Requiem for a Species Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change By Clive Hamilton Not for sale in Australia, NZ and South Africa Hardback £14.99 / $24.95 April 2010 / 240 pages / 9781849710817

Is It Too Late to Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change?

This book does not set out once more to raise the alarm to encourage us to take radical measures to head off climate chaos. There have been any number of books and reports in recent years explaining just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act.

This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, and why it may now be too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species as expressed in both the institutions we built and the psychological dispositions that have led us on the path of self-destruction. It is about our strange obsessions, our hubris, and our penchant for avoiding the facts. It is the story of a battle within us between the forces that should have caused us to protect the Earth - our capacity to reason and our connection to Nature - and those that, in the end, have won out - our greed, materialism and alienation from Nature. And it is about the 21st century consequences of these failures.

Clive Hamilton is author of the bestselling Affluenza and Growth Fetish, of Scorcher, and most recently Freedom Paradox.

EARLY PRAISE FOR REQUIEM FOR A SPECIES

‘I am afraid Clive Hamilton has it right about climate change – deeply afraid. Requiem is a brave and searingly honest book by a brilliant scholar. Ignoring it will only make a bad situation worse, so, please, read this book now.’
James Gustave Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World and Dean Emeritus, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

‘Hamilton's deconstruction of climate denial and its consequences is devastating. Listen to this Requiem and weep, if it helps. False hope is as dangerous as despair, Hamilton reminds us. But don't get mired in helplessness. Above all, Requiem is a call to arms; to the urgent task of overhauling democracy in pursuit of survival. At stake, the biggest prize of all: our own humanity.’
Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity Without Growth

‘Requiem for a Species is a remarkable publication which brings together the scientific imperatives of taking action in the field of climate change. Hamilton highlights the political inertia which is currently acting as a roadblock. In the wake of the weak outcome of Copenhagen, this book assumes added significance in breaking the resistance to the truth about climate change.’
R K Pachauri, Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Director-General, TERI

'I find it hard to imagine what life would be like if I had genuinely come to the irrevocable conclusion that it was too late to do anything serious about preventing runaway climate change… For me, this ongoing internal dialogue gets a little bit more painful, every year … And having just finished reading Clive Hamilton's excellent (but deeply disturbing!) Requiem for a Species, I'm now going to have to think it all through all over again.'
Jonathon Porritt, Founder, Forum for the Future, and author of Capitalism As if the World Matters

‘When future generations look out on a planet ravaged by climate change, they will ask of our generation “When you knew what was happening – surely the greatest debacle since we came out of our caves – why didn’t you stop it?” Clive Hamilton proposes the problem lies with “the perversity of our institutions, our psychological dispositions, our strange obsessions, our penchant for avoiding facts, and, especially, our hubris.” It all makes for a riveting read because, alas, it is all too true – just like Greek tragedy.’
Norman Myers, 21st Century School, University of Oxford

‘Clive Hamilton investigates – in real time – our society’s choice not to act to protect ourselves from devastating climate change. We know the science, but “scientific facts are fighting against more powerful forces” – power, money, bureaucratic inertia and our innate desire to ignore what we don’t want to believe. “It’s too late,” he says. “Humanity failed.” That past tense is devastating.’
Fred Pearce, writer and author of The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change

‘Requiem for a Species magnificently captures the idea that, by and large, none of us want to believe that climate change is real. It explains our inability to seriously weigh the evidence of climate change, and to take appropriate action to ensure our own survival.’
Tim Costello, CEO, World Vision Australia

‘Hamilton’s book presents a powerful statement of the problems confronting us – not just the problem of climate change itself, but the tendency to wish the problem away by denial. Read this book.’
Professor Lord May OM AC FRS, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford

'Requiem offers an insightful and informative look at why the human species can’t come to terms with a changing climate. And Hamilton’s conclusion — To despair, accept, then act — is an important call for us to respond to climate change immediately and decisively or spend the rest of our lives reacting to a warming world and an unraveling civilization.’
Erik Assadourian, Director: State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability

'Clive Hamilton, as usual, has courageously challenged the current nature of our society in this inspirational new book.'
Graeme Pearman, former head of the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research

'Books that change one’s life are rare…Requiem  is a tour de force of compression and analysis that cannot help but shift climate change thinking.'
Andres Kabel, Cultural Pilgrim

'Requiem for a Species is a call to immediate action. It should be sent to every elected official at each level of government. All concerned citizen should read it in order to hold government and industry accountable for knowing the facts, altering policy, and developing clean technologies-not at some later point in time but now. The future looks grim; but, as Hamilton says, action is the best cure for despair. It may also be our only hope.'
Courier Mail

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clive Hamilton is professor of public ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics based at the Australian National University. For 14 years until early 2008 he was the executive director of Australia's foremost progressive think tank. He has held visiting academic positions at the University of Cambridge and Yale University.

CONTENTS