"Saving our Skins ..." now published
Available now at Amazon ...
I finally got there. “Saving our Skins” has just been published at Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s loosely based on my recent postings with the same title, but has been extensively edited and expanded. It now includes a few extra chapters and images.
Front Cover
The cover shows a recent view of the Lauder Research Station.
Back cover text
An insider’s account of the most successful international environmental action ever undertaken: the Montreal Protocol on Protection of the Ozone Layer. Richard McKenzie’s career in ozone research began years before the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole and continues to the present day. McKenzie brings a first-hand experience to the story through his research and involvement in scientific and environmental assessments of ozone depletion. Saving our Skins is the story of how McKenzie and his colleagues at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research in Lauder – a research laboratory housed on a sheep and cattle station at the bottom of the country – helped ensure the success of the Montreal Protocol. McKenzie’s story plays out against a backdrop of an ever-increasing threat from climate change and its interactions with the ozone story. This book – authoritative on the science, but accessible to the layman – intertwines the scientific story behind the Protocol with the author's personal experiences in a career that spans four decades, stretching from the hallowed corridors of Oxford University to an isolated rural community where the locals refer to the scientists as "stargazers". The book’s title plays on the dual problem of ozone depletion - which leads to dramatic increases in ultra-violet radiation that causes skin cancer - and climate change, which poses an existential threat to humanity. Both serve to remind us of the fragility of our thin skin of atmosphere. Ultimately, McKenzie shows that with foresight and global cooperation, difficult problems in science can be solved. As world leaders grasp for solutions to the climate change threat, this book suggests they might find a model in the Montreal Protocol.
The more affordable black and white version can be purchased here.
The original manuscript included a lot of rather striking colour images (photographs and graphs), so I’ve also published a more expensive full-colour version with the same title but the word “Colourful” added in the subtitle. I’ll be purchasing a few copies of that to distribute to family and friends and can get a few more at the author’s cost price to hand deliver to others in the Alexandra region. Let me know if you want one of those. There’s nothing in it for me, but it will probably be around NZ$35 after Amazon, the US govt and the Postal Services have all taken their pounds of flesh.
Updated 30 June: A version for kindle readers is now available at Amazon (in colour).
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