Climate Change and Social Ecology Planning a Green Future

About this book

Climate Change and Social Ecology takes a new and different approach to the world's most pressing challenge, recasting climate change as a challenge of rapid social evolution, and presenting a compelling vision of how sustainable societies might come about. Rather than simply describing the science of climate change or potential near-term initiatives to address the problem, this essential volume looks at the social transformation that will be necessary to deal with the challenge in the long term. The book argues that humanity is still avoiding dealing with the dysfunctional social ecologies that have led to unsustainable development, and that we are still not discussing underlying drivers of the problem such as overpopulation, overconsumption, and inequity. After considering the general strategies considered to date to deal with climate change, including international agreements, piecemeal local and national action, and geoengineering, the volume presents a detailed vision of a sustainable society in the future and how that might be achieved through more conscious public nurturing of our own social ecologies.

Drawing on literature in many fields, the author argues that only by reframing the challenge as one of taking charge of our own evolution can our species survive twenty-first century threats and reach a sustainable future. The task is one of planning in the broadest and most creative sense--planning to heal ourselves, our societies, and the planet.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. A Century of Climate Change
3. Fifty Years of the Sustainability Movement
4. Still off the Table: Growth, Consumption, Population and Equity
5. Storyline 1: Over the Cliff
6. Storyline 2: A Sustainable Society
7. Social Ecology
8. Planning for Social Evolution
9. Shaping Our Future

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Biography

Stephen M. Wheeler, Ph.D., AICP is Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture Program, Department of Environmental Design at the University of California at Davis. He has also taught at the University of New Mexico and the University of California at Berkeley. Author of "Planning for Sustainability: Towards Livable, Equitable, and Ecological Communities" and co-editor of "The Sustainable Urban Development Reader" (with Timothy Beatley), his areas of interest include sustainable development, planning for climate change, urban design, and built landscapes of metropolitan regions. His academic articles have appeared in the "Journal of the American Planning Association", the "Journal of Planning Education and Research", the "Journal of Urban Design", "Local Environment, Progress in Planning", the "Berkeley Planning Journal", and "Regional Studies".

Prof. Wheeler holds Masters and Ph.D. degrees in City and Regional Planning from U.C. Berkeley, and a B.A. from Dartmouth College where he studied with Donella Meadows, one of the originators of the sustainability concept. He has also served as an urban planning consultant, as Transportation Commissioner for the City of Berkeley, as editor of "The Urban Ecologist" journal, and as a lobbyist for environmental organizations in Washington, D.C. In 2009 Prof. Wheeler received the William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning.