Climate Changers

An engaging, accessible citizen’s guide to the seven urgent changes that will really make a difference for our climate—and how we can hold our governments accountable for putting these plans into action.

Dozens of kids in Montgomery County, Maryland, agitated until their school board committed to electric school buses. Mothers in Colorado turned up in front of an obscure state panel to fight for clean air. If you think the only thing you can do to combat climate change is to install a smart thermostat or cook plant-based burgers, you’re thinking too small. 

That’s where The Big Fix comes in, offering everyday citizens a guide to the seven essential changes our communities must enact to bring our greenhouse gas emissions down to zero—and sharing stories of people who are making those changes reality.

Energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis hone in on the seven areas where ambitious but eminently practical changes will have the greatest effect: electricity production, transportation, buildings, industry, urbanization, use of land, and investment in promising new green technologies. In a lively, jargon-free style, the pair illuminate how our political economy really works, revealing who decides everything from what kind of power plants to build to how efficient cars must be before they’re allowed on the road to how much insulation a new house requires—and how we can insert ourselves into all these decisions to ensure that the most climate-conscious choices are being made.

At once pragmatic and inspiring, The Big Fix is an indispensable action plan for citizens looking to drive our country’s greenhouse gas emissions down to zero—and save our climate.

Eric Davidson is an ecologist, soil scientist, and biogeochemist whose research career has focused on how human changes to the land affect carbon and nitrogen in the soil, water, and air. He is working as a science advisor to the Bureau of Environmental Quality at the U.S. Department of State, where he is helping scope out the USG position on a new international agreement on plastic waste.

In his new book, Science for a Green New Deal, Davidson explains for a broad audience how to employ exciting technologies, from carbon sequestration to renewable energy, and how scientists, farmers, CEOs, renewable energy advocates, teachers, and investors must work in tandem to tackle humanity’s greatest challenge.

Each chapter ends with science-backed recommendations to meet the stated goals of the Green New Deal. Davidson’s integrated approach to climate solutions explains:

• why neither environmental quality, economic prosperity, nor social justice can be dealt with independently
• how the cost of deep decarbonization of the energy sector is more affordable than you think
• how regenerative agriculture can help us meet the challenges of feeding 10-12 billion people later this century, while minimizing environmental impact
• how the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change share many features, including their global scope, disproportionately high impacts on the poor and people of color, and a proliferation of misinformation that has led to denial by many despite strong scientific evidence

Davidson covers all of this with clarity that makes his book readily approachable to the non-scientist. He weaves in engaging stories, often using his own life experience—from his childhood in Montana, to his days as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, to conducting research on deforestation in Brazil, to undergoing open-heart surgery.