This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives. Deep Adaptation refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realisation of increasing and irrevocable disruption, by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.

The contributors to this book come from diverse fields including philosophy, psychology, education, leadership, facilitation, community development and private enterprise. Unlike mainstream work on climate adaptation, these writers do not assume that our current economic, social, and political systems can be made resilient in the face of rapid and dangerous climate change. Instead, they demonstrate the caring and creative ways that people are responding to the most difficult realisation with which humanity may ever have to come to terms.

This book is the essential introduction to the concept, practice and emerging global movement of Deep Adaptation to climate chaos. Edited by the originator of the concept, Professor Jem Bendell, and a leading figure in climate activism, Professor Rupert Read, it brings together scholarship and practical measures for policy and action.

Jem Bendell is Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria and the originator of the Deep Adaptation movement.
Rupert Read is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, a Green Party campaigner, and spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.

Introduction: what now the limits are breached?

Jem Bendell and Rupert Read


Part I: The Predicament


1. The scientific case of global over-heating and the root of denial

Wolfgang Knorr


2. Adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy

Jem Bendell


3. The reasons for anticipating collapse

Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens, Gauthier Chapelle, Daniel Rodary


Part II: Shifts in Being


4. Climate Psychology and its Relevance to Deep Adaptation
Adrian Tait


5. Deeper implications of societal collapse: co-liberation from the ideology of e-s-c-a-p-e.

Jem Bendell


6. Unconscious addictions: mapping common responses to climate change and potential climate collapse

Rene Suša, Sharon Stein, Vanessa Andreotti, Tereza  ajkova, Dino Siwek, and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Collective


7. Facilitating Deep Adaptation - enabling more loving conversations about our predicament

Katie Carr and Jem Bendell


8. The Great Turning: Reconnecting through Collapse

Sean Kelly and Joanna Macy


Part III: Shifts in Doing 


9. Leadership and management in a context of deep adaptation
Jonathan Gosling


10. What Matters Most?  Deep Education Conversations in a Climate of Change and Complexity

Charlotte Von Bulow and Charlotte Simpson


11. Riding two horses: The future of politics and activism, as we face potential eco-driven societal collapse

Rupert Read


12. Relocalisation as Deep Adaptation

Matthew Slater and Skeena Rathor


Concluding the Beginning of Deep Adaptation

Jem Bendell and Rupert Read