Reviews
A superbly photographed and researched record of the effects of climate change around the world. It is a book that captures the beauty of our unspoilt natural environment and the dreadful inroads against it from climate change all too much of which is caused by man.
Chris Bonington
A superbly photographed and researched record of the effects of climate change around the world. It is a book that captures the beauty of our unspoilt natural environment and the dreadful inroads against it from climate change all too much of which is caused by man.
Chris Bonington
This book is far more than just a collection of impressive photographs – it documents a massively important and concerning phenomenon that will affect us all. These images vividly show the effect which climate change is having on our planet, and serves as a wake-up call for us all to act before it is too late.
Tim Farron
This book is far more than just a collection of impressive photographs – it documents a massively important and concerning phenomenon that will affect us all. These images vividly show the effect which climate change is having on our planet, and serves as a wake-up call for us all to act before it is too late.
Tim Farron
Sometimes pictures are more powerful than any words and at the beginning of a year that presages some disastrous decisions in the US that will impact upon us all, this book has become essential reading.
Emma Thompson
Sometimes pictures are more powerful than any words and at the beginning of a year that presages some disastrous decisions in the US that will impact upon us all, this book has become essential reading.
Emma Thompson
‘These striking and powerful images remind us what's at stake on the one planet we've got--and the duty we all have to try and preserve it!’
Bill McKibben
Founder of 350.org and author of ‘Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet’
‘These striking and powerful images remind us what's at stake on the one planet we've got--and the duty we all have to try and preserve it!’
Bill McKibben
Founder of 350.org and author of ‘Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet’
‘This book shows, like no other, our dependence on fossil fuels and why we have to open a new chapter in our history. We have the technologies to power our lives without the terrible pollution we have grown accustomed to. Do political leaders have the courage to take the new technologies to scale? Only if we bolster their resolve to act in favour of the future. Everyone should see this book and make their voice heard. It is a tremendous achievement by Ashley Cooper.’
Mark Edwards
Hard Rain Project
‘This book shows, like no other, our dependence on fossil fuels and why we have to open a new chapter in our history. We have the technologies to power our lives without the terrible pollution we have grown accustomed to. Do political leaders have the courage to take the new technologies to scale? Only if we bolster their resolve to act in favour of the future. Everyone should see this book and make their voice heard. It is a tremendous achievement by Ashley Cooper.’
Mark Edwards
Hard Rain Project
'This brilliant book is either the crowning example of a dystopian vision of our world made real through the lens of an artist's genius...marking a moment when the world is changing beyond what we have ever known since humanity first recorded its observations...or it marks the beginning of a new age where the unseen impacts of "slow violence" are suddenly turned into a clear and present danger we are biologically able to react to and philosophically predisposed to.
The big question is; if we fry, who cares. Failure consigns us to abut part actor on evolution's stage. Success would be our crowning achievement as a species and create a spiritual platform that can transform the future into a picture that remains ours still to make.
This magnificent photo essay throws down the gauntlet, the choice is ours but the scale of the game is here made visible'
Sir Tim Smit
The Eden Project
'This brilliant book is either the crowning example of a dystopian vision of our world made real through the lens of an artist's genius...marking a moment when the world is changing beyond what we have ever known since humanity first recorded its observations...or it marks the beginning of a new age where the unseen impacts of "slow violence" are suddenly turned into a clear and present danger we are biologically able to react to and philosophically predisposed to.
The big question is; if we fry, who cares. Failure consigns us to abut part actor on evolution's stage. Success would be our crowning achievement as a species and create a spiritual platform that can transform the future into a picture that remains ours still to make.
This magnificent photo essay throws down the gauntlet, the choice is ours but the scale of the game is here made visible'
Sir Tim Smit
The Eden Project
‘Slowly, with much labour, at some risk and with great determination, Ashley Cooper has created a photographic record of world importance. It is an irony that so many of the images of havoc in this book are seductively beautiful: we should study them aware that other seductions have drawn us into the false relation with nature that has brought about this ugly mess.
Ashley lives not far from Grasmere, as I do. Of necessity, we both walk the same paths and see the same hills that Wordsworth walked and saw. It is hard not to absorb, almost accidentally, the poet’s vision of nature and the human soul as one. And yet, he said, the world we have made is ‘too much with us: late and soon, /getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: - /little we see in Nature that is ours/ … we are out of tune.’
Ashley’s photographs show us just how carelessly, in getting and spending, we have laid waste our planet and just how far out of tune we have become.
Publication of this book falls on the tenth anniversary of that of Mark Edwards’ photographic essay ‘Hard Rain’. This is a worthy successor to that book and a significant review of the evidence. Edwards, in his introduction, asked us to ‘turn the pages and see feelingly’: to this we might now add: see with anger and resolve to do something before it is too late.’
Richard Little
Impact International
‘Slowly, with much labour, at some risk and with great determination, Ashley Cooper has created a photographic record of world importance. It is an irony that so many of the images of havoc in this book are seductively beautiful: we should study them aware that other seductions have drawn us into the false relation with nature that has brought about this ugly mess.
Ashley lives not far from Grasmere, as I do. Of necessity, we both walk the same paths and see the same hills that Wordsworth walked and saw. It is hard not to absorb, almost accidentally, the poet’s vision of nature and the human soul as one. And yet, he said, the world we have made is ‘too much with us: late and soon, /getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: - /little we see in Nature that is ours/ … we are out of tune.’
Ashley’s photographs show us just how carelessly, in getting and spending, we have laid waste our planet and just how far out of tune we have become.
Publication of this book falls on the tenth anniversary of that of Mark Edwards’ photographic essay ‘Hard Rain’. This is a worthy successor to that book and a significant review of the evidence. Edwards, in his introduction, asked us to ‘turn the pages and see feelingly’: to this we might now add: see with anger and resolve to do something before it is too late.’
Richard Little
Impact International
'It looks absolutely terrific.
Beauty and horror, both combined.
It brings together in one book both visually and emotionally all the various effects around the world that climate change is already having on us and our surroundings.
It is so comprehensive that I doubt anything like this has been published before. It brings to life what we usually read about bit by bit, as short news items disconnected to the big picture, dealing with every aspect - analytically - yet with great verve and style.
These are not run-of-the mill photographs, they are of the highest quality aesthetically, and must have cost the author a great deal of time, effort and persistence.'
Julian Heaton Cooper, Artist
'It looks absolutely terrific.
Beauty and horror, both combined.
It brings together in one book both visually and emotionally all the various effects around the world that climate change is already having on us and our surroundings.
It is so comprehensive that I doubt anything like this has been published before. It brings to life what we usually read about bit by bit, as short news items disconnected to the big picture, dealing with every aspect - analytically - yet with great verve and style.
These are not run-of-the mill photographs, they are of the highest quality aesthetically, and must have cost the author a great deal of time, effort and persistence.'
Julian Heaton Cooper, Artist
"This book is utterly spectacular. It brings climate change - both causes and effects - to life in a way that has seldom been attempted before. From the ephemeral beauty of vanishing Alpine glaciers to the relentless toll taken by sea level rise on vulnerable islands, Ashley’s photos capture a moment in our planet’s history that will resonate down the generations - either for good or for bad, depending on how ambitiously we collectively act today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You, the reader, will decide how this book’s story ends."
Mark Lynas
Environment Writer
"This book is utterly spectacular. It brings climate change - both causes and effects - to life in a way that has seldom been attempted before. From the ephemeral beauty of vanishing Alpine glaciers to the relentless toll taken by sea level rise on vulnerable islands, Ashley’s photos capture a moment in our planet’s history that will resonate down the generations - either for good or for bad, depending on how ambitiously we collectively act today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You, the reader, will decide how this book’s story ends."
Mark Lynas
Environment Writer
‘During 2016 over 184,000 new books will be published in the UK, worldwide it runs into millions. How much of this avalanche of material is truly important? Probably very little. However, occasionally a book appears that is not just important, it is also of vital concern to us all. Ashley Cooper’s Images of a Warming Planet is one of those rare publishing events. In its importance, and the scale of its vision, it is a publishing milestone. The author notes in his introduction: “Climate change is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced.” While the scientific consensus, and the disputes that continue on the fringes, are well publicised in a huge but accessible literature, this book provides something different. What does the reality of climate change, as it is happening now, look like? What are the impacts, on biodiversity, ecosystems, natural resources, human communities and individual lives, around the globe? This book gives us eyes to see what our very human, but potentially fatal, habits of inertia, resistance, denial and self-deception, will often lead us to turn away from.
Award winning photographer Ashley Cooper has spent thirteen years documenting the impacts of climate change on every continent of the globe. He has amassed the largest collection of climate change imagery in the world, and this book provides a selection of 500 of them, arranged into fifteen chapters with a concise introduction to each chapter providing a clear background for the images that follow. The impacts documented in these chapters range from the familiar fossil fuel industries to the less well known devastation of the Canadian tar sands; from the chaos and destruction of the increasing incidents of extreme weather events around the globe, to the irreplaceable loss of biodiversity; from droughts in South America, to the struggles of the Inuit to survive in their rapidly changing environment; from the threat to Polynesian islanders from rising sea levels, to retreating glaciers and melting permafrost … the conclusion is inescapable: Climate change is happening, it is real, its impacts are global, and in many instances, catastrophic.
Ashley Cooper has done us all a great service, travelling to over thirty countries, with single minded determination, at considerable expense, and significant personal risk, to document what is happening to our planet. His work has the power to open our eyes to the reality of climate change, and in particular to the suffering of those who are paying the costs, those who know from the devastation of their own lives what climate change means: “If I have learnt one thing in my travels it is that those least responsible for climate change, are most impacted by it.” The author has given voice to those most affected, and least able to stand against the powerful vested interests that rely on the apathy and inertia of the majority, and do their best to discredit, marginalise, and silence the Ashley Coopers of this world. We are all in the author’s debt that he has not been silenced.
Much of the material in this book is frightening, some of it will provoke anger even despair, but amazingly Ashley Cooper does strike a chord of hope, providing inspiring examples of collective action in the form of protest, and the use of renewable energy and reduction of dependence on carbon. Effective action is possible, there are grounds for hope, even though the obstacles are formidable. Our human propensity for avoiding unpleasant facts, pervasive depoliticisation, deference and voyeuristic passivity, are just some of the psychological barriers preventing mass action. In his preface to the book Jonathon Porritt notes that alienation from the natural world is a key reason why many citizens of wealthy urbanised countries find it difficult to engage with issues of climate change, and why they have not “risen up in a paroxysm of rage to demand political responses that are truly commensurate with what the science of climate change now tells us.” Ashley Cooper’s Images from a Warming Planet has the power to awaken us from our complacent sleep. Buy this book, give a copy to a friend, show it to many more. Be horrified, but be inspired. The clock is ticking … time is slipping away.’
Dr James Moorey
Clinical Psychologist/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
‘During 2016 over 184,000 new books will be published in the UK, worldwide it runs into millions. How much of this avalanche of material is truly important? Probably very little. However, occasionally a book appears that is not just important, it is also of vital concern to us all. Ashley Cooper’s Images of a Warming Planet is one of those rare publishing events. In its importance, and the scale of its vision, it is a publishing milestone. The author notes in his introduction: “Climate change is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced.” While the scientific consensus, and the disputes that continue on the fringes, are well publicised in a huge but accessible literature, this book provides something different. What does the reality of climate change, as it is happening now, look like? What are the impacts, on biodiversity, ecosystems, natural resources, human communities and individual lives, around the globe? This book gives us eyes to see what our very human, but potentially fatal, habits of inertia, resistance, denial and self-deception, will often lead us to turn away from.
Award winning photographer Ashley Cooper has spent thirteen years documenting the impacts of climate change on every continent of the globe. He has amassed the largest collection of climate change imagery in the world, and this book provides a selection of 500 of them, arranged into fifteen chapters with a concise introduction to each chapter providing a clear background for the images that follow. The impacts documented in these chapters range from the familiar fossil fuel industries to the less well known devastation of the Canadian tar sands; from the chaos and destruction of the increasing incidents of extreme weather events around the globe, to the irreplaceable loss of biodiversity; from droughts in South America, to the struggles of the Inuit to survive in their rapidly changing environment; from the threat to Polynesian islanders from rising sea levels, to retreating glaciers and melting permafrost … the conclusion is inescapable: Climate change is happening, it is real, its impacts are global, and in many instances, catastrophic.
Ashley Cooper has done us all a great service, travelling to over thirty countries, with single minded determination, at considerable expense, and significant personal risk, to document what is happening to our planet. His work has the power to open our eyes to the reality of climate change, and in particular to the suffering of those who are paying the costs, those who know from the devastation of their own lives what climate change means: “If I have learnt one thing in my travels it is that those least responsible for climate change, are most impacted by it.” The author has given voice to those most affected, and least able to stand against the powerful vested interests that rely on the apathy and inertia of the majority, and do their best to discredit, marginalise, and silence the Ashley Coopers of this world. We are all in the author’s debt that he has not been silenced.
Much of the material in this book is frightening, some of it will provoke anger even despair, but amazingly Ashley Cooper does strike a chord of hope, providing inspiring examples of collective action in the form of protest, and the use of renewable energy and reduction of dependence on carbon. Effective action is possible, there are grounds for hope, even though the obstacles are formidable. Our human propensity for avoiding unpleasant facts, pervasive depoliticisation, deference and voyeuristic passivity, are just some of the psychological barriers preventing mass action. In his preface to the book Jonathon Porritt notes that alienation from the natural world is a key reason why many citizens of wealthy urbanised countries find it difficult to engage with issues of climate change, and why they have not “risen up in a paroxysm of rage to demand political responses that are truly commensurate with what the science of climate change now tells us.” Ashley Cooper’s Images from a Warming Planet has the power to awaken us from our complacent sleep. Buy this book, give a copy to a friend, show it to many more. Be horrified, but be inspired. The clock is ticking … time is slipping away.’
Dr James Moorey
Clinical Psychologist/Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
‘Much has been said about how the pictures in this book empower the change we so badly need. How they can connect those that are scared of the future with the reality or individual lives which they can relate to. They can create a shift in the viewers mind where nothing else works to engender behaviour change. But we must not forget journey the photographer took to generate all these pictures. This award winning photographer sat down one day and created a list of the major climate change issues and then reflected on these points globally, looking beyond civilisations in some areas. That would be a big enough task for most of us but he then found the drive to continue, often self funded, to travel to the locations pin pointed by his research no matter how tricky they were to get to. FOR THIRTEEN YEARS!’
Tom Walmsley
Environmental Education Project
‘Much has been said about how the pictures in this book empower the change we so badly need. How they can connect those that are scared of the future with the reality or individual lives which they can relate to. They can create a shift in the viewers mind where nothing else works to engender behaviour change. But we must not forget journey the photographer took to generate all these pictures. This award winning photographer sat down one day and created a list of the major climate change issues and then reflected on these points globally, looking beyond civilisations in some areas. That would be a big enough task for most of us but he then found the drive to continue, often self funded, to travel to the locations pin pointed by his research no matter how tricky they were to get to. FOR THIRTEEN YEARS!’
Tom Walmsley
Environmental Education Project