About this book
Climate change is a pressing reality. From hurricane Katrina to melting polar ice, and from mass extinctions to increased threats to food and water security, the link between corporate globalisation and planetary blowback is becoming all too evident. Governments and business keep reassuring the public they are going to fix the problem. This book brings together some leading activists who disagree. They expose the inertia, denial, deception - even threats to our civil liberties - which comprise mainstream responses from civil and military policy makers, and from opinion formers in the media, corporations and academia. An epochal change is called for in the way we all engage with the climate crisis. Key to that change is Aubrey Meyer's proposed 'Contraction and Convergence' framework for limiting global carbon emissions. This book, which also includes contributions by Mayer Hillman and George Marshall, is a powerful and vital guide to how mass mobilisation can avert the looming catastrophe.
Contents
PrefaceIntroduction: Survival Means Renewal, Mark Levene and David Cromwell - Both University of SouthamptonPart I The Big Picture 1. The Case for Contraction and Convergence, Aubrey Meyer Part II The State and its Apparatus2. Thinking the Worst: The Pentagon Report, Dave Webb - Leeds Metropolitan University3. Preparing for Mass Refugee Flows: The Corporate Military Sector, Steve Wright - Leeds Metropolitan University4. Britain, Political Process and the Consequences for Government Action on Climate Change, James HumphreysPart III Critical Players5. First they Blocked, Now do they Bluff? Corporations respond to Climate Change, Melanie Jarman6. Mostly Missing the Point: Business Responses to Climate Change, David Ballard - University of Bath7. The Mass Media, Climate Change and how things might be, John Theobald and Marianne McKiggan8. Having the Information but what do you then do with it? The Scientific and Academic Communities, Jonathan Ward - University of Bristol9. Asleep on their Watch: Where were the NGOs?, George MarshallPart IV The Challenge Ahead10.Clearing the Pathways to Transformation, Susan Ballard and David Ballard11. Averting Climate Change: By Force, Persuasion or Enlightened Self-Interest ? Jim ScottAfterword: Where Do We Go From Here? Mayer Hillman - Policy Studies Institute, LondonAppendix 1: A Layperson's Glossary of the Global Politics of Climate Change, Tim Helweg-Larsen (Centre for Alternative Technology, Machynelleth, Wales) and Jo AbbessAppendix 2: Climate Change campaigns and other relevant linksNotes on ContributorsIndex
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Biography
David Cromwell is a researcher in ocean circulation and climate at Southampton Oceanography Centre. He is author of Private Planet (Jon Carpenter Publishing, 2001) and co-author of Guardians of Power (Pluto Press, 2006). He is co-founder of the Crisis Forum and also of Medialens, a media watchdog. Mark Levene is Reader in Comparative History at the University of Southampton and is co-founder of the Crisis Forum. A long-time peace activist, he is the author of the multi-volume book Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State. David Cromwell is the author of Private Planet (2001) and is co-author, with David Edwards, of Guardians of Power (2006). He is a researcher at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, and the co-founder of the Crisis Forum with Mark Levene. Mark Levene is an environmental activist and a historican at the University of Southampton. He is the author of Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State (2005). He is also founder of Rescue!History, a network seeking to understand the historical origins of climate change.