Synopses & Reviews
While ecologists and environmentalists view the melting of the polar ice caps as a dire and threatening effect of climate change, many business and political leaders see emerging opportunity, as a result of newly accessible oil and gas fields. As the contributors to
The Secure and the Dispossessed reveal, the ongoing environmental transitions raise a host of complicated questions about global assets and resources as well as dangerous opportunism.
The Secure and the Dispossessed gathers together essays by high-profile journalists, academics, and activists, including Christian Parenti, Nafeez Ahmed, and policy analyst Oscar Reyes. They offer a close and critical guide to questions about climate change, showing how they converge with questions about international security and global economic power, as new natural resources become available. This book is an essential guide to the key environmental and political debates which will shape future policies and elections: how managing the world’s supply of oil and gas can be squared with the environmental impact of our continued reliance on those very same fossil fuels.
Synopsis
While the world's scientists and many of its inhabitants despair at the impact of climate change, corporate and military leaders see nothing but opportunities. For them, melting ice caps mean newly accessible fossil fuels, borders to be secured from 'climate refugees', social conflicts to be managed and more failed states in which to intervene. They are 'securing' their assets at the expanse of the planet and its inhabitants. The Secure and the Dispossessed looks at these deadly approaches with a critical eye. It also considers the flip-side: that the legitimacy of the elite is under unprecedented pressure - from resistance by communities to resource grabs to those creating new ecological and socially just models for managing our energy, food and water. Topics covered include geoengineering, militarism, refugee protection, greenwashing and the agricultural crisis among others. Adaptation and resilience to a climate-changed world is desperately needed, but the form it will take will affect all of our futures.
About the Author
Nick Buxton is communications manager for the Transnational Institute.Ben Hayes works for the civil liberties organization Statewatch and is a fellow of the Transnational Institute.