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Deep Crisis: Deep Adaptation
Whereas there was a period at the start of the year where some ‘climate experts’ were criticising some of us for discussing how to prepare for or soften potential societal breakdown due to environmental strains, the return of rapid rises in carbon emissions after last year’s Covid stutter means that more scientists are beginning to consider the implications of a failure to meet climate targets. That painful reflection is still mostly done in private. With this book we are helping them explore what it could mean to prepare for failure. As we begin to emerge from a dark period of history dominated by the devastating Covid pandemic, many of us…
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Deep Adaptation: Navitgating the Realities of Climate Chaos
Deep Adaptation is an edited collection co-authored by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read. It is published by Polity. ‘Deep adaptation’ refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives. They do not assume that our…
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This Civilisation is Finished: Conversations on the end of Empire – and what lies beyond
This Civilisation is Finished is a book co-authored by Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander. It is published by the Simplicity Institute. Industrial civilisation has no future. It requires limitless economic growth on a finite planet. The reckless combustion of fossil fuels means that Earth’s climate is changing disastrously, in ways that cannot be resolved by piecemeal reform or technological innovation. Sooner rather than later this global capitalist system will come to an end, destroyed by its own ecological contradictions. Unless humanity does something beautiful and unprecedented, the ending of industrial civilisation will take the form of collapse, which could mean a harrowing die-off of billions of people. This book is…
