Realism and the Climate Crisis: Hope for Life

Description

In the teeth of climate emergency, hope has to remain possible, because life insists on it. But hope also has to be realistic. And doesn’t realism about our plight point towards despair? Don’t the timid politicians, the failed summits and the locked-in consumerism all just mean that we have left things far too late to avoid catastrophe? There is a deeper realism of transformation which can keep life powerful within us. It comes at the price of accepting that our condition is tragic. That, in turn, calls for a harsher, more revolutionary approach to the demands of the emergency than most activists have yet been prepared to adopt. This is a book to think with, to argue and disagree with – and to hope with. Front Cover Realism and the Climate Crisis: Hope for Life Copyright information Dedication Table of contents A Note on Notes Acknowledgements Introduction: Hope, Realism and the Climate Crisis Grounds for hope? Tough hope A quick preview 1 The Demands of Realism Avoiding illusion The vicious syllogism A bleak prospect Disillusioned hope … ? … or life-hope? 2 Transformation? Transformative possibilities Not so unprecedented? Counter-empirical hope Summary – and back to realism 3 Creating Possibility Hoping against hope Possibility and human action Action and causality The collective-action dilemma ‘No one is too small to make a difference’ 4 Responsibility Beyond Morality Morality and the atmosphere Follow the footprints? Life-responsibility Creative power and social transformation 5 The Bounds of Utopia Transformative realism and reality Utopianism and responsibility Hope and defeasibility Towards a tragic vision Conflicted life-energy 6 Climate Crisis as Tragedy Problems, ‘wicked’ and ‘super-wicked’ Problems and values The alternative framing Climate and conflicted life-energy Climate tragedy and rough coping 7 On the Way to Revolution Tragic resilience Transformation as revolution? The Green New Deal Extinction Rebellion 8 The New Revolutionary Dynamic Rebellion, morality and the intolerable Revolution and immiseration Existential immiseration Immiseration for whom? 9 The Vanguard of Hope Where is this minority? Three bugbears ‘Undemocratic’ ‘Fascist’ ‘Elitism’ A revolutionary programme Destabilizing the fossil-fuel state Building the shadow eco-state Public education through disaster A serious Green politics? Notes Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 References Index Back Cover