We can’t successfully tackle climate change without changes to the corporate regime which has been in place in America since the Reagan presidency. That’s the underlying message of Charles Derber in his latest book, Greed to Green: Solving Climate Change and Remaking the Economy. It’s a message he delivers with directness in a book much more readable than I expected from an academic sociologist.
He accepts the position of scientists like James Hansen and others who point to the ominous dangers of tipping points in climate and conclude that we are already above a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which they consider no more than 350 parts per million. It’s not a happy acceptance. “No sane person would wish it to be the scientific truth,” he writes.
Derber recounts the terrible difficulty he had, after realising with despair the seriousness of climate change, in dealing emotionally with the prospect of mass, collective death — “more difficult than dealing with my own personal death.”
The only good news he discerns is that the scientific truth may be spreading and leading to a tipping point in the world’s social and political awareness.