title: The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy
author:  Paul Gilding 
description: It's time to stop just worrying about climate change, says Paul Gilding. Instead we need to brace for impact, because global crisis is no longer avoidable. The 'Great Disruption' started in 2008, with spiking food and oil prices and dramatic ecological change like the melting polar icecap. It is not simply about fossil fuels and carbon footprints. We have come to the end of Economic Growth, Version 1.0, a world economy based on consumption and waste, where we lived beyond the means of our planet's ecosystems and resources. The Great Disruption offers a stark and unflinching look at the challenge humanity faces - yet also a deeply optimistic message. The coming decades will see loss, suffering and conflict as our planetary overdraft is paid. However, they will also bring out the best humanity can offer: compassion, innovation, resilience and adaptability. Gilding tells us how to fight, and win, what he calls 'the One Degree War' to prevent catastrophic warming of the earth, and how to start today. The crisis we are in represents a rare chance to replace our addiction to growth with an ethic of sustainability, and it's already happening. It's also an unmatched business opportunity: old industries will collapse while new companies literally reshape our economy. In the aftermath of the Great Disruption, we will measure 'growth' in a new way. It will mean not quantity of stuff, but quality, and happiness, of life. And, yes, there is life after shopping. The Great Disruption is an invigorating and well-informed polemic by an advocate for sustainability and climate change who has dedicated his life to campaigning for a balanced use of Earth's limited resources. It is essential reading.
zlib_text: In this age of overlapping and mutually reinforcing deep global crises ( financial 
  convulsions, global warming, mass migrations, militarism, inequality,  selfish 
  nation-states, etc.), there needs to be more realistic dialogue about radical 
  alternatives to the status quo. Most literature produced heretofore has focused 
  on the surface causes of these crises without much attention given to the sorts 
  of major societal changes needed in order to deal with the crises we face.
  This book moves the debate beyond the critiques and the false or not fully 
  realised alternatives, to focus on what can be termed “practical utopias”. The 
  contributors to this book outline a range of practical proposals for construct-
  ing pathways out of the global economic, ecological and social crisis. Varieties 
  of Alternative Economic Systems eschews a single blueprint but insists on 
  dealing directly with the deep structural problems and contradictions of con-
  temporary global capitalism. It provides a divers