Prelims

Half Title Page

Climate Emergency

Series title Page

SocietyNow

SocietyNow: short, informed books, explaining why our world is the way it is, now.

The SocietyNow series provides readers with a definitive snapshot of the events, phenomena and issues that are defining our 21st century world. Written leading experts in their fields, and publishing as each subject is being contemplated across the globe, titles in the series offer a thoughtful, concise and rapid response to the major political and economic events and social and cultural trends of our time.

SocietyNow makes the best of academic expertise accessible to a wider audience, to help readers untangle the complexities of each topic and make sense of our world the way it is, now.

Poverty in Britain: Causes, Consequences and Myths

Tracy Shildrick

The Trump Phenomenon: How the Politics of Populism Won in 2016

Peter Kivisto

Becoming Digital: Towards a Post-Internet Society

Vincent Mosco

Understanding Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union

Graham Taylor

Selfies: Why We Love (and Hate) Them

Katrin Tiidenberg

Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online

Crystal Abidin

Corbynism: A Critical Approach

Matt Bolton

The Smart City in a Digital World

Vincent Mosco

Kardashian Kulture: How Celebrities Changed Life in the 21st Century

Ellis Cashmore

Reality Television: The TV Phenomenon that Changed the World

Ruth A. Deller

Drones: The Brilliant, The Bad, and the Beautiful

Andy Miah

Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting

Trine Syvertsen

The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach

Helen Jefferson Lenskyj

Sex and Social Media

Katrin Tiidenberg and Emily van der Nagel

The Politicization of Mumsnet

Sarah Pedersen

Tattoos and Popular Culture

Lee Barron

Disability and Other Human Questions

Dan Goodley

Endorsements

Mark Harvey applies a wide-angle lens to the ultimate global crisis – climate change – demonstrating that a social scientific understanding of the historical development of societal ecologies is crucial. An original contribution of importance to all concerned with understanding problems and solutions.

–Alan Warde, Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester, UK

Working with and building upon the generative insights of Karl Polanyi, Mark Harvey delivers a penetrating and original analysis of the climate emergency, grounded in an integrative, historical, and comparative method. Climate Emergency establishes a new benchmark, and provides new tools, for the critical social-scientific study of global climate change.

–Jamie Peck, University of British Columbia, Canada

Coping with anthropogenic climate change requires us all to “follow the science”. This must include the insights of historical and social sciences, which are epiphenomena of the planetary degradation of recent centuries. Mark Harvey's concept of sociogenesis is a landmark contribution, which he operationalizes in this book to explicate the emergency we now face. He highlights the economic and ethical dilemmas not of humanity in the abstract, but of concrete political societies around the world with very unequal endowments and histories.

–Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany

Title Page

Climate Emergency

How Societies Create the Crisis

By

Mark Harvey

University of Essex, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Mark Harvey

Published under exclusive license by Emerald Publishing Limited

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80043-333-5 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-330-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-332-8 (Epub)

List of Figures

About the Author

Mark Harvey is Emeritus Professor at the Sociology Department University of Essex. He was Research Professor from September 2007 to 2019, and established the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation. For the previous decade he had been at the ESRC Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition (CRIC) at the University of Manchester, and is now Honorary Professor there in the Sustainable Consumption Institute. With a first degree in History from Oxford, followed by a PhD in Sociology (on Historico-critical Epistemology) from London School of Economics, he held a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Institute of Genetic Epistemology, working with Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva (1968–1970). He was a Lecturer in Sociology and Psychology at Brunel University (1971–1974) before leaving academia to become a building labourer, returning to academia 17 years later in 1993. He was made a honorary life member of the building trades union, UCATT, in 2002 for services to the labour movement.