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florisw's review against another edition
5.0
Fleming’s Fixing the Sky is probably still the best account of how people (in the global West) have attempted to control the weather. It is thoroughly researched, confidently and compellingly written, and – importantly for me – clear and direct in its messaging. In essence, Fleming advocates for the “middle road” when it comes to weather (and by implication climate) control: not to do nothing, and not to try to meddle with things you can’t control or don’t understand. Humility is an important value to have as a researcher or policymaker – the more you know about the climate, the less likely you are to think you can develop a simple way of controlling it. Taking inspiration from Hippocratic philosophy, Fleming would like you to help, or at least to do no harm. The book has an impressive scope, covering Euro-American literature since antiquity, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. But if I was to recommend one chapter it would be the final one on contemporary (early twenty-first century) geoengineering theories and debates. It has it all: recent examples of technocratic naivety, analysis of what makes these examples dangerous or depressing, references to historical antecedents, and clear takeaways from this history.
invisibleninjacat's review
5.0
A very good overview of the history of climate engineering and where we stand today.
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