Against the Seas
Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters
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An incredible read.... While unflinching in her analysis, Soderstrom nevertheless gifts us with a message of hope and resilience. - MAUDE BARLOW, activist and author of Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism.
What can we learn about coping with rising sea levels from ancient times?
The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world will be changed, and torrential rains will present their own challenges. But this is not the first time that people have had to cope with threatening waters, because sea levels have been rising for thousands of years, ever since the end of the last Ice Age. Stories told by the Indigenous people in Australia and on the Pacific coast of North America, and those found in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as Roman and Chinese histories all bear witness to just how traumatic these experiences were. The responses to these challenges varied: people adapted by building dikes, canals, and seawalls; by resorting to prayer or magic; and, very often, by moving out of the way of the rushing waters.
Against the Seas explores these stories as well as the various measures being taken today to combat rising waters, focusing on five regions: Indonesia, Shanghai, the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, the Salish Sea, and the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. What happened in the past and what is being tried today may help us in the future and, if nothing else, give us hope that we will survive.
About this Author
Mary Soderstrom writes fiction and non-fiction. Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters is her eighteenth book and is the logical follow-up to her last, Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future. She has travelled widely, but her home base is Montreal.
Reviews
An incredible read... While unflinching in her analysis, Soderstrom nevertheless gifts us with a message of hope and resilience.
Soderstrom sets out in clear, detailed terms what has been done (not enough) and, more importantly, what can be done (surprisingly, a lot) to slow down the juggernaut of global warming.
Against the Seas is a clear-eyed and fascinating look at the central threat our species faces: sea-level rise as a result of climate change. Soderstrom writes with the fluidity of a novelist, weaving history, hydrology, and climate science into compact narratives about the regions most affected and what we can hope to do to mitigate the worst.
A compelling history of rising waters from throughout human history; Mary Soderstrom delivers an educational and compelling read about our past, present, and future relationships to the changing waters of the world.
Soderstrom peppers her enlightening book with risk factors from around the globe, including cresting rivers, deluges, and harsh tides - all exacerbated by a changing climate. But will leaders act on the solutions Soderstrom enumerates?
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