The book under review is “a prolonged enquiry” into an interesting and very important question in the context of global warming: “Why do most people, most of the time, act as though a threat of such magnitude can be ignored?” (p 1). One response lies in what the author self-importantly calls the Giddens Paradox, which the politics of climate change has to cope with: that since “the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible in the course of day-to-day life, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them...(until it gets) too late” (p 2).

Giddens Paradox