City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

A user's guide to the crisis of civilization and how to save it, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrationsmaps

index present

non fiction

A user's guide to the crisis of civilization and how to save it

bibliography

555653994

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

If you want to understand why the world is coming apart at the seams and what we can do to lay the foundations for a peaceful and sustainable society, read this book. Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute and author of The Party's Over (2005) --This important analysis exposes vital truths and challenges much conventional wisdom. It deserves to be widely read. Mark Curtis, Honorary Research Fellow, Strathclyde University and author of Web of Deceit (2003) --The first book to systematically explore [the interconnections between]climate change, peak oil, the cost of food and overpopulation, the global financial crisis, the rise of violent extremism, and the containment of the so-called `war on terror'. ...A very worthwhile read for policy-makers everywhere. RT. Hon. Michael Meacher Mp, former Uk Minister of State for the Environment --Ahmed's book confronts the reader with the stark message that life as we know it is unsustainable. It will have disappeared by the end of the 21st century, and we along with it - unless a comprehensive change occurs in the meantime. Kees Van Der Pijl, Professor of International Relations, Sussex University and author of the series Modes of Foreign Relations and Political Economy (3 volumes, Pluto Press) --Few thinkers weave as many threads into a tapestry as Nafeez Ahmed has done so superbly in this book. Dr. Jeremy Leggett, CEO of Solarcentury and author of Half Gone (2006) --A range of crises threaten our future. This book argues that financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages need to be considered as different parts of the same ailing system. --Naffez Mosaddeq Ahmed argues that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their own fields explains why there is so much disagreement about particular problems. This book investigates these crises as trends that belong to a single global system, rather than treating them as isolated events. Ahmed provides a stark warning about the consequences of failing to take a broad view---and shows how catastrophe can be avoided. --Book Jacket

Machine generated contents note: Between Danger and Hope -- The Invisible Crisis -- The Failure of Civil Society -- The Struggle for Civilization -- The Core Argument -- Structure of Argument -- 1.Climate Catastrophe -- A Debate Resolved? Current Climate Change is Unequivocally Anthropogenic -- National Security Alert -- Rapid Climate Change -- Abrupt Change Through `Tipping Points' -- A Systemic Failure -- 2.Energy Scarcity -- Energy and Society -- Quick Alternatives to Conventional Oil? -- 3.Food Insecurity -- The Global Food Empire -- Peak Food? -- 4.Economic Instability -- The Problem of `Growth' -- Global Financial Crisis -- 5.International Terrorism -- Hydrocarbon Over-Dependence -- Al-Qaeda and Post-Cold War Western Covert Operations -- The `Redirection': AI-Qaeda Sponsorship in the Middle East After 2003 -- 6.The Militarization Tendency -- Empire -- Defending the Homeland -- 7.Diagnosis - Interrogating the Global Political Economy --Contents note continued: The Continuum of Crisis, and Civilizations as Complex Adaptive Systems -- Structural and Socio-Systemic Dynamics of Capitalism -- Neoliberal Computational Finance Capitalism -- The Political-Legal Regulation of the Global Imperial System -- Capitalism's Philosophical Base -- 8.Prognosis - The Post-Carbon Revolution and the Renewal of Civilization