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Coinciding with the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper asked writers from around the world for their perspectives. Read how global warming has effected lives in from Bombay to the high Alps, from The Netherlands to Nigeria and beyond. We present stories by Hans Maarten van den Brink, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Romesh Gunesekera, Kiran Nagarkar, Leo Tuor and more...15/06/2007
World authors on climate change
Seas of stone
The publication of the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has kicked off a heavy debate which - as EU's the recent climate protection plans show - is affecting political decision-making. The NZZ feuilleton asked writers from far and wide to report on climate change from a personal point of view. The series begins with Swiss author Leo Tuor, who has felt the effects of the Earth's warming right up to his belly button.
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Underwater
Continuing with the series, originally published in the NZZ, of first-hand accounts of climate change by international writers, Hans Maarten van den Brink talks of arks and dykes and watersport and the Dutch obsession with the sea.
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Black Christmas
In the NZZ's climate change series, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells how Christmas changed in 2006, with choking heat and clammy bedsheets.
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Rain
Continuing the NZZ's climate change series, Sri Lankan author Romesh Gunesekera tells how everything is perfect for the model farmer with a mathematical mind. Until the rain messes up his calculations.
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From Bombay with smog
In a new sequel of the NZZ's climate change series, Kiran Nagarkar affords a lung-clogging view from Bombay, where this winter the smog was a block of dirty concrete that started a couple of metres from where you stood and stretched all the way to the sky.
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Meteorologists versus shamans
Continuing the NZZ's series of first-hand accounts of climate change by international writers, siberian-born Juri Rytcheu picks fun at polar meteorologists and admits he wouldn't mind it getting a bit warmer.
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Grapes from Greenland
Continuing the NZZ's series of first-hand accounts of climate change by international writers, Danish author Jorn Riel tells of his psychedelic visions for the future of the Arctic.
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Fools' gold and carbon credits
To round off the NZZ series of writers on climate change, Zakes Mda of South Africa takes on the trade in carbon credits. Instead of providing an incentive to control pollution, it gives the world's wealthy classes carte blanche to pollute with clear consciences.
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