Bloomsbury Academic Evolving Knowledge, Human Sustainability, and the Rise of Climate Change (Environment and Society)

Evolving Knowledge, Human Sustainability, and the Rise of Climate Change highlights the monumental significance the present era is contributes to our species’ evolution, because human decisions increasingly have proved to bear weighty consequences for all living beings on planet Earth, not just the human beings. The phenomenon of climate change is becoming a challenge that simultaneously constitutes an unprecedented opportunity for humanity to design, create, and manage its own sustainable evolutionary path. This book contends, however, that when not formally or systemically guided, our innate human curiosity merges with our innate human ingenuity to accelerate the rate of our cultural evolution. Having evolved a sufficiency of useful knowledge, the planning to engage successfully in many thriving activities is currently needed by the effort to control climate change. The book further contends that because we human beings have achieved the capacity to understand and alter our present situation, we also have evolved the impetus to begin self-consciously managing worldwide human evolution, rather than leaving it to an unknown force that may evolve otherwise, meaning a force that may choose to pursue other among the many increasingly diverse human interests. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking.