Book Projects

In early 2019, I began writing a book on how and why climate change became such a partisan politicised issue, and whether anything could be done to overcome these political divides. The working title of my book was, “Bridging the Political Divide on Climate Change”.

The theme of the book was to try and understand why the debate over whether recent climate change is mostly human-caused vs. mostly natural has become a left/right political issue. Are we doomed to become increasingly partisan on this nominally scientific problem – with each side becoming more convinced that the opposing side are irrational and “anti-science”? Click here for a pdf elaborating on the significance of this partisan divide.

I interviewed many scientists, writers, journalists and other commentators around the world (Ireland, UK, Netherlands, France, Norway, Canada and USA). And I was gathering a lot of fascinating and insightful material on the subject. By the end of 2019, I had completed about 80% of the interviews I felt I needed for the book.

But, then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began!

The travel restrictions for the first few years meant that I had to temporarily postpone the remaining “in-person” interviews I had planned. Obviously during the pandemic, there was a shift towards video conferencing. So, technically, I could have completed those interviews online.

However, I became busy working on COVID-19 research. And, I was also continuing my climate science research.

And as the pandemic progressed, the societal changes from both the pandemic and the government measures introduced in response to the pandemic were so widespread that the world before 2020 now seems a lifetime ago.

I also began to see many parallels between the politicisation of climate change and the responses to COVID-19. At some point in the future, I might re-interview some of the people I interviewed in 2019 to see if their views have changed since then and maybe also interview some more people to explore these parallels. But, for now, I have decided to postpone finishing this book until later.

In the meantime, I would like to express my gratitude to the many people I interviewed in 2019.

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