NEW BOOK ON THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

For Immediate Release   January 28, 2021

Kent D. Shifferd, Ph.D.  email kentshifferd@gmail.com, phone 651 271 5510

THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS: WHERE ARE WE? HOW DID WE GET HERE?  HOW DO WE GET OUT OF HERE?

Dr. Shifferd’s new book, THE PLANETARY EMERGENCY: ENVIRONMENTAL COLLAPSE AND THE PROMISE OF ECOCIVILIZATION, has just been released by McFarland Publishers (mcfarlandbooks.com).

Publisher’s Description  (from the back cover)

“So much is going right and at accelerating speed” – from the concluding chapter.  Optimism overlaid on a sobering assessment of both where we are and how we got here sets this thoughtful book apart from others in its class.  Historical analysis traces hundreds of years of contributory behavior shifts and events to demonstrate that positive new shifts are possible.  The author explores ways we can create an ‘ecocivilization’ compatible with the laws and limits of nature—a new way of living already developing with new technologies, new forms of social organization and a new story about ourselves and the Earth.” 

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Revolution of Hypercivilization

Part I—Breakdown: A Brief Tour Through the Global Environmental Crisis

                1.  The Perfect Storm

                2.  Assault on the World’s Forests, Soils, Water and Air

                3.  War’s War on the Environment and Splitting the Atom

                4.  Environmentally Induced Disease and the Genetic Revolution

                5.  Climate Change: The Crowning Blow

                6.  The Prospect of Collapse

Part II—The Rise of Hypercivilization

                7.  “The Old Way”

                8.  Materialism, Capitalism and Conquest

                9.  Industrialization

                10.  Resisting Hypercivilization: Poets, Painters and Darwin

                11.  Resisting Hypercivilization: Conservationists, Environmentalists and Blockadia

Part III—Breakthrough: Creating Ecocivilization

                12.  Our Changing Mind

                13. Changing Education, Food and Industry

                14.  The Energy Revolution Is Underway

                15.  Creating Resilient, Place-based Communities

                16.  We Can Make It—On Toward Ecocivilization.

Available from McFarland Publishers (mcfarlandbooks.com) and Amazon Books. 

Author Kent Shifferd taught for 30 years at Northland College with visiting appointments at the University of Wisconsin, Ripon College and United Theological Seminary.  His specialty is environmental history and environmental ethics.  He publishes a monthly environmental newsletter.  He has also written books about peace systems including From War to Peace: A Guide to the Next Hundred Years.