How Everything Can Collapse

Author: Pablo Servigne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509541403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 142

Book Description
What if our civilization were to collapse? Not many centuries into the future, but in our own lifetimes? Most people recognize that we face huge challenges today, from climate change and its potentially catastrophic consequences to a plethora of socio-political problems, but we find it hard to face up to the very real possibility that these crises could produce a collapse of our entire civilization. Yet we now have a great deal of evidence to suggest that we are up against growing systemic instabilities that pose a serious threat to the capacity of human populations to maintain themselves in a sustainable environment. In this important book, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens confront these issues head-on. They examine the scientific evidence and show how its findings, often presented in a detached and abstract way, are connected to people’s ordinary experiences – joining the dots, as it were, between the Anthropocene and our everyday lives. In so doing they provide a valuable guide that will help everyone make sense of the new and potentially catastrophic situation in which we now find ourselves. Today, utopia has changed sides: it is the utopians who believe that everything can continue as before, while realists put their energy into making a transition and building local resilience. Collapse is the horizon of our generation. But collapse is not the end – it’s the beginning of our future. We will reinvent new ways of living in the world and being attentive to ourselves, to other human beings and to all our fellow creatures.

Another End of the World is Possible

Author: Pablo Servigne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509544674
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
The critical situation in which our planet finds itself is no longer in doubt. Some things are already collapsing while others are beginning to do so, increasing the possibility of a global catastrophe that would mean the end of the world as we know it. As individuals, we are faced with a daily deluge of bad news about the worsening situation, preparing ourselves to live with years of deep uncertainty about the future of the planet and the species that inhabit it, including our own. How can we cope? How can we project ourselves beyond the present, think bigger and find ways not just to survive the collapse but to live it? In this book, the sequel to How Everything Can Collapse, the authors show that a change of course necessarily requires an inner journey and a radical rethinking of our vision of the world. Together these might enable us to remain standing during the coming storm, to develop a new awareness of ourselves and of the world and to imagine new ways of living in it. Perhaps then it will be possible to regenerate life from the ruins, creating new alliances in differing directions – with ourselves and our inner nature, between humans, with other living beings and with the earth on which we dwell.

The Knowledge

Author: Lewis Dartnell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143127047
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
How would you go about rebuilding a technological society from scratch? If our technological society collapsed tomorrow what would be the one book you would want to press into the hands of the postapocalyptic survivors? What crucial knowledge would they need to survive in the immediate aftermath and to rebuild civilization as quickly as possible? Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself? Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.

X-Events

Author: John L. Casti
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062088300
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Book Description
A necessary and thought-provoking read for the age of coronavirus, exploring eleven scenarios that may trigger the collapse of the modern world — from pandemics to nuclear apocalypse to robot uprisings — and what we can do to prevent and survive them. In the twenty first century, our world has become impossibly complicated, relying on ever more advanced technology that is developing at an exponential rate. Yet it is a fact of mathematical life that higher and higher levels of complexity lead to systems that are increasingly fragile and susceptible to sudden, spectacular collapse. In this highly provocative and grippingly readable book, John Casti brilliantly argues that today’s advanced, overly complex societies have grown highly vulnerable to extreme events that will ultimately topple civilization like a house of cards. Like Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan meets Jared Diamond’s Collapse, Casti’s book provides a much-needed wake-up call, sounding a fascinating and frightening warning about civilized society’s inability to recover from a global catastrophe. An eye-opening and necessary read, X-Events is a shocking look at a world teetering on the brink of collapse, and a population under constant threat from pandemic viruses, worldwide communication breakdowns, nuclear winter, or any number of unforeseeable “X-Events.” Fascinating and chilling, X-Events provides a provocative tour of the catastrophic outlier scenarios that could quickly send us crashing back to the preindustrial age – and shows that they may not be as far-fetched as they seem.

SUMMARY - How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual For Our Times By Pablo Servigne And Raphaël Stevens

Author: Shortcut Edition
Publisher: Shortcut Edition
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 34

Book Description
* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. By reading this summary, you will discover from which angle collapsology views current crises. You will also discover : that environmental, social, geopolitical, economic, climatic and energy problems are connected to each other; how energy is at the heart of all problems; how the finance-energy system increases the risk of collapse; how globalization has created complex but very fragile systems; the mechanisms that lead to collapse; how humans perceive the concept of collapse. Humans have entered the era where their actions are changing the Earth system. Many predict the end of industrial societies if humans continue to disrupt these ecosystems. Thus, the debate on collapse is today dominated by two extremes: apocalyptic discourses and those of denial. Collapsology puts the issue of collapse back at the center, by dealing with all aspects of this systemic phenomenon closely linked to humans. Collapse seems inevitable. How to apprehend it? *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!

The North Atlantic Polar Triangle

Author: Matthew Bampton
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031272641
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Book Description
This book explores the broad trajectory of the Holocene epoch in a region defined as the North Atlantic Polar Triangle (NAPT). The text is multi-disciplinary and synthetic, and focuses on the area extending from the North Pole to the Equator, and covers 60 degrees of longitude, encompassing the entire North Atlantic and significant parts of the land-masses that surround it. It discusses the physical, ecological and cultural history of the NAPT and its bordering regions after the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. It outlines the long-term changing relationships between environmental processes and humans within this single space, providing insight into the broader and more complex interactions happening globally. The author proposes, on the basis of the changes that can be documented in the NAPT, probable trajectories of change in other equally complex but less well-documented, and less geographically constrained Earth systems. It contributes to the ongoing discussion of human transformation of the world, and the current debate about the designation of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. It concludes by supporting the proposition that the Anthropocene is best understood as a boundary event, marking the upper limit of the Holocene, rather than as a new epoch. The intended audience includes physical geographers, anthropologists and readers exploring the synthetic analyses of the crisis humans currently confront as the world enters a period of extraordinary change

The Politics of Deep Time

Author: Frederic Hanusch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108944566
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 111

Book Description
Human societies increasingly interact with processes on a geological or even cosmic timescale. Despite this recognition, we still lack a basic understanding of these interconnections and how they translate into politics. This Element provides an exploration and systematization of 'the politics of deep time' as a novel lens of planetary politics in three steps. First, it demonstrates why deep-time interactions render the politics of deep time essential; second, it asks how deep time should be politicized and third, it explicates the politics of deep time by examining representative cases. The Element also formulates a conceptual framework to open up possibilities for alliances that seek to better understand and realize the politics of deep time, pioneering a debate on how planetary temporalities can be politically institutionalized. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Homo Numericus

Author: Daniel Cohen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150956022X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Book Description
From Amazon to Tinder, from Google to Deliveroo, there is no facet of human life which the digital revolution has not streamlined and dematerialised. Its objective was to reduce the cost of physical interactions by forgoing face-to-face interactions, a direct result of the free-market shock of the 1980s, which sought to seamlessly expand the marketplace in every possible dimension. Today, we can be algorithmically entertained, educated, cared for and courted in a way which was impossible in the old industrial society, where institutions structured the social world. Today, these institutions have been replaced by monetised virtual contact. As with the industrial revolution of the past, the digital revolution is creating a new economy and a new sensibility, bringing about a radical revaluation of society and its representations. While obsessed with the search for an efficient management of human relations, the new digital capitalism gives rise to an irrational and impulsive Homo numericus prone to an array of addictive behaviours. Far from producing a new agora, social media produce a radicalization of public debate in which hate-filled speech directed against adversaries becomes the norm. The good news is that these outcomes are not inevitable. Technologies have not taken control of our lives. The digital revolution also offers an alternative path: one that leads to a world in which every word deserves to be listened to, without a transcendent truth hanging over it. Are we able to seize the new opportunities opened up by the digital revolution without succumbing to its dark side?

The Liminal Loop

Author: Timothy L. Carson
Publisher: Lutterworth Press
ISBN: 0718848446
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
Recent and current crises in health, ecology, society and spirituality have lent the whole arena of liminality a new urgency and relevancy. Those who traverse the great transitions are rediscovering new ways of interpreting life through the liminal lens, a way to make sense of the great voluntary and unchosen transitions that characterize modern life. This anthology provides a unique overview of liminality as it gathers a diverse coterie of authors, disciplines, and contexts to explore its many facets. Distinct in its interdisciplinary approach, The Liminal Loop serves as an important source book for general readers, teachers, students, artists, counselors, spiritual guides, and social transformers. From liminal poetry and musical traditions to the strange vertical world of the rock climber, The Liminal Loop explores the swirling chaos on the other side of critical thresholds and suggests a pathway through the daunting middle passages of the in-between. With what can only be described as courage, the many authors of this collection dare to look uncertainty in the eye, knowing that this is a necessary journey, and that it is better to travel with a common band of pilgrims than to go it alone.

The Palgrave Handbook of Environmental Politics and Theory

Author: Joel Jay Kassiola
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031143469
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 722

Book Description
This Handbook aims to provide a unique and convenient one-volume reference work, exhibiting the latest interdisciplinary explorations in this urgently burgeoning field of intellectual and practical importance. Due to its immense range and diversity, environmental politics and theory necessarily encompasses: empirical, normative, policy, political, organizational, and activist discussions unfolding across many disciplines. It is a challenge for its practitioners, let alone newcomers, to keep informed about the ongoing developments in this fast-changing area of study and to comprehend all of their implications. Through the planned volume’s extensive scope of contributions emphasizing environmental policy issues, normative prescriptions, and implementation strategies, the next generation of thinkers and activists will have very useful profiles of the theories, concepts, organizations, and movements central to environmental politics and theory. It is the editors’ aspiration that this volume will become a go-to resource on the myriad perspectives relevant to studying and improving the environment for advanced researchers as well as an introduction to new students seeking to understand the basic foundations and recommended resolutions to many of our environmental challenges. Environmental politics is more than theory alone, so the Handbook also considers theory-action connections by highlighting the past and current: thinkers, activists, social organizations, and movements that have worked to guide contemporary societies toward a more environmentally sustainable and just global order. Chapter “Eco-Anxiety and the Responses of Ecological Citizenship and Mindfulness” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.