Recent Issues

Global Economy
Can Globalization 'Go Social'?

• In a world continuing to harden socially because of rapid and unsettling modernizations, could prevailing thinking about globalization shift toward the social?

Civil Society
Big Democracies at the Crossroads

• In a balloting year filled with surprises from India and Venezuela, and with Americans battered by the Bush-Kerry race, what do Russia and Indonesia tell us about the future character of democracy as a globally expanding project?

Boiling Point: Courting
public opinion amid crisis

Excerpts from Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists have Fueled the Climate Crisis and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster are reprinted by arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2004. From the dustjacket:

“In the groundbreaking Boiling Point, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan argues that, unchecked, climate change will eclipse every other issue facing us today. What began as an initial response of many institutions—denial and delay—has grown into a crime against humanity. Gelbspan’s previous book, The Heat Is On, exposed the financing of climate-change skeptics by the oil and coal companies. Now, his brilliant reporting exposes the strange and surprising group of players who—wittingly or unwittingly—have worsened the crisis.

“According to Gelbspan, the fossil-fuel industry is directing the Bush administration’s energy and climate policies—payback for helping Bush get elected. In a time when the science has become so robust and the impacts so visible, the White House’s actions—from withdrawing form the Kyoto Protocol to manipulating EPA reports—represent corruption disguised as conservatism. But even more surprisingly, Gelbspan also points a finger at the news media, which have essentially ignored the biggest story of this century, and environmental activists who have acquiesced in compromises that ignore the urgency and magnitude of the problem.”