A Radically Different World: Preparing For Climate Change

Earlier this century I hoped that humanity – through multiple endeavours globally, nationally, regionally and locally – would rise to the challenge and rapidly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, bequeathing a relatively safe and hospitable planet to future generations.’

But in 2024 these emissions are still rising. In his new book, A Radically Different World: Preparing for Climate Change, Jonathan Boston underscores a critical need for societies to supplement urgent measures to mitigate climate change with robust adaptation strategies.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains crucial, but Professor Boston argues that the escalating impacts of climate change make adaptation unavoidable. ‘Climate change is a game changer. Among many other things, it will increasingly determine where people can live. Indeed, it will render many places around the world unliveable,’ he writes. Severe storms, wild fires, rising sea-levels and floods are now altering our world, globally and locally.

The book addresses the adaptation challenges ahead, assessing the impact on communities, the necessity for robust relocation policies, and the development of a fair and effective compensation scheme for residential property losses. There is also the troubling prospects for property insurance. ‘Property owners in vulnerable locations are facing the unenviable question: will insurance remain available and affordable? If not, what then?’

Jonathan Boston, an Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington, brings extensive expertise to these pressing issues. With a career dedicated to researching and confronting major issues for Aotearoa, including climate change, child poverty, governance and welfare state design, he brings insights that are both profound and practical.

A Radically Different World is a call to action. It asks us ‘to imagine and prepare for a different world – a world where the longstanding assumptions of spatial, geographical and physical permanence must inevitably yield under the increasing impacts of climate change to an acceptance of a more dynamic and transitory sense of “place”.’

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