Reimagining Climate Change

This edited collection questions established categories, routines, and practices that presently constitute accepted solutions to tackling climate change-a regime the authors call, 'Climate, Inc.'-and offers alternative routes forward. Over the course of the chapters, the authors question the understanding that the most important and promising sphere of climate protection resides at the international level (in the form of negotiations between sovereign states). Recognizing that states are incapable of advancing significant climate measures, the authors explore the promise of non-state forms of political activity. Specifically, they probe the meaning and effectiveness of climate protection 'from below'-forms of community and practice that are emerging in various locales around the world and that hold promise for greater collective resonance. They also question climate protection 'from above' in the form of industrial and modernist orientations and examine large-scale agribusinesses, as well as criticising the concept of resilience as it is presently being promoted as a response to climate change. Reimagining Climate Change steps back from the solution-sets societies are pursuing and demonstrates that such answers are strictures limiting, rather than advancing, promising climate alternatives. Key to the enterprise is unleashing the political imagination: the ability to grasp a larger arc of collective experience and interpret its meaning for the choices we face. This involves disciplined inspiration, creativity, and ingenuity that can help us cognitively and emotionally enter into alternative futures. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, global environmental politics and environmental studies in general.