Product Description

"A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era. I urge everyone to read it."
Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America

Climate change differs from any other problem that, as collective humanity, we face today. If it goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people, and for many policy–makers too, it tends to be a "back of the mind" issue. We recognise its importance and even its urgency, but for the most part it is swamped by more immediate concerns. Politicians have woken up to the dangers, but at the moment their responses are mainly on the level of gesture rather than being, as they have to be, both concrete and radical.

Political action and intervention, on local, national and international levels, is going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming, as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. At the moment, however, Anthony Giddens argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics as usual won′t allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. Giddens introduces a range of new concepts and proposals to fill in the gap, and examines in depth the connections between climate change and energy security.

This book is likely to become a classic in the field. It will be of appeal to everyone concerned about how we can cope with what amounts to a crisis for our civilisation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15509 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"Giddens′ is a simple message, argued with great clarity and power, that brings a new dimension to the debate."
Book of the week in the Times Higher Education

"As well as providing a useful summary of a number of current debates in climate change policy – from the robustness of carbon markets and green taxes through to the role of government in fostering new technological solutions – Giddens makes a powerful contribution to the emerging debate."
Progress

"The Politics of Climate Change stands out in the crowded terrain of climate change publications by placing politics – rather than science or economics – at the center of the analysis ... there is much to recommend this book. It is up to date, with discussions of the recent global financial crisis and the change of leadership in the US. It takes a multilevel governance perspective on climate change governance and attempts to think about how the various components relate to one another. The book is accessible for the nonspecialist, making it appropriate for use in the classroom."
Environment and Planning C

"How do you create, maintain and renew majorities that encourage people, organisations and institutions to behave responsibly and well, especially when they have become accustomed to behaving irresponsibly and badly? This key question ... underlies everything in Anthony Giddens′ important new book, The Politics of Climate Change. Giddens is clear that politicians make things worse by the tactic – much used by Brown in the economic field too – of simultaneously dramatising the threat and then pretending to have the unique measure of it, as the G20 may show."
Martin Kettle, The Guardian

"In challenging the standard criteria used by policy–makers to think about climate change, and by offering an alternative set, Giddens shows how a real national and European debate can finally occupy the political foreground."
Times of Malta

"The prospect of disruptive climate change should be high on the international agenda: it raises issues of politics, economics and equity that are even more complex than the science. This balanced and comprehensive assessment by a distinguished author should be widely read by politicians and policymakers."
Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge

"An incisive and highly original contribution."
Ulrich Beck, University of Munich

From the Back Cover
"A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era. I urge everyone to read it."
Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America

Climate change differs from any other problem that, as collective humanity, we face today. If it goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people, and for many policy–makers too, it tends to be a "back of the mind" issue. We recognise its importance and even its urgency, but for the most part it is swamped by more immediate concerns. Politicians have woken up to the dangers, but at the moment their responses are mainly on the level of gesture rather than being, as they have to be, both concrete and radical.

Political action and intervention, on local, national and international levels, is going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming, as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. At the moment, however, Anthony Giddens argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics as usual won′t allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. Giddens introduces a range of new concepts and proposals to fill in the gap, and examines in depth the connections between climate change and energy security.

This book is likely to become a classic in the field. It will be of appeal to everyone concerned about how we can cope with what amounts to a crisis for our civilisation.

About the Author
Anthony Giddens is the former director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is now a member of the House of Lords. His many books include The Third Way and Europe in the Global Age.

Customer Reviews

The politics of climate change
There are some central ideas that are held to throughout this book and one of them concerns the interlinked possibilities of working towards solutions in the energy crisis and climate change concerns. There is no hype and the clarity in technical explanations match the fluidity in political analysis. Some of the attacks on ideas and idealists (those with other discourses) are belligerent and scathing but perhaps that's what happens to a highly respected sociologist that's become a Lord in the British Political system. While I am of the deep green and left persuasion I nevertheless respected the approach in this book. I am tired of 'awareness raising' and attempts to frighten people into action. There are some well-reasoned and measured suggestions and ideas in this book. It is very readable.

The politics of climate change
Giddens provides a sound and dependable analysis of the problems associated with containing climate change; he writes from the perspective of the centre-left and advocates a greater role for the state in the planning for adaptation and mitigation required as a consequence of climate change. Giddens proposes a mixed economy solution for problems of inadequately regulated markets; problems made by the Global North and paid for by the people of the Global South. The message is Darwinist; we must adapt to a sustainable low-carbon economy for our survival; time is running out, short-termism within our political cycle is a hindrance, as is the lack of co-operation at international negotiations. No matter which way, we are going to pay. The more we dither, the more limited are the choices and the greater will be the final bill in terms of the money we must invest and in the terms of the lives expended in the struggle against the changes which we continue to impose upon our world.