History at the End of the World? : History, Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure

Annotation. The authors of this collection of essays propose that climate change means serious peril. The approaches begin from archaeology, literature, religion, psychology, sociology, philosophy of science, engineering and sustainable development, as well as 'straight' history. Our argument, however, is not about the science per se. It is about us, our deep and more recent history, and how we arrived at this calamitous impasse. With contributions from academic activists and independent researchers, History at the End of the World challenges advocates of 'business as usual' to think again. But in its wide-ranging assessment of how we transcend the current crisis, it also proposes that the human past could be our most powerful resource in the struggle for survival Licence and Use 3 Untitled 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Contents continued 7 Notes on Contributors 9 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction: A Chronicle of a Death Foretold? 14 Part I: Deep History 35 1. Responding to Climate Change: Lessons from our Prehistoric Ancestors. 35 Part II: Harbingers of the End 47 2. We’ll cope, Mankind always has: The Fall of Rome and the Cost of Crisis 47 3. People, climate and landscape in medieval Iceland and beyond 54 4. The Wrath of God: explanations of crisis and natural disaster in pre-modern Europe 68 Part III: The Debate about Enlightenment and Modernity 81 5. The Urgent Need for an Academic Revolution 81 6. Dangerous Limits: Climate Change and Modernity 95 Part IV: Coming to Terms with a Recent Historical Legacy 114 7. Five Lessons for the Climate Crisis: What the History of Resource Scarcity in the United States and Japan can teach us 114 8. ‘We are All Slave Owners now’: Fossil Fuels, Energy Consumption and the Legacy of Slave Abolition 133 Part V: Countdown to Self-Annihilation 149 9. Climate Change, Resources and Future War: The Case of Central Asia 149 10. On the Edge of History: the Nuclear Dimension 167 Part VI: Surviving Catastrophe: Creating Conditions for Renewal 189 11. On Reading History as a Mental Health Issue 189 12. A Zoroastrian Dilemma? Parsi Responses to Global Catastrophe 206 13. How Novels Can Contribute to our Understanding of Climate Change 219 14. Towards Transition 235 Humanities-Ebooks 252 'This collection of essays proposes that climate change means serious peril. Our argument, however, is not about the science per se. It is about us, our deep and more recent history, and how we arrived at this calamitous impasse. With contributions from academic activists and independent researchers, History at the End of the World challenges advocates of ‘business as usual'to think again. But in its wide-ranging assessment of how we transcend the current crisis, it also proposes that the human past could be our most powerful resource in the struggle for survival. Our approaches begin from archaeology, literature, religion, psychology, sociology, philosophy of science, engineering and sustainable development, as well as ‘straight'history.'