In a time of violent passions, when we are buffeted from all sides by appeals to panic about man-made climate change or arguments from those who see it as a giant hoax concocted by China, moderation feels like a virtue from a lost era. Yet there is another, gentler way of doing things. Small Gases, Big Effect, a short book in which two 24-year-old German economics students set out the scientific basis for global warming with admirable simplicity and factual sobriety, has lorded it over the bestseller lists in Germany and will be released in New Zealand in July, although the e-book is already available.
It’s found its way into more than 350,000 German homes, been read by Germany’s agriculture minister, Julia Klöckner, and at least 37 MPs in the Bundestag. It’s a set text in universities, engineering conglomerates and the European Central Bank. Yet the most remarkable thing about it is that, in an age of inexorably hardening political battle lines, it is really changing minds.
“Actually, quite a lot of climate deniers have got in touch over email, even a couple of German politicians,” David Nelles, one of the authors, says. “I did promise I wouldn’t reveal which. But one of them rang me personally on my mobile. I was totally taken aback. He said he just couldn’t see before that climate change was man-made – it had never been plausibly explained to him and he’d always been annoyed by the hysteria in the debate.
“But he said that when he read our book it was the first time he’d recognised the thread of an argument that … put everything in its proper place and laid down the facts. And that’s exactly how we’ve got through to climate sceptics and deniers, who say, ‘Yeah, OK, I guess that’s just physics. It’s so clearly explained that you can’t really fault it.’”
Perhaps it all comes down to the German emphasis on Sachlichkeit, the notion that you should at least try to look as though you’re analysing matters dispassionately. contains no rains of blood, no tidal waves engulfing Los Angeles and no injunctions to revolution. What it does contain is unobjectionable facts, set down in sparse prose, with lots of homemade diagrams. “The feedback we’re getting is that in the current age of fake news, people long for a reliable source of information,” says David’s co-author, Christian Serrer. “At the start we didn’t think the whole thing would be such a success. But people have been tearing the book out of our hands. It’s just this sober way of
