1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910824367203321

Autore

Oreskes Naomi

Titolo

The collapse of western civilization : a view from the future / / Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, New York : , : Columbia University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-231-53795-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (105 p.)

Disciplina

909/.09821

Soggetti

Civilization, Western - Forecasting

Civilization, Western - 21st century

Science and civilization

Progress - Forecasting

Twenty-first century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. The Coming of the Penumbral Age -- 2. The Frenzy of Fossil Fuels -- 3. Market Failure -- Epilogue -- Lexicon of Archaic Terms -- Interview with the Authors -- Notes -- About the Authors

Sommario/riassunto

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought and-finally-the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093, when the disintegration of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet led to mass migration and a complete reshuffling of the global order. Writing from the Second People's Republic of China on the 300th anniversary of the Great Collapse, a senior scholar presents a gripping and deeply disturbing account of how the children of the Enlightenment-the political and economic elites of the so-called advanced industrial societies-failed to act, and so brought about the collapse of Western civilization. In this haunting, provocative work of science-based fiction, Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book



reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called "carbon combustion complex" that have turned the practice of science into political fodder. Based on sound scholarship and yet unafraid to speak boldly, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature.