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'Deep adaptation' refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives. They do not assume that our current economic, social and political systems can be made resilient in the face of climate change but, instead, they demonstrate the caring and creative ways that people are responding to the most difficult realization with which humanity may ever have to come to terms.
Edited by the originator of the concept of deep adaptation, Jem Bendell, and a leading climate activist and strategist, Rupert Read, this book is the essential introduction to the concept, practice and emerging global movement of Deep Adaptation to climate chaos.
Introduction: what now the limits are breached? / Jem Bendell and Rupert Read
Part I: The Predicament
1. The scientific case of global over-heating and the root of denial
2. Deep Adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy / Jem Bendell
3. The reasons for anticipating collapse / Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens, Gauthier Chapelle, Daniel Rodary
Part II: Shifts in Being
4. Climate Psychology and its Relevance to Deep Adaptation / Adrian Tait
5. Deeper implications of societal collapse: co-liberation from the ideology of e-s-c-a-p-e. / Jem Bendell
6. Unconscious addictions: mapping common responses to climate change and potential climate collapse / Rene Suša, Sharon Stein, Vanessa Andreotti, Tereza ajkova, Dino Siwek, and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Collective
7. Facilitating Deep Adaptation - enabling more loving conversations about our predicament / Katie Carr and Jem Bendell
8. The Great Turning: Reconnecting through Collapse / Sean Kelly and Joanna Macy
Part III: Shifts in Doing
9. Leadership and management in a context of deep adaptation / Jonathan Gosling
10. What Matters Most? Deep Education Conversations in a Climate of Change and Complexity / Charlotte Von Bulow and Charlotte Simpson
11. Riding two horses: The future of politics and activism, as we face potential eco-driven societal collapse / Rupert Read
12. Relocalisation as Deep Adaptation / Matthew Slater and Skeena Rathor
Concluding the Beginning of Deep Adaptation / Jem Bendell and Rupert Read
Jem Bendell is a Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria and the originator of the Deep Adaptation movement.
Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, a Green Party campaigner and a former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.
"The authors of this book have courage to recognise the reality of our time and face the uncomfortable facts of climate calamity. The theme of this book is indeed scary. But it's full of bright ideas for how to transmute both fear and difficulty into kind and wise ways of living and working. The thinkers, academics and activists who have contributed to this book embody the wisdom to adapt to this unprecedented catastrophe. They also show the practical ways and means to live and act with the imagination and resilience. Not everyone would agree to these radical ideas but everyone needs to know about them. So, I recommend this book to all."
– Satish Kumar, Editor Emeritus Resurgence & Ecologist and Founder, Schumacher College
"This book is the "red pill" of our times, offering neither certainty nor confirmation of any story you may be holding about where we are heading in the face of so many colliding crises. What it does offer is togetherness in our insecurity and frameworks in our unknowing for coming to terms with and making sense of these times. I look forward to both "deep adaptation" and "collapsology" entering mainstream discourse, so that we might then imagine creating together, as our current paradigm crumbles."
– Gail Bradbrook, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion
"The contributors are unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom on the climate crisis and go against the grain with a provocative assessment of what we are now able to achieve and where we should focus our efforts."
– Ecologist
"Collapse followed by transformation is a common way that complex systems evolve. Perhaps collapse of our high consumption, climate-destabilising society can lead to transformation towards a brighter human future. The Deep Adaptation framework outlined in this book is a helpful way to seek that transformation."
– Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University Climate Change Institute
"In this book I am joined by scholars from around the world who seek to be present to the suffering and difficulties of our time. Please turn toward these ideas, not away, to find your own path in a turbulent future."
– Joanna Macy, author of A Wild Love for the World
"Deep Adaptation is only the beginning – it is one in which we expand our thinking and open ourselves to the possibility of a completely new emergent paradigm, as yet unknown. That fills me with curious hope."
– Maddy Harland, Permaculture Magazine
"riveting"
– Times Literary Supplement
"Lucid, productive, and necessary [...] Bendell succeeds in distilling a terrifying future into a series of questions that invite people into conversation. By doing so, he gives us a language to speak the unthinkable."
– Salon
