Climate Change and Society

"Urry challenges sociologists to entertain the social blockages to coming to terms with climate change, social costs of not doing so, and major social rearrangements entailed by a genuine, Copernican ecological turn."
American Journal of Sociology
 
"A must read for those interested in or working on climate change research and policy making."
Choice
 
"Deftly drawing together a wide range of materials from Hollywood cinema to the complexity sciences, Urry's analysis combines sobering warnings about potential impending catastrophes, with hints at reasons for optimism about the possible emergence of innovative low carbon lifestyles ... a well-argued, detailed example of what sociologists can do when they turn their attention to climate change."
Sociology
 
"As debates rage in the UK on the efficiency of wind farms or whether fracking should be given the green light, this book is a timely reminder of how human reliance on the convenience of oil is irrefutably unsustainable."
LSE Review of Books
 
"A tour de force! Urry shows the centrality of the social - both to comprehend the meaning of the carbon catastrophe that besets us and, thereby, to discover the possibility of a post-carbon society. Essential reading for all."
Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley
 
"Climate change will affect more than the environment. It will change social institutions as well. In addition to economic science and to the environmental sciences, John Urry gives us insights from the social sciences. It is urgent that we pay attention."
David Stark, Columbia University, author of The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life