Anthony Giddens on The Politics of Climate Change

Lord Anthony Giddens presented his recently published book, “The Politics of Climate Change”, which outlines the political complexities of combating climate change.

In “The Politics of Climate Change” Lord Giddens argues that we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics as usual won't allow us to deal with the climate change problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. In this book, Lord Giddens introduces a range of new concepts and proposals to fill in the gap, and examines in depth the connections between climate change and energy security.

About the speaker:
Anthony Giddens is a member of the House of Lords, a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge and Emeritus Professor at the London School of Economics.  He was Director of the LSE from 1997 to 2003, and was made a peer in 2004.  He has honorary degrees or comparable awards from 21 universities.  He is an honorary fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Science and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  He was the BBC Reith Lecturer in 1999.  According to Google Scholar, he is the most widely cited sociologist in the world.  His many books include The Constitution of Society (1984), Beyond Left and Right (1994), The Third Way (1998) and Europe in the Global Age (2006). His most recent major work is The Politics of Climate Change (2009). His books have been translated into more than forty languages. 

This event is part of the Climate Change Group’s ongoing research on the prospects for a post-Kyoto international climate change agreement.

Anthony Giddens is a very erudite guy with a low-key manner. He's a really good thinker, and I hope you appreciate this. I hope we can live up to his assessment of what needs to happen. I really, really do. (Thank you, Niall Dunne.)

An answer to my sense of hopelessness, despair and horror

I have a link to Bioneers on Facebook who posted this talk by Joanna Macy on the "consciousness shift in the great turning."  I love this because it breaks that silence I mentioned, and really understands and addresses how many of us feel about the horrors of the world, climate change et al.  I highly recommend watching this.


Joanna Macy Speaks with The Pachamama Alliance from Defend theCommons on Vimeo.

Pictures of our Bedford apartment

My friend Erica asked for pictures of our apartment, so here they are.  I had posted some when we first moved in, but I wasn't very happy about living here.  We're very happy here now.

Just inside the front door is the sun room, a porch that has been glassed in.

View from the sun room

Living room

Our temple

Dining room/office

Our bedroom

Our bath

Spare bedroom

Spare bedroom bath

Kitchen (one window)

Dexter artwork on the frig

The other window is behind the water bottle.

Welcome quote from Bioneers yesterday on Facebook. Thank you, Bioneers, for everything you do.

 ‎"There comes a point when we realize that everything we encounter and everyone we meet is a teacher. We can even learn from seemingly negative experiences such as difficulties, personal warps, enemies, suffering, illness, and death. The first step is to choose to see all of life as a classroom filled with spiritual lessons. Be a lifelong learner who walks in humility and with receptivity."