Reimagining Climate Change

Paul Wapner is Professor of Global Environmental Politics in the School of International Service at American University, USA.Hilal Elver is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and Global Distinguished Fellow at the UCLA School of Law Resnick Food Law and Policy Program, USA.

The introductory chapter by Wapner (global environmental politics, American Univ.), who is also one of the publication’s editors, illustrates that he is a wickedly skilled writer. He wastes no time sticking it to what he calls “Climate Inc.,” i.e., the “well-meaning people, organizations, and governments” who currently address global climate change. He rhetorically questions what humans have to demonstrate for environmental change efforts over the last few decades. Wapner answers that when the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, humans discharged around 24 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Now, this has amplified to 36 billion tons, which he links to an 0.8 degree Celsius increase in temperature since the 18th century. The book’s thesis is that existing environmental approaches are hopelessly inadequate. Climate change requires a complete “envisaging and reformulating [of] first principles.” The problem this reviewer finds is that with the exception of a chapter on climate change in the Arabian Peninsula, the volume’s nine authors sail off into the leftist intellectual stratosphere, dismissing geoengineering, dissolving national borders, and reordering all societal operations along lines of climate justice. How to accomplish goals is hardly hinted at. However, the chapters do offer well-informed references to radical climate policy movements.--F. T. Manheim, George Mason University, February 2017 issue of CHOICE

• 1. Introduction: Reimagining Climate Change 2. The Sociological Imagination of Climate Futures 3. Climate Security in the Anthropocene: ‘Scaling up’ the Human Niche 4. Climate Change, Policy Knowledge, and the Temporal Imagination 5. Modernity on Steroids: The Promise and Perils of Climate Protection in the Arabian Peninsula 6. Overcoming Food Insecurities in an Era of Climate Change 7. Reimagining Climate Engineering: The Politics of Tinkering with the Sky 8. Climate of the Poor: Suffering and the Moral Imperative to Reimagine Resilience 9. Re-Imagining Radical Climate Justice 10. The Promise of Climate Fiction: Imagination, Story Telling, and the Politics of the Future