This chapter explores the category of the “EcoGothic” that has emerged out of the attempt by Gothic Studies to confront the reality of the climate crisis and ideas of the Anthropocene. The Gothic is often presented as a privileged mode, given its interest in affective states of fear and horror and its ability to operate at different scales from domestic realism. It can evoke apocalypse and planetary transformations, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to John Ruskin’s late lectures on storm clouds. The chapter proposes the EcoGothic be considered less as a set of objects or texts than a method of apprehension of many kinds of Victorian cultural objects. Authors discussed include Edmund Burke, Anne Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, M. P. Shiel, H. P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, and others.

This chapter explores the connections of a species-exceeding neighbor love with self-love, love of God, and the imitation of Christ. By defining the neighbor in Works of Love beyond merely the human being, it provides an alternative to the entrenched dichotomy in ecological thought that sets loving the planet and self-love in opposition. Such a dichotomy suggests that the measures necessary to avert a planetary catastrophe include a radical change in the Western way of living – a change usually understood as unattractive asceticism. The interpretation of Kierkegaard’s exposition of Matthew 22:39, however, proposes that sacrificing the egocentric self leads to a flourishing of the neighbor as much as one’s "deeper self." Furthermore, the chapter demonstrates that such an understanding of neighbor love is compatible with recent arguments in eco-theology (e.g., Sallie McFague’s concept of a kenotic "universal self"). Finally, the chapter discusses the challenges of an ecological reading of Works of Love. It brings Works of Love into a constructive dialogue with Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanist ethics of zoe, pointing out the strong resonances with Braidotti’s non-religious eco-philosophy.

The Coda explores contexts of speculative fictional responses to environmental crises as a way of bringing together the varied dialogues between literature, self-help, and agency at the heart of this study. It begins by surveying narratives of climate apocalypse and speculative possibility by Alexandra Kleeman, Margaret Atwood, Lidia Yuknavitch, and others before turning to consider in more depth Ben Lerner’s autofiction trilogy (Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and The Topeka School) and his dialogic textual interactions with the work of his mother, bestselling feminist self-help author Harriet Lerner. These final reflections illuminate the submerged utopian and dystopian fantasies around personal and political change evident throughout the book and consider how self-help both enables and forecloses potentials for individual and collective authorship and agency in contemporary writing. The Coda argues that by pushing self-help to its limits – sometimes beyond the bounds of the human self – contemporary authors offer nuanced perspectives on what it means to ‘be better’, ethically, personally, ecologically, and socially, in a world of ongoing crisis.

This Introduction specifies the book’s aims. Its main thesis is that a comprehensive examination of Kant’s texts displays the relevance of his ethical, legal, aesthetic, metaphysical, and historical ideas for environmental problems like climate change, despite the standard view of Kant as anthropocentrist, individualist, dualist, and nonconsequentialist. Doing so, the book builds a bridge between environmental philosophy and Kant studies by offering distinctly Kantian solutions to environmental problems. I begin with an overview of the tensions in these philosophical fields, emphasizing that the climate crisis exhibits the value of Kant’s philosophy for contemporary environmental problems. After providing empirical background on climate change, I indicate why philosophy matters for the crisis. A recent greening-the-canon movement in environmental philosophy nonetheless places Kant on the wayside. The Introduction also offers an overview of the chapters.

This book analyzes the role of different political economic sectors that drive deforestation and clearcutting, including mining, ranching, export-oriented plantation agriculture, and forestry. The book examines the key actors, systems, and technologies behind the worsening climate/biodiversity crises that are aggravated by deforestation. The book is theoretically innovative, uniting political economic, sociological, political ecologic, and transdisciplinary theories on the politics of extraction. The research relies on the author’s multi-sited political ethnography, including field research, interviews, and other approaches, across multiple frontiers of deforestation, focusing on Brazil, Peru, and Finland. Why do key global extractivist sectors continue to expand via deforestation and what are the differences between sectors and regions? The hypothesis is that regionally and sometimes nationally dominant politically powerful economic sectors are major explanatory factors for if, how, and where deforestation occurs. To address the deepening global crises, it is essential to understand these power relations within different types of deforesting extractivisms.

Climate change impacts are, however, coming to us all — developing and developed countries alike. For instance, Hurricane Maria’s devastation in the Caribbean and extreme heatwaves in Europe exemplify how no region is immune. The chapter discusses how even developed nations face significant challenges, such as wildfires in Australia and California, and flooding in Germany. Comprehensive policy responses are essential to address these widespread impacts. Insights from experts such as Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s Minister for Finance, highlight the extensive effects of climate change, including infrastructure damage, economic costs, health effects, and migration. The chapter calls for a unified global effort to mitigate climate risks, improve infrastructure resilience, and implement robust economic and health strategies to protect all populations from the escalating consequences of climate change.

The chapter lays out the goal and objectives of the project by introducing the framing of the book, key terms and concepts, and the structure of the argument. A central element of the chapter is to lay out how the growing climate crisis and the impact on cities can be situated within the broader set of challenges the cities have faced with their growth and development. Explicit here is the assertion that to address the current waves of dynamic climate risk affecting cities and their residents, one can benefit from looking back into their collective histories to understand how and why cities were able to address, and in some cases overcome, past environmental trials. The book presents how these narratives of “solving” urban environmental problems can be set and analyzed within a several-step process of stress, crisis, transition, and transformation. The steps are bounded by a range of conditions through which fundamental issues of impact and vulnerability and resilience of environmental policy regimes come into question. How urban environmental crises build and reach significant tipping points with associated policy transitions are specific turn key components of the book’s storyline.

Just as we would be remiss to skip past a discussion of the role of entrepreneurs in innovation, we would be remiss to skip over the role of the state. In this chapter, we move through three starkly different visions of what role government ought to play in bringing about innovation in the economy. The first paper discussed, by Acemoglu & Robinson, suggests that the state actually plays a key role in creating the institutions that make innovation worthwhile. The second reading, a set of chapters from a book by Mazzucato, argues that this institution-oriented view is too limited, provides evidence of how ‘entrepreneurial states’ can also work to develop innovations, and suggests that this implies a state that is much more active in investing in and directing innovation. The third reading turns up this argument further, arguing that the urgency of the global climate crisis and the vast economic reorganization that it demands means that the state should not just be more active in investing and directing: the crisis, it argues, can only be solved by a complete socialization of the economy, by the state actively managing innovation and production.

How has Britain been transformed since the financial crisis of 2008?

Art music in Australia has always reflected the dominant social and cultural values of its time. As with all forms of art, the context of music making significantly influences the evolution of musical practice, from concept and narrative through to techniques and performance. In the twenty-first century, the zeitgeist of ‘our time and place’ is dominated by two global issues: the climate crisis and social justice. Both issues are strongly influencing the evolution of art music in Australia, shaping new directions in creative practice, informing conceptual frameworks, and guiding curatorial and collaborative approaches to programming and mentorship. This chapter will focus on how these issues are influencing curatorial and creative practices in Australian art music today, using works, projects and programs from the 2010s and early 2020s as examples.

Parents and grandparents face unprecedented challenges in supporting their children to survive, cope with and adapt to the impacts of climate change while simultaneously preparing them for the greater negative impacts predicted in the future. This chapter draws on multidisciplinary research in parenting science, child and youth development, and disasters to guide parents in varying contexts. We first discuss how parents and carers can help young people cope with the direct exposure to both sudden and gradual climate disasters and flow-on effects that exacerbate social inequalities. We then discuss how parents can help children manage the emotions that knowledge of climate change can engender, explore parents’ vital role in fostering children’s sense of agency and hope, and highlight ways that parents can support young people’s active engagement. We end by stressing that parents and others with responsibility for raising the next generations should take action at local to national levels to drive the urgent changes needed to prevent climate catastrophe.

The first and introductory chapter explains the necessity of this book, in other words, why it should be read. Several questions arise to illustrate this: If climate emergency is the grand challenge, why is so difficult to address it? Is it technically feasible? Economically? Trying to address it, we frame the current climate emergency as an extreme case of the well-known phenomenon of ‘the tragedy of the commons’. As a potential solution, we introduce a new disruptive business model and environmental strategy called ‘regenerative’, characterised by two main elements: (1) cutting-edge climate science solutions (capturing and utilising atmospheric carbon dioxide capable of producing net zero and even net negative emissions or positive environmental externalities); and (2) firm purpose redefinition under a new ecological, ethical and moral paradigm. Finally, a brief description of the book’s contents is presented.