STWR - Share The World's Resources

The relentless pursuit of economic growth promotes the unsustainable consumption patterns that underpin the climate crisis. Only a clearer understanding of the causes and greater public engagement can finally urge governments to act on climate change, argues Rajesh Makwana.

Many governments are elected on platforms promising to address climate change, but fail to implement meaningful environmental policies once in office. Can this be explained by human psychology - and will it take a local climate catastrophe for them to finally act, asks Chris Goodall.

The climate change conference in Copenhagen during March 2009 highlighted a growing gulf between science, policy and action - a fatal flaw that increases the risk of an abrupt and irreversible climatic shift. A backgrounder by STWR.

Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warn - and we have only 100 months to avoid disaster, explains Andrew Simms.

We have entered a new geological era marked by growing environmental and social turbulence, the largest transfer of wealth in modern history, and a future defined by overdue questions on how to redress - or further embed - a world of unmanageable inequalities, writes Mike Davis.

The dilemma of the South: if they follow capitalisms 'stages of growth' like the North, it will bring about ecological Armageddon - so climate change is both a threat and an opportunity to bring about long postponed economic reform, writes Walden Bello.

What is clear is that in most other places in the South, one cannot depend on the elites and some sections of the middle class to decisively change course. At best, they will procrastinate. The fight against global warming will need to be propelled mainly by an alliance between progressive civil society in the North and mass-based citizens’ movements in the South, says Walden Bello.