Description: This book by two leading scholars offers the first systematic analysis of the relationship between globalization and the environment from the early Modern period to the present. Peter Christoff and Robyn Eckersley disentangle and clarify the relationship between the processes ...
Review Quotes: Noted environmental politics scholars Christoff and Eckersley seek to investigate the 'claims and counter-claims' associated with the effects of the globalization of trade, production, and consumption on the intensification of climate change. The authors draw on many sources, ranging from intellectual history and social science to the history of global climate change and international policy debates. They compare human developments in the past century with 'a snake swallowing its own tail.' But they warn against narrowly conceived policies. They recognize William McKibben's The End of Nature as an eloquent first book on climate change for laypersons. But McKibben's vision of 'wilderness' is countered with critiques that such views are romantic 'Western' notions that ignore the various ways that humans have changed along with nature. The authors state that agreements by 'sovereign states based on exclusive territorial rule' are ill suited for managing a global problem. One approach they favor is international environmental governance, described as a web of understandings and practices that 'shape, and are shaped by, society and the economy.' The writing is skilled but includes conceptual complexity potentially difficult for undergraduates or nonprofessionals. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers/faculty, and professionals.