374. David Orr: Reforming Democracy for a Warming World — Pathways to Thriving in a Post-Fossil Fuel Era

Democracy in a Hotter Time calls for reforming democratic institutions as a prerequisite for avoiding climate chaos and adapting governance to how Earth works as a physical system. To survive in the “long emergency” ahead, the book suggests ways to reform and strengthen democratic institutions, making them assets rather than liabilities. Edited by David W. Orr, this collection of essays proposes a new political order that would enable humanity to thrive in the transition to a post-fossil fuel world.

Orr gathers leading scholars, public intellectuals, and political leaders to address the many problems confronting our current political systems. Few other books have taken a systems view of the effects of a rapidly destabilizing climate on our laws and governance or offered such a diversity of solutions. These thoughtful and incisive essays cover subjects from Constitutional reform to participatory urban design to education; together, they aim to invigorate the conversation about the human future in practical ways that will improve the effectiveness of democratic institutions and lay the foundation for a more durable and just democracy.

David W. Orr is Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse. He is a founder of the Atlanta Environmental Symposium, the Meadowcreek Project, the Oberlin Project, the journal Solutions, and of the State of American Democracy Project. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years.” His current work at Arizona State University is on the repair and strengthening American democracy.

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