In Catastrophic Times

Author : Isabelle Stengers
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 158 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2015-09-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1785420097

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In Catastrophic Times by Isabelle Stengers Pdf

This book is addressed to everyone who is struggling and experimenting today, to everyone who is a true contemporary of what Stengers dares to call "the intrusion of Gaia," this "nature" that has left behind its traditional role and now has the power to question us all. In Catastrophic Times is neither a book of prophecy nor a survival guide. Here, Stengers reminds us that it falls to us to experiment with the apparatuses that make us capable of surviving without sinking into barbarism, to create what nourishes trust where panicked impotence threatens.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2024-05-26
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1607850095

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In Catastrophic Times by Anonim Pdf

Author : Seth Klein
Publisher : ECW Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2020-09-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781773055916

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A Good War by Seth Klein Pdf

“This is the roadmap out of climate crisis that Canadians have been waiting for.” — Naomi Klein, activist and New York Times bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine • One of Canada’s top policy analysts provides the first full-scale blueprint for meeting our climate change commitments • Contains the results of a national poll on Canadians’ attitudes to the climate crisis • Shows that radical transformative climate action can be done, while producing jobs and reducing inequality as we retool how we live and work. • Deeply researched and targeted specifically to Canada and Canadians while providing a model that other countries could follow Canada needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to prevent a catastrophic 1.5 degree increase in the earth’s average temperature — assumed by many scientists to be a critical “danger line” for the planet and human life as we know it. It’s 2020, and Canada is not on track to meet our targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because we’ve done it before. During the Second World War, Canadian citizens and government remade the economy by retooling factories, transforming their workforce, and making the war effort a common cause for all Canadians to contribute to. Klein demonstrates how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed today for Canada’s own Green New Deal. He shares how we can create jobs and reduce inequality while tackling our climate obligations for a climate neutral—or even climate zero—future. From enlisting broad public support for new economic models, to job creation through investment in green infrastructure, Klein shows us a bold, practical policy plan for Canada’s sustainable future. More than this: A Good War offers a remarkably hopeful message for how we can meet the defining challenge of our lives. COVID-19 has brought a previously unthinkable pace of change to the world—one which demonstrates our ability to adapt rapidly when we’re at risk. Many recent changes are what Klein proposes in these very pages. The world can, actually, turn on a dime if necessary. This is the blueprint for how to do it.

Author : Geoffrey Parker
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 944 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2013-03-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300189193

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Global Crisis by Geoffrey Parker Pdf

The acclaimed historian demonstrates a link between climate change and social unrest across the globe during the mid-17th century. Revolutions, droughts, famines, invasions, wars, regicides, government collapses—the calamities of the mid-seventeenth century were unprecedented in both frequency and severity. The effects of what historians call the "General Crisis" extended from England to Japan and from the Russian Empire to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas. In this meticulously researched volume, historian Geoffrey Parker presents the firsthand testimony of men and women who experienced the many political, economic, and social crises that occurred between 1618 to the late 1680s. He also incorporates the scientific evidence of climate change during this period into the narrative, offering a strikingly new understanding of the General Crisis. Changes in weather patterns, especially longer winters and cooler and wetter summers, disrupted growing seasons and destroyed harvests. This in turn brought hunger, malnutrition, and disease; and as material conditions worsened, wars, rebellions, and revolutions rocked the world.

Author : Dale Jamieson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2014-02-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199337675

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Reason in a Dark Time by Dale Jamieson Pdf

From the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference there was a concerted international effort to stop climate change. Yet greenhouse gas emissions increased, atmospheric concentrations grew, and global warming became an observable fact of life. In this book, philosopher Dale Jamieson explains what climate change is, why we have failed to stop it, and why it still matters what we do. Centered in philosophy, the volume also treats the scientific, historical, economic, and political dimensions of climate change. Our failure to prevent or even to respond significantly to climate change, Jamieson argues, reflects the impoverishment of our systems of practical reason, the paralysis of our politics, and the limits of our cognitive and affective capacities. The climate change that is underway is remaking the world in such a way that familiar comforts, places, and ways of life will disappear in years or decades rather than centuries. Climate change also threatens our sense of meaning, since it is difficult to believe that our individual actions matter. The challenges that climate change presents go beyond the resources of common sense morality -- it can be hard to view such everyday acts as driving and flying as presenting moral problems. Yet there is much that we can do to slow climate change, to adapt to it and restore a sense of agency while living meaningful lives in a changing world.

Author : Todd Dufresne
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 198 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2019-09-12
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780773559622

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The Democracy of Suffering by Todd Dufresne Pdf

In The Democracy of Suffering philosopher Todd Dufresne provides a strikingly original exploration of the past, present, and future of this epoch, the Anthropocene, demonstrating how the twin crises of reason and capital have dramatically remade the essential conditions for life itself. Images, cartoons, artworks, and quotes pulled from literary and popular culture supplement this engaging and unorthodox look into where we stand amidst the ravages of climate change and capitalist economics. With humour, passion, and erudition, Dufresne diagnoses a frightening new reality and proposes a way forward, arguing that our serial experiences of catastrophic climate change herald an intellectual and moral awakening - one that lays the groundwork, albeit at the last possible moment, for a future beyond individualism, hate, and greed. That future is unapologetically collective. It begins with a shift in human consciousness, with philosophy in its broadest sense, and extends to a reengagement with our greatest ideals of economic, social, and political justice for all. But this collective future, Dufresne argues, is either now or never. Uncovering how we got into this mess and how, if at all, we get out of it, The Democracy of Suffering is a flicker of light, or perhaps a scream, in the face of human extinction and the end of civilization.

Author : Rachel Matlow
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2020-03-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780735236318

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Dead Mom Walking by Rachel Matlow Pdf

NATIONAL BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize SHORTLISTED for the 2021 Vine Award in Non-Fiction "A comedy for catastrophic times." --CBC "A hilarious memoir of effervescent misadventures." --Toronto Star "How am I laughing at someone's mother's cancer? How? We think we can't laugh about death, about cancer, about our mothers and their suffering . . . and we can't, but we can. And there's so much relief in that." --Carolyn Taylor, BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW A whip-smart and darkly funny memoir about an unconventional family, the limits of wellness fads, and the mother of all catastrophes. Rachel Matlow’s eccentric mom, Elaine, never quite followed the script handed down to her. Her bold out-there-ness made it okay for Rachel to be their genderqueer self and live life on their own terms. But when Elaine decides to try to heal her cancer naturally, Rachel has to draw the line. What ensues is a tug of war between logical and magical thinking, an odyssey through New Age remedies ranging from herbal tinctures and juice cleanses to a countryside ayahuasca trip, and a portrait of a mother and child who’ve never been physically closer or ideologically further apart. In facing their inimitable mother’s death, Rachel has written a book bursting with life—the epic adventures and epic fails, the broken limbs and belly laughs. As hilarious as it is poignant, Dead Mom Walking is about writing the story of your life only to find out that life has other plans.

Author : Robert Muir-Wood
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2016-09-06
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780465096473

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The Cure for Catastrophe by Robert Muir-Wood Pdf

We can't stop natural disasters but we can stop them being disastrous. One of the world's foremost risk experts tells us how. Year after year, floods wreck people's homes and livelihoods, earthquakes tear communities apart, and tornadoes uproot whole towns. Natural disasters cause destruction and despair. But does it have to be this way? In The Cure for Catastrophe, global risk expert Robert Muir-Wood argues that our natural disasters are in fact human ones: We build in the wrong places and in the wrong way, putting brick buildings in earthquake country, timber ones in fire zones, and coastal cities in the paths of hurricanes. We then blindly trust our flood walls and disaster preparations, and when they fail, catastrophes become even more deadly. No society is immune to the twin dangers of complacency and heedless development. Recognizing how disasters are manufactured gives us the power to act. From the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 to Hurricane Katrina, The Cure for Catastrophe recounts the ingenious ways in which people have fought back against disaster. Muir-Wood shows the power and promise of new predictive technologies, and envisions a future where information and action come together to end the pain and destruction wrought by natural catastrophes. The decisions we make now can save millions of lives in the future. Buzzing with political plots, newfound technologies, and stories of surprising resilience, The Cure for Catastrophe will revolutionize the way we conceive of catastrophes: though natural disasters are inevitable, the death and destruction are optional. As we brace ourselves for deadlier cataclysms, the cure for catastrophe is in our hands.

Author : Vaclav Smil
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2012-09-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780262291620

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Global Catastrophes and Trends by Vaclav Smil Pdf

A wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at global changes that may occur over the next fifty years—whether sudden and cataclysmic world-changing events or gradually unfolding trends. Fundamental change occurs most often in one of two ways: as a “fatal discontinuity,” a sudden catastrophic event that is potentially world changing, or as a persistent, gradual trend. Global catastrophes include volcanic eruptions, viral pandemics, wars, and large-scale terrorist attacks; trends are demographic, environmental, economic, and political shifts that unfold over time. In this provocative book, scientist Vaclav Smil takes a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look at the catastrophes and trends the next fifty years may bring. Smil first looks at rare but cataclysmic events, both natural and human-produced, then at trends of global importance, including the transition from fossil fuels to other energy sources and growing economic and social inequality. He also considers environmental change—in some ways an amalgam of sudden discontinuities and gradual change—and assesses the often misunderstood complexities of global warming. Global Catastrophes and Trends does not come down on the side of either doom-and-gloom scenarios or techno-euphoria. Instead, Smil argues that understanding change will help us reverse negative trends and minimize the risk of catastrophe.

Author : Jonathan Franzen
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 80 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2021-01-21
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780008434052

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What If We Stopped Pretending? by Jonathan Franzen Pdf

The climate change is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

Author : Eve Darian-Smith
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2022-04-19
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781503631465

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Global Burning by Eve Darian-Smith Pdf

How extreme-right antidemocratic governments around the world are prioritizing profits over citizens, stoking catastrophic wildfires, and accelerating global climate change. Recent years have seen out-of-control wildfires rage across remote Brazilian rainforests, densely populated California coastlines, and major cities in Australia. What connects these separate events is more than immediate devastation and human loss of life. In Global Burning, Eve Darian-Smith contends that using fire as a symbolic and literal thread connecting different places around the world allows us to better understand the parallel, and related, trends of the growth of authoritarian politics and climate crises and their interconnected global consequences. Darian-Smith looks deeply into each of these three cases of catastrophic wildfires and finds key similarities in all of them. As political leaders and big business work together in the pursuit of profits and power, anti-environmentalism has become an essential political tool enabling the rise of extreme right governments and energizing their populist supporters. These are the governments that deny climate science, reject environmental protection laws, and foster exclusionary worldviews that exacerbate climate injustice. The fires in Australia, Brazil and the United States demand acknowledgment of the global systems of inequality that undergird them, connecting the political erosion of liberal democracy with the corrosion of the environment. Darian-Smith argues that these wildfires are closely linked through capitalism, colonialism, industrialization, and resource extraction. In thinking through wildfires as environmental and political phenomenon, Global Burning challenges readers to confront the interlocking powers that are ensuring our future ecological collapse.

Author : Paul Behrens
Publisher : Black Spot Books
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2020-09-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781911648109

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The Best of Times, The Worst of Times by Paul Behrens Pdf

A unique, highly readable approach to the environmental crisis, with alternating chapters outlining the effects on society if left unchecked, and the radical actions we can take to prevent it Now includes updated sections on COVID-19 and COP26 The environmental emergency is the greatest threat we face. Preventing it will require an unprecedented political and social response. And yet, there is still hope. Academic, physicist, environmental expert and award-winning science communicator Paul Behrens presents a radical analysis of a civilization on the brink of catastrophe. Setting out the pressing existential threats we face, he writes, in alternating chapters, of what the future could look like at its most pessimistic and hopeful. In lucid prose, Behrens argues that structural problems need structural solutions, and examines critical areas in which political will is required, including women's education, food and energy security, biodiversity and economics. The book was printed with two different jackets, to illustrate the unique duality of the author's approach.

Author : David Pogue
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
Page : 624 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2021-01-26
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781982134518

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How to Prepare for Climate Change by David Pogue Pdf

A practical and comprehensive guide to surviving the greatest disaster of our time, from New York Times bestselling self-help author and beloved CBS Sunday Morning science and technology correspondent David Pogue. You might not realize it, but we’re already living through the beginnings of climate chaos. In Arizona, laborers now start their day at 3 a.m. because it’s too hot to work past noon. Chinese investors are snapping up real estate in Canada. Millennials have evacuation plans. Moguls are building bunkers. Retirees in Miami are moving inland. In How to Prepare for Climate Change, bestselling self-help author David Pogue offers sensible, deeply researched advice for how the rest of us should start to ready ourselves for the years ahead. Pogue walks readers through what to grow, what to eat, how to build, how to insure, where to invest, how to prepare your children and pets, and even where to consider relocating when the time comes. (Two areas of the country, in particular, have the requisite cool temperatures, good hospitals, reliable access to water, and resilient infrastructure to serve as climate havens in the years ahead.) He also provides wise tips for managing your anxiety, as well as action plans for riding out every climate catastrophe, from superstorms and wildfires to ticks and epidemics. Timely and enlightening, How to Prepare for Climate Change is an indispensable guide for anyone who read The Uninhabitable Earth or The Sixth Extinction and wants to know how to make smart choices for the upheaval ahead.

Author : Bryan Walsh
Publisher : Hachette Books
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2019-08-27
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780316449601

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End Times by Bryan Walsh Pdf

In this history of extinction and existential risk, a Newsweek and Bloomberg popular science and investigative journalist examines our most dangerous mistakes -- and explores how we can protect and future-proof our civilization. End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable -- and inevitable -- end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race. In End Times, Walsh examines threats that emerge from nature and those of our own making: asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, disease pandemics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Walsh details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves, all pulled from his rigorous and deeply thoughtful reporting and research. Walsh goes into the room with the men and women whose job it is to imagine the unimaginable. He includes interviews with those on the front lines of prevention, actively working to head off existential threats in biotechnology labs and government hubs. Guided by Walsh's evocative, page-turning prose, we follow scientific stars like the asteroid hunters at NASA and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus. Walsh explores the danger of apocalypse in all forms. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.

Author : David Wallace-Wells
Publisher : Tim Duggan Books
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2019-02-19
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780525576723

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The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells Pdf

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books