Windfall

The Booming Business of Global Warming

By: McKenzie Funk

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Global warming's physical impacts can be separated into three broad categories: melt, drought, and deluge. Funk travels to two dozen countries to profile entrepreneurial people who see a potential windfall in each of these forces.

The melt is a boon for newly arable, mineral rich regions of the Arctic, such as Greenland - and for the man-made snow trade. Drought creates opportunities for private firefighters working for insurance companies as well as for fund managers backing south Sudanese warlords who control local farmland. The deluge - rising seas, surging rivers, and superstorms - has been our most distant concern, but for Dutch architects designing floating cities and American scientists patenting hurricane defenses, the race is on.

By letting climate change continue unchecked, we are choosing to adapt to a warming world. Containing the resulting surge will benefit some, but much of the planet will suffer. McKenzie Funk has investigated both sides, and what he has found will shock us all.

©2014 McKenzie Funk. Recorded by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company. (P)2014 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

"Funk has written a fun book humanizing the problems of climate change, focused on the colorful entrepreneurs who see in an increasingly inhospitable world golden opportunities." ( The Associated Press)

"A shocking account of how governments and corporations are confronting the crises caused by global warming…A well-written, useful global profile emphasizing concrete solutions rather than ideological abstractions." ( Kirkus Reviews)

"For most of the planet, the specter of global warming is ominous, but as journalist Funk reveals in this startling book, there are those who view the Earth's dangerous meltdown as a golden opportunity...Funk's original, forthright take on this little-discussed profit-taking trend in the climate change sweepstakes is very unsettling." ( Publishers Weekly)

unintended windfalls mixed with obvious perils

Interesting survey of how climate change has created a range of economic costs and benefits around the globe.

Great premise and packed with insights and yet unfortunately prone to tangents

The stories provide a humanizing effect but I was more interested in the figures and wish they got more of the spotlight. Overall, a good book.

Interesting but exhaustingly cynical

The book is an interesting and in-depth exploration of global warming through the lens of business: where in the world which individuals and companies are working on attempted adaptations and "solutions". The research is often detailed and set well I'm context, the anecdotes vivid and entertaining. Alas, I became exhausted by the author's cynical attitude toward seemingly every single attempt: everybody in the book's telling appears either self-interested or foolish, or both. I think reality is more complicated, and to address global warming and it's inequities, even an advocate should adopt a more even-handed POV.
The reader does a nice job.

Whoops.

What did you like best about Windfall? What did you like least?

This is not an unbiased economic tome. The writer seems to think all business's are bad for the planet. And everyone in a position of authority is a buffoon. Malthusian to the point that the planet would be better off without people on it.
The cynicism is palpable.
The narrator read a zombie appocalyps sieris and it was also very cynical, but funny. This book is dour.
But I did not finish the whole book. So it may get better further along.

important Subject. Pretty Good but Not Great

Climate change is an important subject. This book has a lot of good information. But the author tends to ramble . The reader is good but not spectacular.