The Apocalyptic Dimensions of Climate Change

The Apocalyptic Dimensions of Climate Change
Author: Jan Alber
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110730286

Climate change and the apocalypse are frequently associated in the popular imagination of the twenty-first century. This collection of essays brings together climatologists, theologians, historians, literary scholars, and philosophers to address and critically assess this association. The contributing authors are concerned, among other things, with the relation between cultural and scientific discourses on climate change; the role of apocalyptic images and narratives in representing environmental issues; and the tension between reality and fiction in apocalyptic representations of catastrophes. By focusing on how figures in fictional texts interact with their environment and deal with the consequences of climate change, this volume foregrounds the broader social and cultural function of apocalyptic narratives of climate change. By evoking a sense of collective human destiny in the face of the ultimate catastrophe, apocalyptic narratives have both cautionary and inspirational functions. Determining the extent to which such narratives square with scientific knowledge of climate change is one of the main aims of this book.

The Apocalyptic Dimensions of Climate Change

The Apocalyptic Dimensions of Climate Change
Author: Jan Alber
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110730200

Climate change and the apocalypse are frequently associated in the popular imagination of the twenty-first century. This collection of essays brings together climatologists, theologians, historians, literary scholars, and philosophers to address and critically assess this association. The contributing authors are concerned, among other things, with the relation between cultural and scientific discourses on climate change; the role of apocalyptic images and narratives in representing environmental issues; and the tension between reality and fiction in apocalyptic representations of catastrophes. By focusing on how figures in fictional texts interact with their environment and deal with the consequences of climate change, this volume foregrounds the broader social and cultural function of apocalyptic narratives of climate change. By evoking a sense of collective human destiny in the face of the ultimate catastrophe, apocalyptic narratives have both cautionary and inspirational functions. Determining the extent to which such narratives square with scientific knowledge of climate change is one of the main aims of this book.

Future Ethics

Future Ethics
Author: Stefan Skrimshire
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2010-08-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441189564

Future Ethics: Climate Change and Political Action presents a comprehensive examination of the philosophical questions facing activists, policy makers and educators fighting the causes of climate change. These questions reflect a genuine crisis in ethical reflection for individuals and groups in today's society and are also underpinned by a broader question of how the future forms the basis for action in the present. For instance, does the reporting of impending 'points of no return' in global warming renew a spirit of resistance or a spirit of fatalism? How is the future of the human species really imagined in society and how does this affect our sense of ethical responsibility? In this fascinating book, thirteen leading experts explore the philosophical and ethical issues underlying social responses to climate change and in particular how these responses draw upon ideas about the future. Ideal for students of environmental ethics in multiple disciplines, the book provides sources and discussion for anyone interested in issues to do with environment, society and ethics.

Discourses of Global Climate Change

Discourses of Global Climate Change
Author: Jonas Anshelm
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317671066

This book examines the arguments made by political actors in the creation of antagonistic discourses on climate change. Using in-depth empirical research from Sweden, a country considered by the international political community to be a frontrunner in tackling climate change, it draws out lessons that contribute to the worldwide environmental debate. The book identifies and analyses four globally circulated discourses that call for very different action to be taken to achieve sustainability: Industrial fatalism, Green Keynesianism, Eco-socialism and Climate scepticism. Drawing on risk society and post-political theory, it elaborates concepts such as industrial modern masculinity and ecomodern utopia, exploring how it is possible to reconcile apocalyptic framing to the dominant discourse of political conservatism. This highly original and detailed study focuses on opinion leaders and the way discourses are framed in the climate change debate, making it valuable reading for students and scholars of environmental communication and media, global environmental policy, energy research and sustainability.

Apocalypse Never

Apocalypse Never
Author: Michael Shellenberger
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0063001705

Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

The Environmental Apocalypse

The Environmental Apocalypse
Author: Jakub Kowalewski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2022-11-16
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1000779874

This volume brings together scholars working in diverse traditions of the humanities in order to offer a comprehensive analysis of the environmental catastrophe as the modern-day apocalypse. Drawing on philosophy, theology, history, literature, art history, psychoanalysis, as well as queer and decolonial theories, the authors included in this book expound the meaning of the climate apocalypse, reveal its presence in our everyday experiences, and examine its impact on our intellectual, imaginative, and moral practices. Importantly, the chapters show that eco-apocalypticism can inform progressively transformative discourses about climate change. In so doing, they demonstrate the fruitfulness of understanding the environmental catastrophe from within an apocalyptic framework, carving a much-needed path between two unsatisfactory approaches to the climate disaster: first, the conservative impulse to preserve the status quo responsible for today’s crisis, and second, the reckless acceptance of the destructive effects of climate change. This book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in the contributions of both apocalypticism and the humanities to contemporary ecological debates.

False Alarm

False Alarm
Author: Bjorn Lomborg
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1541647483

An “essential” (Times UK) and “meticulously researched” (Forbes) book by “the skeptical environmentalist” argues that panic over climate change is causing more harm than good Hurricanes batter our coasts. Wildfires rage across the American West. Glaciers collapse in the Artic. Politicians, activists, and the media espouse a common message: climate change is destroying the planet, and we must take drastic action immediately to stop it. Children panic about their future, and adults wonder if it is even ethical to bring new life into the world. Enough, argues bestselling author Bjorn Lomborg. Climate change is real, but it's not the apocalyptic threat that we've been told it is. Projections of Earth's imminent demise are based on bad science and even worse economics. In panic, world leaders have committed to wildly expensive but largely ineffective policies that hamper growth and crowd out more pressing investments in human capital, from immunization to education. False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong -- and points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.

Environmental Apocalypse in Science and Art

Environmental Apocalypse in Science and Art
Author: Sergio Fava
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2013-01-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136208933

At a time when it is clear that climate change adaptation and mitigation are failing, this book examines how our assumptions about (valid and usable) knowledge are preventing effective climate action. Through a cross-disciplinary, empirically-based analysis of climate science and policy, the book situates the failures of climate policy in the cultural history of prediction and its interfaces with policy. Fava calls into question the current interfaces between scientific research and climate policy by tracing multiple connections between modelling, epistemology, politics, food security, religion, art, and the apocalyptic. Demonstrating how the current domination of climate policy by models and scenarios is part of the problem, the book examines how artistic practices are a critical location to ask questions differently, rethink environmental futures, and activate social change. The analysis starts with another moment of climatic change in recent western history: the overlap of the Little Ice Age and the "scientific revolution," during which intense climatic, scientific and political change were contemporary with mathematical calculation of the apocalypse. Dealing with the need for complex answers to complex and urgent questions, this is essential reading for those interested in climate action, interdisciplinary research and methodological innovation. The empirical analyses amount to a methodological experiment, across history of science, theology, art theory and history, architecture, future studies, climatology, computer modelling, and agricultural policy. This book is a major contribution to understanding how we are precluding effective climate action, and designing futures that resemble our worst nightmares.

Defiant Earth

Defiant Earth
Author: Clive Hamilton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1509519785

Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'. The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself. What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment – even to the point of geoengineering – is now impossible because we have rendered the Earth more unpredictable and less controllable, a disobedient planet. At the same time, all attempts by progressives to cut humans down to size by attacking anthropocentrism come up against the insurmountable fact that human beings now possess enough power to change the Earth's course. It's too late to turn back the geological clock, and there is no going back to premodern ways of thinking. We must face the fact that humans are at the centre of the world, even if we must give the idea that we can control the planet. These truths call for a new kind of anthropocentrism, a philosophy by which we might use our power responsibly and find a way to live on a defiant Earth.

Summary & Analysis of Apocalypse Never

Summary & Analysis of Apocalypse Never
Author: SNAP Summaries
Publisher: ZIP Reads
Total Pages: 36
Release:
Genre: Nature
ISBN:

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary and analysis of the book and not the original book. SNAP Summaries is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way. If you are the author, publisher, or representative of the original work, please contact info[at]snapsummaries[dot]com with any questions or concerns. If you'd like to purchase the original book, please paste this link in your browser: https://amzn.to/3jEcpI7 In Apocalypse Never, environmental journalist and activist Michael Shellenberger challenges claims of an imminent climate catastrophe and offers practical solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems today. What does this SNAP Summary Include? - Synopsis of the original book - Key takeaways from each chapter - Why current climate trends give us more reason to be hopeful than fearful - How economic growth and other counterintuitive solutions are the key to saving Earth - Editorial Review - Background on Michael Shellenberger About the Original Book: A lot of what the media and environmental activists tell us about climate and the environment, Shellenberger contends, is grossly exaggerated and in desperate need of being corrected. Global warming is not going to cause an apocalypse in 2030 or any other year, plastics are not that bad, and renewable energy is not really cheaper or better for the environment. Drawing from the latest scientific studies and his experiences travelling the world and researching environmental issues, Shellenberger sets the record straight and explains how accelerating technological advances and economic growth is the key to halting and reversing adverse climate and environmental trends. DISCLAIMER: This book is intended as a companion to, not a replacement for, Apocalypse Never. SNAP Summaries is wholly responsible for this content and is not associated with the original author in any way. If you are the author, publisher, or representative of the original work, please contact info[at]snapsummaries.com with any questions or concerns. Please follow this link: https://amzn.to/3jEcpI7 to purchase a copy of the original book.