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[Ahmed's] arguments are in the main forceful and well-sourced, with ...
(Guardian)
[Ahmed's] arguments are in the main forceful and well-sourced, with particularly good sections on agribusiness, US policies of 'energy security', and what he terms the 'securitisation' of ordinary life by Western governments.
(Guardian)
How can a discussion of the all too familiar crises ...
(Richard Levins, John Rock Professor of P)
How can a discussion of the all too familiar crises of our time be a hopeful book? By combining a microscopic dissection of the structure of each with a telescopic view of how they weave together in a whole system. If the myriad international conferences and programs haven’t worked, it isn’t that we have to try harder but that we have to confront the whole free of conventional constraints. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed confronts the whole.
(Richard Levins, John Rock Professor of Population Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University; author, Evolution in Changing Environments)
This important analysis exposes vital truths and challenges much conventional ...
(Mark Curtis, author of Web of Deceit: Br)
This important analysis exposes vital truths and challenges much conventional wisdom. It deserves to be widely read.
(Mark Curtis, author of Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World and Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses)
This is an important book. There has been much discussion ...
(Rt. Hon. Michael Meacher MP, UK Minister)
This is an important book. There has been much discussion already about climate change, peak oil, the cost of food and overpopulation, the global financial crisis busting neoliberal capitalism, the rise of violent extremism, and the containment of the so-called war on terror. But this is the first book to systematically explore their interconnections and place them within a single comprehensive narrative. That makes it a very worthwhile read for policy-makers everywhere.
(Rt. Hon. Michael Meacher MP, UK Minister of State for the Environment (1997-2003))
Few thinkers weave as many threads into a tapestry as ...
(Dr. Jeremy Leggett, UK Department of Tra)
Few thinkers weave as many threads into a tapestry as Nafeez Ahmed has done so superbly in this book. Those of us who seek to operate within the form of capitalism that has evolved today would do well to ask ourselves a very big question. Are we wasting our time? If it is true that only root-to-branch rewriting of the global economic operating manual can save society from an unliveable future, shouldn’t we be putting our weight behind that re-engineering process before it is too late?
(Dr. Jeremy Leggett, UK Department of Trade & Industry’s Renewables Advisory Board (2002-2006))
Nafeez Ahmed’s book confronts the reader with the stark message ...
(Kees van der Pijl, Professor of Internat)
Nafeez Ahmed’s book confronts the reader with the stark message that life as we know it is unsustainable. It provides a chilling enumeration of the existential challenges humanity faces, and can only by qualified as optimistic in the sense that it does not leave a single illusion in place. A must-read but not as bed-time reading.
(Kees van der Pijl, Professor of International Relations, University of Sussex)
A staggeringly comprehensive bird’s-eye view of the gaping cracks that ...
(Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Ca)
A staggeringly comprehensive bird’s-eye view of the gaping cracks that are appearing in global industrial civilization. Ahmed weaves a context that makes current economic and geopolitical events comprehensible. 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 sane, peaceful, and sustainable society, read this book.
(Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute; author, The Party’s Over, Powerdown and Peak Everything)
Dr. Ahmed presents the clearest synthesis to date of the ...
(Jeff Vail former US Department of the In)
Dr. Ahmed presents the clearest synthesis to date of the systemic problems facing human civilization. There is no shortage of popular texts on climate change, economic challenges, energy scarcity, and terrorism, but this work is the first to effectively integrate these diverse issues into a compelling and unified system - one that is both accessible to a broad audience yet grounded in rigorous academic research.
(Jeff Vail former US Department of the Interior Counterterrorism Analyst and author of A Theory of Power)
In this magisterial exposition of the multiple intersecting challenges facing ...
(David Schwartzman, Professor of Biology,)
In this magisterial exposition of the multiple intersecting challenges facing humanity in our century Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed points to real solutions. Armed with the depth of knowledge and the courage demonstrated in this work we can and will construct the other world that is possible. All of us, but especially the youth of our planet will be empowered by reading this book.
(David Schwartzman, Professor of Biology, Howard University, Washington DC; author, Life, Temperature and the Earth: the self-organizing biosphere)
A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization
And How to Save It
Product Description
It often seems that different crises are competing to devastate civilisation. This book argues that financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages need to be considered as part of the same ailing system.
Most accounts of our contemporary global crises such as climate change, or the threat of terrorism, focus on one area, or another, to the exclusion of others. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed argues that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their own fields explains why there is so much disagreement and misunderstanding about particular crises. This book attempts to investigate all of these crises, not as isolated events, but as trends and processes that belong to a single global system. We are therefore not dealing with a 'clash of civilisations', as Huntington argued. Rather, we are dealing with a fundamental crisis of civilisation itself.
This book provides a stark warning of the consequences of failing to take a broad view of the problems facing the world and shows how catastrophe can be avoided.
About The Author
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development in London. He has taught international relations, contemporary history, empire and globalisation at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex and the Politics & History Unit, Brunel University. His previous books include The War on Truth: Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (2005) and Behind the War on Terror: Western Secret Strategy and the Struggle for Iraq (2003).
Additional Information
A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization is also available in ebook format from a number of retailers. Click the following links for more purchasing information:
Kindle (UK)Kindle (US)
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Climate Catastrophe
2. Energy Scarcity
3. Food Insecurity
4. Economic Instability
5. International Terrorism
6. The Militarization Tendency
7. Diagnosis – Interrogating the Global Political Economy
8. Prognosis - The Post-Carbon Revolution and the Renewal of Civilization
Afterword
Notes and References
Index
Prices
