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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Jul 2023, 496 pages
Paperback:
Jun 11, 2024, 496 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Katharine Blatchford
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The New York Times best-selling author explores how "anti-science" became so virulent in American life—through a history of climate denial and its consequences.
In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and plunked a sign on top: AL GORE'S NEW HOME: HONK IF YOU LOVE CLIMATE CHANGE. In The Parrot and the Igloo, best-selling author David Lipsky tells the astonishing story of how we moved from one extreme (the correct one) to the other.
With narrative sweep and a superb eye for character, Lipsky unfolds the dramatic narrative of the long, strange march of climate science. The story begins with a tale of three inventors—Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla—who made our technological world, not knowing what they had set into motion. Then there are the scientists who sounded the alarm once they identified carbon dioxide as the culprit of our warming planet. And we meet the hucksters, zealots, and crackpots who lied about that science and misled the public in ever more outrageous ways. Lipsky masterfully traces the evolution of climate denial, exposing how it grew out of early efforts to build a network of untruth about products like aspirin and cigarettes.
Featuring an indelible cast of heroes and villains, mavericks and swindlers, The Parrot and the Igloo delivers a real-life tragicomedy—one that captures the extraordinary dance of science, money, and the American character.
The Message
Technologies are like stars: they hang around the lot waiting for the right story, the proper vehicle. Electricity became a star with the telegraph. The telegraph needed a crime.
On New Year's Day in 1845, a sixty-year-old Quaker named John Tawell caught the Paddington train for Slough. (Slough, twenty miles from London, is one of those in-between places people like to make fun of. It's where the Ricky Gervais version of The Office is set.) John Tawell had been a chemist, a forger, a deportee to Australia; in 1841, he'd romanced and wed the dream bride of every reformed criminal: a prosperous widow. He also maintained a former mistress, Sarah Hart. They'd arrived at an informal palimony scheme. Fifty-two pounds a year, so long as Hart didn't spill the beans and ruin everything. Tawell was now running short of cash. Sarah Hart had a solution: Tawell could murder his wife. Instead, he bought a bottle of prussic acid and boarded the train for Slough.
Tawell poured the ...
Lipsky's writing is quick-witted and highly entertaining. He expertly manages the tone—moments of humor balance out the often-grim subject matter without trivializing it. His depiction of the people involved is personal and vivid, full of funny descriptions and insightful commentary. The Parrot and the Igloo is a disturbing breakdown of how anti-science rhetoric gained first a foothold, and then a major following in American politics. Well-researched and captivatingly written, it's a must-read for people seeking to understand how climate change became the subject of such vicious denial...continued
Full Review
(660 words)
(Reviewed by Katharine Blatchford).
Darin Strauss, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author of Half a Life
The best nonfiction book I've read in decades. And the best book of its kind I've ever read. Rich Cohen, New York Times best-selling author of Sweet and Low and Monsters
Where can a person living on a melting planet turn, at least before the spaceship fleet is ready, for enlightenment? I'd start, and finish, with David Lipsky's brilliant epic The Parrot and the Igloo, which I devoured in a single, feverish, page-turning sitting, a perspective-altering dream, a story told in language as sharp and clear as the spring air we knew before all the carbon was released.… You will stare out the same windows when you've finished, but nothing will look the same.
David Lipsky's history of climate change denial, The Parrot and the Igloo, exposes many of the strategies deniers have used to prevent governmental action on environmental issues. One of the key approaches has been to shift responsibility for pollution off of industries and onto individuals. An excellent example of this strategy in action is the famous 1971 public service announcement produced by anti-litter nonprofit Keep America Beautiful. First aired on Earth Day, the ad showed an ostensibly Native American man steering a canoe down a river covered in floating trash, with industrial smokestacks puffing away on the banks. The ad has a brief voiceover: "Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this ...
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