Routledge handbook of global environmental politics /

It is impossible to overpraise a volume that is comprehensive, forthright, mostly well-written, and practices what it preaches, including offering suggestions about how to teach global environmental politics and why it is necessary to conduct transdisciplinary research that engages environmental issues and values from multiple perspectives. Individual chapters are wide-ranging and surprisingly accessible to nonspecialists. Engagement across chapters reveals the power of structural violence and self-interest to block strong environmental action, which is also evident as writers move across different levels of analysis. The tacit dialogue among the chapters on sustainability and expertise and the three chapters focused on justice and ethics show that people are already well beyond the threshold of being able to impose effective limits on destructive climate change and, supported by chapters on agents and activism, far from arriving at that point. This conclusion is reinforced by chapters examining practices such as energy use, fishing, and agriculture that illustrate the denial, ignorance, and indifference toward those outside self-defined communities of mutual duties and rights. Students, practitioners, activists, clergy, and general readers interested in environmental issues would appreciate this excellent collection if the price of the volume does not inhibit access. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels. M. Tetreault Trinity University