Description:
Climate Chaos argues powerfully that unless global citizens come together to change the infrastructure and value system of capitalist greed and consumption, human society will not survive past this century.
Review Quotes:
Climate Chaos and Its Origins in Slavery and Capitalism situates the human contribution to our current climate crisis in a centuries long process of capitalist commodification and institutional development that has on balance degraded and exploited humans and the planet. Just when the U.S Department of State is withdrawing its commitment to international cooperation and transnational problem-solving - abandoning the Paris Climate Treaty, the Human Rights Commission, and the World Health Organization -- narrowing what counts as human rights, and re-narrating American history to reinforce a culture of individualism and American exceptionalism, Judith and Reva Blau offer us a powerful and timely alternative diagnosis and vision for addressing the decline of human civilization and the planet that it depends on for survival. This mother and daughter team marshal and eloquently present ample evidence to clarify the urgency of the challenge we now face, and persuasively explain not only why market solutions are futile, but also why the strengths of liberalism (diversity, democracy, and expertise) are not enough. Any viable path for navigating this climate chaos, they contend, also will have to transcend the culture of individualism and human-centered understandings of our relationship to Earth and the non-human life and systems with whom we share it. - John G. Dale, Associate Professor, George Mason University