Earth Day: The Octopus in the Parking Garage

I was astounded to learn that THE OCTOPUS IN THE PARKING GARAGE is titled for a real-life event. Written by Rob Verchick, a climate law scholar associated with both Loyola University New Orleans and Tulane, this new text is subtitled “A Call for Climate Resilience.”  Verchick quickly grabs readers’ attention with the story of the octopus and then devotes several chapters, including one called “Climate and Caste,” to understanding resilience. He defines that term as “the capacity to manage and recover from a climate impact in a way that preserves a community’s central character…” While Verchick agrees that reducing carbon emissions is key, he strongly supports devoting more resources to planning and notes that “the federal government spends more than $45 billion recovering from disasters, about seven times what it spends on preparing for climate change.”  The second section of Verchick’s text is about doing resilience. There, he does an excellent job of outlining protective innovations. As he says, some are technological, “but the meat of this book involves governance and social cooperation.” His travels have taken him to places like the Louisiana Bayous and the Mohave Desert and he introduces readers to the efforts of local activists and citizen scientists. Verchick caps those stories with a final chapter with the mantra: Learn. Talk. Do. THE OCTOPUS IN THE PARKING GARAGE serves as both primer and call to action.