Our Choice: Al Gore

In the pile of delicious books I received for review from Rodale Publishing, the second one on the review list was the new book from Al Gore called Our Choice. The former US Vice President and high-profile environmental activist has followed up his tremendously successful and enlightening first book, An Inconvenient Truth, with a work that tells us what we can do to change the truths and realities exposed in that book: a new book called Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.

In Our Choice, Gore tells us the realities of how we're living on this planet right now: what are the sources of the energy we use? And knowing our appetite for energy, how can we change those sources and move to something more sustainable? What are the challenges of moving to those technologies - and what are the challenges of *not* moving?

In this exhaustively researched yet compellingly written book, you'll see beautiful images of the world we live in and how it's changing due to the impacts of human energy consumption (including fossil fuels, food, and much more). You'll learn about the realities of solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and biofuels, including the way they work as well as the challenges involved in using them (eg. the requirement for a new power grid to distribute the power in a smarter way).

In the end, Gore poses us a choice. It is still possible to fix the damage we've done and to halt the progression of the problems we've created. And in 20, 40, 100 years, how will we explain what we've done? How will we say to our children, this is how we fixed it - or this is why we didn't? Ultimately, Our Choice is a testimony to the reality of the climate crisis - that it is not insurmountable, that it is fixable, and that is within our power to do so.

You can pick up Our Choice at Chapters/Indigo and other retailers.