SOCIETY AND CLIMATE: TRANSFORMATIONS AND CHALLENGES

Climate has for a long time been a taken-for-granted background against which social, political and economic interactions have taken place. But this taken-for-granted background is cleaving. It is becoming hard to ignore the potential repercussions of a changing climate, and the uneven impact of certain forms of human society and energy cultures that risk undermining their own environmental conditions.In a comprehensive and accessible way, this book: Provides a broad account of the various conceptions and constructions of climate and its shifting interconnections with society, science and politics;Incorporates both natural and social scientific perspectives;Situates contemporary climate change research in an historical context;Drawing on the insights of various disciplines and citing numerous examples, Society and Climate probes the interplay between society, science and climate, and warns against making any easy assumptions.