2021
Deep adaptation’ refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives.
2016
In the summer of 1995, Chicago experienced the deadliest heat wave in American history. Streets buckled, power grids failed, and when the heat finally broke, more than 700 people were dead. The questions of why so many people perished, and why their deaths were so easy to deny, ignore, or forget, preoccupied Eric Klinenberg. He uncovered unsettling forms of social breakdown – the isolation of seniors, the abandonment of poor neighborhoods, and the retrenchment of public assistance programs – which led him to write "Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago." Drawing on his experience as research director for the federal Rebuild By Design competition after Superstorm Sandy, he also discovered that global warming makes these issues all the more dangerous and argues that cities must adapt, or face worse incidents in the future.