John C. Mutter
In The Disaster Profiteers, John C. Mutter argues that when no one is looking, disasters become a means by which the elite prosper at the expense of the poor. As the specter of increasingly frequent and destructive natural disasters looms in our future, this book will ignite an essential conversation about what we can do now to create a safer, more just world for us all.
It's what happens after the disasters that really matters-when the media has lost interest and the last volunteer has handed out a final blanket, and people are left to repair their lives. What happens is a stark expression of how unjustly unequal our world has become. The elite make out well-whether they belong to an open market capitalist democracy or a closed authoritarian socialist state. In Myanmar-a country ruled by a xenophobic military junta-the generals and their cronies declared areas where rice farms were destroyed by Cyclone Nargis as blighted and simply took the land. In New Orleans the city was re-shaped and gentrified post Katrina, making it almost impossible for many of its poorest, mostly black citizens to return.
https://www.amazon.com/Disaster-Profiteers-Natural-Disasters-Richer-ebook/dp/B00SEVGBFU
How will future climates be different from today’s world—and what consequences will changes in climate have for societies and their development strategies? This book, published in 2020 is a primer on the essential science for grasping the workings of climate change and climate prediction. It is accessible for readers with little to no background in science, with an emphasis on the needs of those studying sustainable development.
John C. Mutter gives a just-the-facts overview of how the climate system functions and what we know about why changes occur. He recounts the evolution of climatology from the earliest discoveries about Earth’s climate to present-day predictive capabilities, and clearly presents the scientific basis of fundamental topics such as climate zones, ocean-atmosphere dynamics, and the long-term cycles from glacial to interglacial periods. Mutter also details the mechanisms of climate change and the ways in which human activity affects global climate. He explains the science behind some known consequences of rising temperatures, such as sea level rise, hurricane behavior, and climate variability. The primer discusses how climate predictions are made and examines the sources of uncertainty in forecasting. Climate Change Science is a straightforward and easy-to-read treatment of the fundamental science needed to comprehend one of today’s most important issues
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/climate-change-science/9780231192231
This 2025 update of the original Climate Change Science Primer includes a new full Chapter on Geoengineering (now Chapter 6), and a section in Chapter 5 on Attribution Science. It is also updated to be consistent with the latest IPCC Assessment Report AR6. The motivation for the book has not changed from the original 2020 edition.
How will future climates be different from today’s world—and what consequences will changes in climate have for societies and their development strategies? This book is a primer on the essential science for grasping the workings of climate change and climate prediction. It is accessible for readers with little to no background in science, with an emphasis on the needs of those studying sustainable development.
John C. Mutter gives a just-the-facts overview of how the climate system functions and what we know about why changes occur. He recounts the evolution of climatology from the earliest discoveries about Earth’s climate to present-day predictive capabilities, and clearly presents the scientific basis of fundamental topics such as climate zones, ocean-atmosphere dynamics, and the long-term cycles from glacial to interglacial periods. Mutter also details the mechanisms of climate change and the ways in which human activity affects global climate. He explains the science behind some known consequences of rising temperatures, such as sea level rise, hurricane behavior, and climate variability. The primer discusses how climate predictions are made and examines the sources of uncertainty in forecasting. Climate Change Science is a straightforward and easy-to-read treatment of the fundamental science needed to comprehend one of today’s most important issues.
Disasters and Development book is now available:
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a/9780231206365/
https://www.amazon.com/Disasters-Development-Institute-Sustainability-University/dp/0231206372
This new book for 2025 results from our co-instructing a course of approximately the same name for the School of International and Public Affairs. It has been available to Masters and undergraduate students at Columbia. The book was published in October 2025 and is a further edition of the series of Primers in Sustainable Development, from CU Press https://cup.columbia.edu/book/disasters-and-development/9780231206365/
As with the Climate Change Science Primer this book derives from, and is intended firstly to support teaching at the undergraduate to Masters level. We teach always together in the classroom. While John Mutter is a geophysicist and Sonali Deraniyagala is a political economist we are each present in every class, regardless of which of us is giving the lecture. After schooling the students in the basics of the natural phenomenon of extreme events and economic growth theory and how capital shocks can distract societies at different development levels, the remainder of the class is devoted to case studies presented by students.
We examine disasters and their human development consequences across a full spectrum of possibilities from hurricanes in poor countries to earthquakes in rich countries, to responses in democratic governments to those in authoritarian regimes., and recoveries in many different settings. The case studies we describe are infused throughout the text, rather than appear as a separate section.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a/9780231206365/
https://www.amazon.com/Disasters-Development-Institute-Sustainability-University/