms, and warmer temperatures. One way or another, climate change will be a proving ground. We will either sink, in cases where the land is subsiding, or swim, finding ways to address these challenges.
While temperatures and seas are rising slowly, we have some immediate choices to make. If we act quickly and boldly, there is a small window of opportunity to prevent the worst. We can prepare for the changes by understanding what is happening and taking specific measures. There is "commitment" already in the climate change system. To minimize those effects will require another kind of commitment, the kind Rick Van Noy illustrates in these stories about a climate-distressed South.
Like Rachel Carson's groundbreaking work Silent Spring, Rick Van Noy's Sudden Spring is a call to action to mitigate the current trends in our environmental degradation. By highlighting stories of people and places adapting to the impacts of a warmer climate, Van Noy shows us what communities in the South are doing to become more climate resilient and to survive a slow deluge of environmental challenges.
"Imagining an unwanted future is something most people aren't willing to do. This book is full of quiet heroes who help communities in the Southeast imagine a future they do want. It isn't easy, but it's crucial."
Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason Univ
"Brenner is especially adept at portraying bright twenty-somethings consigned to jobs in the service sector, humanities majors and would-be artists who seek love but don't count on finding it. . . . Brenner's achievement in these ironic, understanding tales is making sure that even the small losses her characters suffer do not fail to move us."
Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books
"All the world will feel the effects of our rapidly changing climate, of course-and those spots that we cherish most for their sense of place, their long-standing in our hearts, will be the hardest to watch change. Perhaps these fine reflections will spur us to some of the action necessary to minimize the damage!"
