Documents Giddens, Anthony 9 results

"Will the reconstruction of the global economy be positive for mitigating climate change? Is the move toward energy security at odds with a low-carbon society? Do we need the return of state planning to overcome the climate change challenge? How can the response to climate change be socially just? How can we forge an achievable but also equitable and legally secure international emissions deal at Copenhagen?
By addressing these questions, leading international thinkers and practitioners put forward a compelling new account of climate change politics and policies in this pamphlet, demonstrating how a low-carbon future can be built by a revitalised co-existence of markets and the state, as well as a strong political narrative of hope and opportunity."

"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."

"Climate change is now a mainstream political issue. However, as yet there is no substantive framework for policy which offers coherence and consistency as to how national governments should cope with the long-term political challenges of climate change. This paper by the Labour peer and sociologist Anthony Giddens launches a new Policy Network project on the politics of climate change, held in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, with the kind support of the Victor Dahdaleh Foundation. Led by the paper's author and the vice chair of Policy Network Roger Liddle, this project will examine how best to develop an effective climate change policy framework through a comparative political analysis of key western democracies. It will provide a forum for the discussion of the complex politics of climate change between national and international policymakers, academics and commentators. […]"

"This book makes an essential contribution to the debate now opening up over the future of Europe in the wake of the demise of the Constitution. Since 1989 much about the European Union has changed, including the very definition of 'Europe' itself. The EU has enlarged to 25 countries and the division between Western and Eastern Europe has disappeared.

The EU has responded positively to these changes, not only by making a success of enlargement, but by pushing ahead with the Single Market and the Single Currency. These very successes, however, have led to a reaction. Those who voted 'no' in the referenda in France and the Netherlands registered worries about Europe's future, especially on a social and economic level. For many, 'social Europe' - the welfare states that offer protection from the buffetings of the global marketplace - are under threat. Unemployment and low growth are seemingly becoming endemic across much of the EU.

How should pro-Europeans respond? What future is there for Europe's cherished social model? How will the EU deal with the competitive pressures coming from India, China and other industrialising countries? In this volume, leading contributors from a range of countries offer answers to these questions"