Abstract

The continued failure of our civilisation to mobilise an adequate response to the crisis of climate change is traced to a pathological condition of culture analogous to addiction in the case of an individual. The exponential increase in the use of fossil fuel energy has both fuelled, and been driven by, an increasingly mechanistic and materialistic world-outlook that is inimical to acceptance of the measures needed to prevent catastrophic anthropogenic climate change. A holistic view of nature, drawn from such disciplines as chaos theory, complexity theory and Gaia theory, and allied to a spiritual outlook grounded in the Buddhist view of interdependence and kindred paradigms, is emerging as a response to the crisis that could form the basis of a rapid 'state-shift' of the human social / economic / cultural system, comparable to cases of spontaneous remission from cancer that is unresponsive to conventional treatment regimes.