Climate change is now a fact of contemporary life. It has become widely accepted that not only is the reality of change significant, and probably irreversible, but also that it is largely human-induced practices that are its basic cause. While climatic and geological events are certainly ‘natural’, there is massive evidence that the intensity and acceleration of climate change are triggered and sustained by our cultural practices and by the economic structures, e.g. non-renewable energy consumption and extractive pollution generation, that fuel these practices. We experience the biological and meteorological facts. It behooves us then to analyse the cultural and civilisational factors that have led us, wittingly or unwittingly, into crisis, and then, on the basis of this analysis, to search for alternative patterns of life that are sustainable and which contribute least to exacerbate the already serious situation.