The octopus in the parking garage A call for climate resilience

Many readers are interested in absorbing more information about the issue of climate change--quite possibly the most significant challenge facing the world today. For those readers particularly interested in climate change adaptation and resiliency, Verchik's The Octopus in the Parking Garage is just the ticket. This accessible volume incorporates great details for undergraduates interested in environmental policy and practitioners who want to dig into resiliency. Verchick (Loyola Univ. New Orleans; Tulane Univ.) challenges readers to think about the implications of climate change in the US and abroad and the mechanisms by which we might struggle to limit its impact on human communities. His wide-ranging coverage of resiliency and climate change serves to inform readers about impacts, policy options, and political commitments. His focus on the power grid is engaging, on the lowlands of Louisiana edifying, on wildfires enlightening, and on oceans deeply felt. Finally, his discussion of creating a climate relocation program is both bold and saddening--bold because it would mean doing what we should to protect communities; saddening because we lack the political will. Resiliency is necessary for a future with a changing climate, and reading Verchick's book can help readers see this more clearly. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, lower-division undergraduates, and professionals. --Mark Chris Stephan, Washington State University

Society must make wide-reaching infrastructural changes to survive a warming world, according to this unfocused treatise. Verchick (Facing Catastrophe), an environmental law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, calls for humans to mimic the smarts and adaptability of octopuses to tackle climate change, advocating for investments in technology and infrastructure, as well as healing the environment. He examines how localities across the U.S. are combating soaring temperatures, rising seas, and weather disasters, highlighting Louisiana's plan to protect its Gulf coast with levees and West Coast initiatives to ameliorate wildfires with prescribed burns. Verchick also details programs to relocate climate refugees in Alaska; replant coral reefs off the Florida coast; and "migrate" Joshua trees, threatened by increasing heat, north of their current range to Utah. The author asserts that local experimentation is vital to devising solutions because climate change's effects differ by region, and as such he provides few overarching takeaways besides the vague guidelines that remedies should be flexible, "forward-looking," "fit to scale," and fair. The result feels like a grab bag of examples that give little sense of a coherent agenda. Climate resilience is a crucial and multifarious subject, but Verchick's treatment doesn't do it justice. Photos. (Apr.)