2023 and 2024 are probably the warmest years humans have ever experienced. We are changing the Earth's climate in ways that are dangerous for all living beings. Social scientists are responsible for understanding how humans organise their lives. But they have had relatively little to say about climate change. This is even though everything they study and teach will inevitably be negatively affected by climate change. This text is avowedly unorthodox, a tool for students and a concerned public It mixes fact, fiction and prediction to locate climate change at the centre of understanding future social change. A scenario is created where humans survive by ditching both their toxic identity politics and their unsustainable consumption economics. The inherent empathy of most people triumphs in a struggle to make a new kind of civilization.
Arvustused
'Have you ever wondered why we so often treat people and the planet so badly? If so, this book will blow your mind and greatly expand your imagination.'Danny DorlingHalford Mackinder Professor of Geography, Oxford University'Throughout his long and distinguished career, Peter Taylor has always pushed the frontiers of Political Geography. In this book he literally pushes it to the ends of the Earth, and to the end of the world as we know it. But what is so brilliant about this book is how it creatively tells a counter-factual history of modernity centred on African states as the founders of the capitalist world economy. This fictional alternative history is thought provoking and great fun to read. It also vividly conveys how earth shattering the rule of the modern humans, one faction of our species, has been for the planet.'Gerard ToalProfessor in the School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech
Peter J. Taylor is the author of several hundred publications including 170 articles in peer-reviewed journals, mainly concerning Geography and Urban Studies but also including Political Science, Sociology, History, Planning and Economic Development. In addition, he has written 25 books, edited 16 books, and contributed 136 book chapters. Now retired, he has spent most of his career in British universities but has held visiting positions in US universities, in Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, France, and has been an advisor to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a consultant on the International Economic Consultation Commission of the Mayor of Jinan (China). He was a member of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Future of the Social Sciences (1993-96, Lisbon) and is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by Ghent University, Belgium, and Oulu University, Finland, and has been awarded 'Honors' by the Association of American Geographers.
