John Barkdull is author of the recently published, Confronting Climate Change: From Mitigation to Adaptation

This year, August became the fifteenth straight month of record high global temperatures. We are seeing the consequences now. For example, Phoenix, Arizona experienced 113 consecutive days of temperatures over 100ºF, smashing the previous record of 76 days in 1993. Hospitals reported patients suffered serious burns from touching hot surfaces such as pavement. In late September 2024, Hurricane Helene struck the US Southeast, resulting in over 200 fatalities and nearly $100 billion in damages. Broadly, societies have endured scorching heat waves, destructive hurricanes, devastating floods, and unprecedented species loss on every continent.

The resulting higher temperatures mean societies and communities must adapt to a much warmer global climate, and even more adaptation will be required in the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body charged with informing policymakers of the most recent climate science, states that adaptation is about “reducing climate risks and vulnerability,” and it asserts adaptation should enable “climate resilient development.” Adaptation entails a process of adjustment to changing climatic conditions to reduce the damage to the ecology and to human society. International negotiations, scholarship, and science have increased their emphasis on adaptation as global average temperatures have risen and prospects for meeting emissions reduction goals have dimmed.

As temperatures rise even further, adaptation could demand profound alteration of social, economic and political institutions. Transformational adaptation in a radically changed world could be required to cope with massive human migration, profound changes to agricultural practices, severe stress on infrastructure and human habitation, health threats, and more.

The most recent two major IPCC reports assert that rising temperatures could require transformational adaptation rather than such incremental adaptations as strengthening infrastructure and installing air conditioning. Numerous policy makers and scholars have adopted the language of transformation to signal the urgency of the climate crisis, including the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The pressing question might become whether existing global and national institutions are capable of identifying, selecting, and implementing the drastic measures that a hot world will require. It may be that a growth-oriented global economy in a world order dominated by heavily armed sovereign states simply cannot recognize, choose, or implement effective, humane forms of adaptation. If adaptation demands reallocation of resources away from current priorities such as military spending, maximizing profits, and consumerism, then a global capitalistic state system could stand as the major obstacle to meeting the climate challenge. If so, then transformation must encompass profound change in global and national economic, political, social, and cultural institutions. Thus, transformation would mean much more than the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Transformation would mean radical social change, probably to ecosocialism.

Although the IPCC has asserted the importance of transformational responses to climate change, and many officials and scholars have made the same plea, the fact is that high-level negotiations proceed as if existing institutions are largely unalterable, and that they are capable of managing the problem.

But if existing institutions prove unable to meet the challenge, then the world could experience chaotic, poorly planned, inequitable and even violent responses to the social disruptions resulting from climate change. Accordingly, leaders in the UN, other important international organizations, national governments, and citizens must take seriously the full scope of what adaptation might require for civilization to survive and thrive.

The study I conducted showed that adaptation has been part of the global dialogue on climate change since the world first paid attention to the problem. Over the decades, adaptation became understood to require profound institutional transformation. But official negotiators have not embraced the full implications of transformation. Possibly, as the effects of climate change become more obvious and more damaging, transformational adaptation of economic and political institutions will be on the global agenda. The world can only hope that it is not too late. 

LRP just turned 40 … and we couldn’t have done it without the support and encouragement of countless friends and colleagues! We are sending out a huge thank you to all!

In celebration, we welcome you to our redesigned website. Our new platform will, we hope, not only enhance your experience, but also foster a deeper connection with our community of scholars, librarians, educators, and other readers.

Over the years, we’ve strived to be a pioneering force in independent publishing, and we take great pride in what and who we publish. We’re honored by the relationships we’ve formed along the way. What follows are some kind words from just a few of our spectacular authors.

 
Stephen Morris, author of The Corruption Dilemma: Controlling the Power of the Powerful and many more:
I have had the pleasure of working with Lynne and her team for many years. They couple kindness with professionalism, making the publishing experience pain-free and fulfilling. Congratulations on 40 years of contributing to intellectual explorations and discoveries.
 

John Clark, editor of Political Identity and African Foreign Policies and coauthor of Africa’s International Relations: Balancing Domestic and Global Interests: 
Lynne Rienner has been a great friend to the scholarly community that studies the Global South. She takes a personal interest in every project, and LRP publishes the highest quality work in the social sciences. Lynne’s eye for excellence and innovation in academic work is unmatched. Her deep understanding of the social science world has helped countless scholars, myself included, improve their work. The LRP staff refines and processes manuscripts with great professionalism, but in a timely manner. The publications of LRP have been a great resource for the scholarly community for over forty years.


Lynda Barrow, author of Religion and Politics on the World Stage: An IR Approach:
Writing during summers and sabbaticals, Religion and Politics on the World Stage was a nine-year labor of love. I was thrilled to have LRP publish it - and to work with Lynne Rienner directly as the editor. Her guidance resulted in a better, more focused book.


Robert Springborg, editor of Security Assistance in the Middle East: Challenges ... and the Need for Change among others:
I may hold LRP's record for author and editor with most books published under its imprint. The first was in 1999 followed in 2021 and 2023 with hopes for two more in 2025.

I have obviously been a glutton for the pleasure of working with what I have found to be the most dedicated, professional, considerate publisher in the business, headed and staffed by folks with whom it is always a delight to deal and whose personal engagement with publishing projects is unequalled. This happy state of affairs is due both to the commitment of Lynne and her staff, and to the fact that theirs is one of the few remaining entirely independent, privately owned presses. How nice it is to be able to join LRP's outstanding list of publications on the Middle East.

I should like to raise a toast to Lynne and her staff for their signal contribution to academic publishing while making the experience of doing so such a pleasurable one for me and for friends and colleagues.