‘It is there, in the background. Always. Increasingly urgent. Its ominous hum is the soundtrack to every other story we tell.’ The devastating summer of Australian bushfires underlined a terrifying sense of a world pushed to the brink. Then came Covid-19, and with it another dramatic lurch away from business as usual. Some observers are worried that the all-consuming effort to control the pandemic will distract us from the long-term challenge of limiting catastrophic climate change. At the same time, many people are hoping for a ‘green Covid-19 recovery’: a cleaner, fairer and safer world. This BWB Text brings together mātauranga Māori and Pasifika perspectives, voices from academia, activism, journalism and economics to bear witness to these troubled times.
Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to be done to create more decisive action. Composed of twenty-eight essays—a combination of new and republished texts—the anthology is organised around seven main themes: paradigms; what counts?; extraction; dispatches from a climate change frontline country; governance; finance; and action(s). Through this multifaceted approach, the contributors ask pressing questions about how we conceptualise and respond to the climate crisis, providing both ‘big picture’ perspectives and more focussed case studies. This unique and extensive collection will be of great value to environmental and social scientists alike, as well as to the general reader interested in understanding current views on the climate crisis.
The Bible is full of images of God caring for his creation in all its complexity. Yet experts warn us that a so-called perfect storm of factors threatens the future of life on earth. The authors assess the evidence for climate change and other threats that our planet faces in the coming decades while pointing to the hope God offers the world and the people he made.
The environmental crisis besieges morality with unanswered questions and ethical dilemmas, requiring fresh examination of nature's value, animal rights, activism, and despair.
Will Washington, London, and Tokyo be threatened by rising seas? What changes in our economics, politics, and lifestyles will be brought about by the coming climate crisis? Here is the needed information to prepare for this very different future.
A provocative history of the environmental movement in America, showing how this rise to political and social prominence produced a culture of alarmism that has often distorted the facts Few issues today excite more passion or alarm than the specter of climate change. In A Climate of Crisis, historian Patrick Allitt shows that our present climate of crisis is far from exceptional. Indeed, the environmental debates of the last half century are defined by exaggeration and fearmongering from all sides, often at the expense of the facts. In a real sense, Allitt shows us, collective anxiety about widespread environmental danger began with the atomic bomb. As postwar suburbanization transformed the American landscape, more research and better tools for measurement began to reveal the consequences of economic success. A climate of anxiety became a climate of alarm, often at odds with reality. The sixties generation transformed environmentalism from a set of special interests into a mass movement. By the first Earth Day in 1970, journalists and politicians alike were urging major initiatives to remedy environmental harm. In fact, the work of the new Environmental Protection Agency and a series of clean air and water acts from a responsive Congress inaugurated a largely successful cleanup. Political polarization around environmental questions after 1980 had consequences that we still feel today. Since then, the general polarization of American politics has mirrored that of environmental politics, as pro-environmentalists and their critics attribute to one another the worst possible motives. Environmentalists see their critics as greedy special interest groups that show no conscience as they plunder the earth while skeptics see their adversaries as enemies of economic growth whose plans stifle initiative under an avalanche of bureaucratic regulation. There may be a germ of truth in both views, but more than a germ of falsehood too. America’s worst environmental problems have proven to be manageable; the regulations and cleanups of the last sixty years have often worked, and science and technology have continued to improve industrial efficiency. Our present situation is serious, argues Allitt, but it is far from hopeless. Sweeping and provocative, A Climate of Crisis challenges our basic assumptions about the environment, no matter where we fall along the spectrum—reminding us that the answers to our most pressing questions are sometimes found in understanding the past.
The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, the ‘Age of Humans’. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognised scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, the book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science. If in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. It means the end of the ‘social-only’ understanding of human history and agency. These pillars of modernity are now destabilised. The scale and pace of the shifts occurring on Earth are beyond human experience and expose the anachronisms of ‘Holocene thinking’. The book explores what kinds of narratives are emerging around the scientific idea of the new geological epoch, and what it means for the ‘politics of unsustainability’.
The culmination of over three decades of writing by environmental scientist and writer Haydn Washington, this book examines the global environmental crisis and its solutions. Many of us know that something is wrong with our world, that it is wounded. At the same time, we often don’t know why things have gone wrong – or what can be done. Framing the discussion around three central predicaments – the ecological, the social, and the economic – Washington provides background as to why each of these are in crisis and presents steps that individuals can personally take to heal the world. Urging the reader to accept the reality of our problems, he explores practical solutions for change such as the transition to renewable energy, rejection of climate denial and the championing of appropriate technology, as well as a readjustment in ethical approaches. The book also contains 19 ‘solution boxes’ by distinguished environmental scholars. With a focus on positive, personal solutions, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of environmental science and environmental philosophy, and for all those keen to heal the world and contribute towards a sustainable future.
This book explores how the world community will respond to the unfolding humanitarian crisis caused by climate change. It recognises climate change as the greatest threat to human development in the 21st century, bringing with it: flooding, drought, extreme temperatures, health crises, threats to human security and severe harm to economic development. The Climate Change Crisis addresses climate change and its impact as a major threat for countries around the world. Through a collection of interviews with leading environmentalists and exploration into new innovations that can offer hope and protection for billions of people, this book presents an interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the paramount health and development challenges of climate change. This timely and informative book cuts across several disciplines, including human rights, public policy, international relations, national refugee policy, and migration studies.
"Jack Hollander has written a lucid and path-breaking book. He is completely convincing in his thesis that it is poverty we should be addressing, both for the environment and for moral reasons, and that science, technology, markets, and affluence are the friends of the environment and poverty is the enemy. The book is of the highest scholarship and gets the big picture right; the arguments on both sides are addressed with clear thinking and clear prose. Though he is an eminent scientist, Hollander has a wonderful talent for keeping technical jargon to a minimum yet making the essence of technical arguments clear. Both the intelligent layman and the environmental scientist will learn much from this book. I did, and enjoyed the book immensely."—Bruce Ames, Former Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center, University of California, Berkeley "This book is a much-needed reminder that declining environmental integrity is not—and certainly need not be—an inexorable attribute of economic progress. Throughout the book the author dispels a number of closely related myths, such as that of steadily increasing scarcity of energy resources. Hollander provides a corrective to the simplistic and unbalanced treatment of environmental and natural resource topics one encounters all too often in the media and in public debate."—Joel Darmstadter, Resources for the Future; editor, Global Development and the Environment: Perspectives on Sustainability "This work is extremely important and makes a major contribution to the debate and decision-making surrounding efforts to eradicate poverty and protect the environment. In a uniquely balanced manner, Hollander adds to the general understanding of how poverty and wealth contribute to sustainable management of natural resources."—Per Pinstrup-Andersen, author of Seeds of Contention: World Hunger and the Global Controversy over GM Crops "Jack Hollander puts forth two simple hypotheses. The first, explicit, is that environmental sustainability depends on extending prosperity to the developing world. The second, implicit, is that the sustainability of environmentalism depends on transparent and objective science. Both are well defended in Hollander's clear, well researched and timely book."—Richard S. Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
