
The Climate Swerve
Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival
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Narrated by:
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Rudy Sanda
About this listen
Over his long career as witness to an extreme 20th century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind" - what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity.
Thanks to the power of corporate-funded climate denialists and the fact that "with its slower, incremental sequence, [climate change] lends itself less to the apocalyptic drama", a large swathe of humanity has numbed themselves to the reality of climate change. Yet Lifton draws a message of hope from the Paris climate meeting of 2015, where representatives of virtually all nations joined in the recognition that we are a single species in deep trouble.
Here, Lifton suggests in this lucid and moving book that recalls Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell, was evidence of how we might call upon the human mind - "our greatest evolutionary asset" - to translate a growing species awareness - or "climate swerve" - into action to sustain our habitat and civilization.
©2017 Robert Jay Lifton (P)2017 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Performance
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
NASA Astrobiologist and renowned scientist Dr. David Grinspoon brings listeners an optimistic message about humanity's future in the face of climate change. For the first time in Earth's history, our planet is experiencing a confluence of rapidly accelerating changes prompted by one species: Humans. Climate change is only the most visible of the modifications we've made - up until this point, inadvertently - to the planet. And our current behavior threatens not only our own future but that of countless other creatures.
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Wonderful listen.
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What listeners say about The Climate Swerve
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Overall
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- Anonymous User
- 08-18-23
Essential
A stunningly helpful psychological review of humanity’s collective swerve toward climate awareness. Utilizing analogies of societal grappling with the nuclear age, this exposes qualitative evidence of forces for tackling the climate crisis.
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