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.