Nature, Action and the Future: Political Thought and the Environment

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Cover -- Half-title -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- List of Figures -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 History, Theory and the Environment -- I -- II -- Part I Time, Nature and the Land -- 2 Is There Any Place for Environmental Thinking in Early Modern European Political Thought? -- 3 ‘Sustainability’, Resources and the Destiny of States in German Cameralist Thought -- I. Cameralism: The Ethic of Activist Government -- II. Forests: From Proscription to Prescription -- III. Power through Knowledge -- IV. Sustaining Purposes -- 4 Abundance and Scarcity in Geological Time, 1784–1844 -- I -- II -- III -- 5 Slack -- I. Idle Resources -- II. The Defence of Idleness -- III. Slack -- IV. Slack, Corruption and Idleness -- V. Decadence and Renewal -- VI. Double Time -- Part II Science, Agency and the Future -- 6 The Nature of Fear and the Fear of Nature from Hobbes to the Hydrogen Bomb -- I. The Fear of Nature after the State of Nature -- II. The Lisbon Earthquake and Nineteenth-Century Disaster Science -- III. Disaster Science in the Twentieth Century -- IV. Conclusion -- 7 Between Frankfurt and Vienna: Two Traditions of Political Ecology -- I. The Tale of Two Papers -- II. Neurath: Socialist Calculation and Ecological Economics -- III. Neurath and Hayek -- IV. Horkheimer and the Critique of Instrumental Reason -- V. The Legacy of an Unresolved Dispute -- 8 Uncertainty, Action and Politics: The Problem of Negligibility -- I. Preliminaries: Climate Change and the Question of Thresholds -- Comparing Climate Change with Voting: Rational Choice Approaches -- II. Consequentialist Approaches to the Rationality and Morality of Seemingly Negligible Individual Action -- III. Conclusion: The Parameters of Power and Agency -- 9 What Kind of Problem Is Negligibility?: A Response to Melissa Lane.;Leading scholars of political thought demonstrate how the history of political ideas makes sense of environmental politics and climate change. Cover -- Half-title -- Title page -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- List of Figures -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 History, Theory and the Environment -- I -- II -- Part I Time, Nature and the Land -- 2 Is There Any Place for Environmental Thinking in Early Modern European Political Thought? -- 3 â&#x80 &#x98 Sustainabilityâ&#x80 &#x99 , Resources and the Destiny of States in German Cameralist Thought -- I. Cameralism: The Ethic of Activist Government -- II. Forests: From Proscription to Prescription -- III. Power through Knowledge -- IV. Sustaining Purposes -- 4 Abundance and Scarcity in Geological Time, 1784â&#x80 &#x93 1844 -- I -- II -- III -- 5 Slack -- I. Idle Resources -- II. The Defence of Idleness -- III. Slack -- IV. Slack, Corruption and Idleness -- V. Decadence and Renewal -- VI. Double Time -- Part II Science, Agency and the Future -- 6 The Nature of Fear and the Fear of Nature from Hobbes to the Hydrogen Bomb -- I. The Fear of Nature after the State of Nature -- II. The Lisbon Earthquake and Nineteenth-Century Disaster Science -- III. Disaster Science in the Twentieth Century -- IV. Conclusion -- 7 Between Frankfurt and Vienna: Two Traditions of Political Ecology -- I. The Tale of Two Papers -- II. Neurath: Socialist Calculation and Ecological Economics -- III. Neurath and Hayek -- IV. Horkheimer and the Critique of Instrumental Reason -- V. The Legacy of an Unresolved Dispute -- 8 Uncertainty, Action and Politics: The Problem of Negligibility -- I. Preliminaries: Climate Change and the Question of Thresholds -- Comparing Climate Change with Voting: Rational Choice Approaches -- II. Consequentialist Approaches to the Rationality and Morality of Seemingly Negligible Individual Action -- III. Conclusion: The Parameters of Power and Agency -- 9 What Kind of Problem Is Negligibility?: A Response to Melissa Lane. 10 Optimism, Pessimism and Fatalism -- Afterword: Climate Change in the Light of the Past -- Index.