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The current fascination with risk acceptability, risk benefit analysis and other devices for relating risk to social gain is a manifestation of the loss of faith amongst certain groups in modern western society with the honesty and competence of those who assess and finally make judgements about public safety. The problem lies as much in a suspicion over the motives of leading personalities and the fidelity of assessment procedures as it does with the collective psychology of individual beliefs and judgements. "Real world" studies involving carefully sampled households monitored over a period of time may well reveal better information on the complexities of risk cognition and evaluation than laboratory investigation of the views of individuals responding in isolation.

This book places tipping points in their scientific, economic, governmental, creative, and spiritual contexts. It seeks to offer a comprehensive set of interpretations on the meaning and application of tipping points. Its contribution focuses on the various characterisations and metaphors of tipping points, on the scope for anticipating their onset, the capacity for societal resilience in the face of their impending arrival, and for better ways of communicating and preparing societies, economies, and governments for accommodating them, and hence to turn them into responses which buffer and better human well-being. Above all, the possibility of preparing society for creative and benign "tips" is a unifying theme. The conclusion is sombre but not without hope. Thresholds of profound change can combine earth system-based relatively abrupt shifts with human-caused alterations of these disturbed patterns which, coupled together, produce more rapid onsets and greater tensions and stresses for governments and economies, as well as socially unequal societies. There is still time to predict and address these thresholds but too much delay will make the task of accommodation very difficult to achieve with relevant-scale community support. There are many examples of adaptive resilience throughout the world. These should be identified, supported, and emulated according to cultural acceptance and emerging economic realities. But there is no guarantee that the necessary adjustments can be made in time, as emerging patterns of outlook and governance do not appear to be conducive to manage the very awkward transitions of appropriate response.

The Politics of Climate Change provides a critical analysis of the political, moral and legal response to climate change in the midst of significant socio-economic policy shifts. Evolving from original EC commissioned research, this book examines how climate change was put on the policy agenda, with the evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention and subsequent Conference of Parties.The international team of contributors devote in-depth chapters to: * climate change policies of different nations* reductions of greenhouse gas emmissions * legal aspects of external competence and moral obligatons* the political significance of the European experience within the wider global perspectives of America and Asia.

This book places tipping points in their scientific, economic, governmental, creative, and spiritual contexts. It seeks to offer a comprehensive set of interpretations on the meaning and application of tipping points. Its contribution focuses on the various characterisations and metaphors of tipping points, on the scope for anticipating their onset, the capacity for societal resilience in the face of their impending arrival, and for better ways of communicating and preparing societies, economies, and governments for accommodating them, and hence to turn them into responses which buffer and better human well-being. Above all, the possibility of preparing society for creative and benign "tips" is a unifying theme. The conclusion is sombre but not without hope. Thresholds of profound change can combine earth system-based relatively abrupt shifts with human-caused alterations of these disturbed patterns which, coupled together, produce more rapid onsets and greater tensions and stresses for governments and economies, as well as socially unequal societies. There is still time to predict and address these thresholds but too much delay will make the task of accommodation very difficult to achieve with relevant-scale community support. There are many examples of adaptive resilience throughout the world. These should be identified, supported, and emulated according to cultural acceptance and emerging economic realities. But there is no guarantee that the necessary adjustments can be made in time, as emerging patterns of outlook and governance do not appear to be conducive to manage the very awkward transitions of appropriate response.