The Climate Swerve, Robert Jay Lifton
The Climate Swerve, Robert Jay Lifton
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The Climate Swerve
Reflections on Mind, Hope, and Survival

Author: Robert Jay Lifton

Narrator: Rudy Sanda

Unabridged: 4 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/10/2017


Synopsis

Over his long career as witness to an extreme twentieth century, National Book Award–winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind," what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity.

Thanks to the power of corporate-funded climate denialists and the fact that "with its slower, incremental sequence, [climate change] lends itself less to the apocalyptic drama," a large swathe of humanity has numbed themselves to the reality of climate change. Yet Lifton draws a message of hope from the Paris climate meeting of 2015 where representatives of virtually all nations joined in the recognition that we are a single species in deep trouble.

Here, Lifton suggests in this lucid and moving book that recalls Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell, was evidence of how we might call upon the human mind—"our greatest evolutionary asset"—to translate a growing species awareness—or "climate swerve"—into action to sustain our habitat and civilization.

About Robert Jay Lifton

Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist who has written more than twenty books and edited many others, including many seminal works in the field such as the National Book Award-winning Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. He lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Mark

Using expressions like "malignant normality" and "psychic numbing," Lifton assesses the current malaise in our age--at least for those of us who know the biosphere is threatened. The efforts of climate change deniers (he prefers to use the term, "rejectors") has taken its toll on the general public......more

Goodreads review by Jack

Robert Jay Lifton is a gifted researcher and writer of psychology and history. His writing was an inspiration to me while writing my recent book The Trump Files. In this book, Lifton explores climate change and the nuclear threat. In 1962, he lived for six months in Hiroshima to meet and talk with s......more

Goodreads review by Steve

Robert Lifton is a writer I wish I had encountered earlier. This book, written after he was 90, is a great exploration of the correspondence between nuclear weapons and climate change as global threats to the future of humanity. He sees signs we are making a swerve that he is hopeful will allow a fu......more