History at the End of the World? History Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure

About this book

This collection of essays proposes that climate change means serious peril. Our argument, however, is not about the science per se. It is about us, our deep and more recent history, and how we arrived at this calamitous impasse. With contributions from academic activists and independent researchers, History at the End of the World? challenges advocates of 'business as usual' to think again. But in its wide-ranging assessment of how we transcend the current crisis, it also proposes that the human past could be our most powerful resource in the struggle for survival. Our approaches begin from archaeology, literature, religion, psychology, sociology, philosophy of science, engineering and sustainable development, as well as 'straight' history.

Contents

Introduction: A Chronicle of a Death Foretold? Mark Levene

PART I: DEEP HISTORY
1. - Responding to Climate Change: Lessons from our Prehistoric Ancestors. Kate Prendergast

PART II: HARBINGERS OF THE END
2. - We'll cope, Mankind always has: The Fall of Rome and the Cost of Crisis. Bryan Ward-Perkins
3. - People, climate and landscape in medieval Iceland and beyond. Chris Callow
4. - The Wrath of God: explanations of crisis and natural disaster in pre-modern Europe. Elaine Fulton and Penny Roberts

PART III: THE DEBATE ABOUT THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND MODERNITY
5. - The Urgent Need for an Academic Revolution. Nicholas Maxwell
6. - Dangerous Limits: Climate Change and Modernity. Christopher Shaw

Part IV: COMING TO TERMS WITH A RECENT HISTORICAL LEGACY
7. Five Lessons for the Climate Crisis: What the History of Resource Scarcity in the United States and Japan can teach us. Roman Krznaric
8. 'We are All Slave Owners now': Fossil Fuels, Energy Consumption and the Legacy of Slave Abolition. Jean-Francois Mouhot

PART V: COUNTDOWN TO SELF-ANNIHILATION
9. Climate Change, Resources and Future War: The Case of Central Asia. Rob Johnson
10. On the Edge of History: the Nuclear Dimension. Dave Webb

PART VI: SURVIVING CATASTROPHE: CREATING CONDITIONS FOR RENEWAL
11. On Reading History as a Mental Health Issue. Jonathan Coope
12. A Zoroastrian Dilemma? Parsi Responses to Global Catastrophe. Tehmina Goskar
13. How Novels Can Contribute to our Understanding of Climate Change. Peter Middleton
14. Towards Transition. Robert Biel

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