Hopeful Realism: A Climate Manifesto

Description

With scant progress and too much regress, significant climate action is failing to materialize as tipping points toward climate and ecological collapse rapidly approach. Why has the political discourse on climate soured as carbon emissions continue to accelerate, weather events become more life threatening, and as economies continue to grow yet weaken? What can we do to stem the tide of Earth System chaos?

The answers to these urgent questions are both simple and complex. This book explains the basic framework for creating new and effective ways to overcome the global predicament we cannot avoid. We have no time to debate with ideological science deniers now. The best time for climate action was decades ago when climate scientists like James Hansen warned us of the emerging climate crisis; the second best time for global climate action is right now.

Despite making “green” promises and setting abstract future targets, all major institutions operationally ignore the climate crisis, even as some admit there is a problem. The purpose of this Climate Manifesto is to point out why these far-reaching changes in our environment now require us to take drastic steps, not just as individuals but also as whole societies. This Climate Manifesto expresses hopeful realism at the end of the industrial era by explaining what we must do, and how to do it.