"A landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era. I urge everyone to read it."

Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States of America Climate change differs from any other problem that, as collective humanity, we face today. If it goes unchecked, the consequences are likely to be catastrophic for human life on earth. Yet for most people, and for many policy-makers too, it tends to be a 'back of the mind' issue. We recognise its importance and even its urgency, but for the most part it is swamped by more immediate concerns. Politicians have woken up to the dangers, but at the moment their responses are mainly on the level of gesture rather than being, as they have to be, both concrete and radical. Political action and intervention, on local, national and international levels, is going to have a decisive effect on whether or not we can limit global warming, as well as how we adapt to that already occurring. At the moment, however, Anthony Giddens argues controversially, we do not have a systematic politics of climate change. Politics-as-usual won't allow us to deal with the problems we face, while the recipes of the main challenger to orthodox politics, the green movement, are flawed at source. 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. This book is likely to become a classic in the field. It will be of appeal to everyone concerned about how we can cope with what amounts to a crisis for our civilisation.

安東尼·吉登斯（Anthony Giddens，1938～），著名社會學傢、政治學傢，英國倫敦經濟學院前院長，劍橋大學皇傢學院研究員，英國上議院議員。

著有《資本主義與現代社會理論》、《發達社會的階級結構》、《曆史唯物主義的當代批判》、《社會學》、《民族一國傢與暴力》、《現代性與自我認同》、《超越左與右》、《第三條道路》等。　吉登斯是當今世界最重要的思想傢之一，與羅爾斯、哈貝馬斯等思想傢一起引領瞭20世紀中後期全球社會理論的發展。他所主張的“第三條道路”影響尤其深遠，被譽為英國前首相布萊爾的“精神導師”。