The Global Environmental Crisis: The Limitations of Scientific Knowledge and the Necessity of Utopian Imagination

The Global Environmental Crisis presents a new perspective on our inattention and inaction in the face of a major crisis.

We cannot proceed without scientific knowledge, but we cannot exclusively rely on it. What we need, in addition to scientific knowledge, is utopian imagination to make us understand the nature of the crisis and to suggest an alternative vision of a viable future.

This book is an essential resource for students and instructors across the social sciences, especially sociology and environmental studies. It will also be a crucial and accessible text for general readers interested in climate change and how to imagine a better world for themselves and future generations.

John Lie is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Lie’s main scholarly interest is social theory. He is the author of Modern Peoplehood (2004). His longstanding interest in the environment has led him to write a book on sustainability - Japan, the Sustainable Society (2021) - and our inattention to and inaction on the global environmental crisis.