ABSTRACT
The ecological, social, and economic emergency of our civilization takes form now as climate change. Climate change is the main theme of this book although as pressing for attention are related forms of planetary emergency that include poverty, disease, crime, and violence. Despite the wake up calls of the past thirty years there is only a tenuous link made in the collective mind maps of the West between our dependency on the biosphere and the separation from it that results in the way we live and think. This contradiction is more evident now than at any time since the start of the industrializing process and in the gap, the ebb and fl ow of this paradoxical situation, is the existence of the human species and all that we have become. The possibility to learn from our mistakes and evolve hangs in the balance. Climate change is one of the resulting threats and challenges of our time.
