The new book GWR: The Global Warming Reader leaves a reader wondering why, given the evidence, there’s not a robust movement to replace the causes of the warming. But the situation is unlike any other that’s arisen, and our historical models of resistance or mobilization may mislead us. Many of these differences are painfully apparent to those trying to build a movement; in the aggregate they are daunting and suggest the need for some additional tactics, including a kind of initiation.

First, the differences:

For example, the danger of global warming is not marked by an attack. Global warming has produced no Pearl Harbor, no “day of infamy” that’s sudden and unambiguous. In the case of an attack, we know what to do.

The cause of the crisis is not some foreign foe who can be hated. The greenhouse gases have been emitted largely by industrialism (at home and displaced) and vehicles driven by us humans and our ancestors.

Unlike a war mobilization, we have no assurance of renewed growth after the emergency. Instead, as peak oil analysts tell us, we may have to make do with less energy than we are now accustomed to consuming. If we ever impose a tax on carbon, energy will cost more.

Although Al Gore and some others call global warming a moral crisis, it’s hard to recognize the nature of the decision, in the way we can spot the temptation to steal or commit adultery or tell a lie or break any of the other Biblical commandments or oppress an outgroup or deny half the population the right to vote.

The inconvenient consequences seem too ghastly to be believed: nothing so bad could happen, some feel.

Read the full review in Huffpost Green