The importance of the humanities to the climate change debate

Abstract

This chapter examines connections between the humanities (understood as a grouping of academic disciplines that includes history, philosophy, literature, language, art and music) and climate change. The relationship between the two has a long and complex past; a past which has informed, directed and helped co-create the current debate and its understanding as a ‘crisis’. It will be shown that climate change needs the kind of understanding that only the humanities can provide, and that the humanities have a crucially important role to play in the on-going debate.