The Politics of Climate Change in the United States and Europe
Hugh Atkinson is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at London South Bank University. His teaching specialisms are in British, European and American Politics and the Politics of Sustainability and Climate Change. His main research interests are in the areas of local democracy, sustainability and climate change. His work in these areas has been published in a range of refereed academic journals. He is the author of a number of books. These include Local Government from Thatcher to Blair: the politics of creative autonomy, co-written with Dr Stuart Wilks-Heeg published by Polity Press (2000), co-editor (with Professor Ros Wade) The Challenge of Sustainability: Linking Politics, Learning and Education (Policy Press , 2014) and Local Democracy, Civic Engagement and Community: from New Labour to the Big Society, published by Manchester University Press (2017). Dr Atkinson is also a former local councillor in the London borough of Croydon.
Peadar Kirby is Professor Emeritus of International Politics and Public Policy at the University of Limerick from where he retired in 2012. Before joining UL in 2007, he was Associate Professor in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. He is a former journalist with The Irish Times and, from 1984-86, was associate editor of Noticias Aliadas in Lima, Peru. A former secondary teacher, he now lives in Ireland’s only ecovillage in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary. He also holds the positions of adjunct professor in the Centre for Small State Studies in the University of Iceland, adjunct professor in the Network for Power, Politics and Society at Maynooth University, and in the autumn of 2012 he held the UNESCO chair of South-North studies in the University of Valencia, Spain. He has published more than 20 books, numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as working papers, pamphlets, book reviews and journalistic articles since the late 1970s. In addition to publications in English, he has published in Irish and in Spanish. Among his key works are Celtic Tiger in Collapse (2010),Towards a Second Republic (written with Mary Murphy, 2011), Vulnerability and Violence (2006) and Introduction to Latin America (2003). His new book, The Political Economy of the Low-Carbon Transition: Pathways Beyond Techno-Optimism, co-authored with Dr Tadhg O'Mahony, is due for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in early 2018.