Climate change is a pressing reality. Hurricane Katrina, melting polar ice and increased threats to food and water security show that planetary blowback is becoming all too evident.

Governments and business keep reassuring the public they are going to fix the problem. This book brings together some leading activists who disagree. They expose the inertia, denial, deception – even threats to our civil liberties – which comprise mainstream responses from civil and military policy makers, and from opinion formers in the media, corporations and academia.

An epochal change is called for in the way we all engage with the climate crisis. Key to that change is Aubrey Meyer’s proposed Contraction and Convergence framework for limiting global carbon emissions. This book, which also includes contributions by Mayer Hillman and George Marshall, is a powerful and vital guide to how mass mobilisation can avert the looming catastrophe.