Climate Change as Societal Risk: Revealing Threats, Reshaping Values

This book analyzes climate change from a societal risk perspective, considering IPCC data, harm reduction, and global impact. Climate change is a globalised agent of social disruption whose impacts will worsen societal inequities and inequalities around the world. For some unfortunate societies already precariously exposed, climate change will tip them into societal collapse. Devastation will also occur to many ecological values in which all societies are embedded. But effective social action can limit the extent of these costs and losses. Ultimately, only social transformation can limit the social and environmental harms of climate change. But what does this mean? To what extent is society at risk? Are such risks particularized and restricted to specific segments and localities? Or is society at risk in a more universal way? Climate risks are re-shaping the practices of households, communities, governments and businesses. In this way, climate risks are a dynamic element in social change and social processes. Risk holds a mirror to society, revealing who and what is prioritized, recognized and valued. It also provides a reckoning of our perceived strengths, vulnerabilities and weaknesses. This volume examines how we understand the societal risks of contemporary and forecast climate change impacts―and those risks inherent in dealing with these impacts. We know that society is fashioning a new global climate―but climate change is also re-fashioning society; this book explores this dynamic process and considers its implications for future society.

Mikael Granberg is Professor of Political Science and a Senior Research Fellow at Centre for Societal Risk Research at Karlstad University, Sweden, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Natural Hazards & Disaster Science (CNDS) at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Leigh Glover is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Societal Risk Research at Karlstad University, Sweden. He is the former Director of the Australasian Centre for the Governance & Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT) at the University of Melbourne, Australia.