{"id":3009,"date":"2013-01-11T08:21:14","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T08:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=3009"},"modified":"2013-01-11T08:21:14","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T08:21:14","slug":"after-sustainability-denial-hope-retrieval-a-new-john-foster-seminar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2013\/01\/11\/after-sustainability-denial-hope-retrieval-a-new-john-foster-seminar\/","title":{"rendered":"After Sustainability: denial, hope, retrieval \u2013 a new John Foster Seminar"},"content":{"rendered":"

A date for everyone's dairy, I'd say. \u00a0John Foster will speak on\u00a0After Sustainability :\u00a0 denial, hope, retrieval<\/strong><\/em> on April 30th at the University of Bath as part of the I-SEE seminar series. \u00a01600 (for tea). \u00a0This is John's Abstract:<\/p>\n

Why don\u2019t we admit that dangerous climate change is coming? It has been clear since Copenhagen that the political will to make adequate cuts in global CO2 <\/sub>emissions isn\u2019t there, and isn\u2019t likely to be generated in any foreseeable future. The international attempt to shift the world by agreement onto a sustainable trajectory has failed \u2013 indeed, it never really got started. Shouldn\u2019t environmentalists stop pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n

But denial<\/em> is not confined to those who refuse to see the serious environmental damage we are doing; it extends equally to those who refuse to see that we have missed our chance to stop it. The \u2018sustainable development\u2019 paradigm facilitates both forms of denial, since neither the grip of putative claims on us from the future, nor the predictability of specific long-term harms, is robust enough to act as a genuine constraint on what we want to do or believe now..<\/p>\n

The roots of such embedded denial lie in progressivism<\/em>, which underlies the whole environmental problematic. Material consumerism is the form in which this mindset has caused environmental damage in the first place; latterly, it has manifested itself as wilfully self-blinded technological optimism.\u00a0 Many environmentally-concerned people, however, do already suspect the inadmissible: that it is now too late for \u2018sustainability\u2019 as conventionally projected. In this talk I explore where coming out of denial could take us.<\/p>\n

Environmentalism needs to be recognised as addressed to what is wrong in our present orientation to the natural, both externally and within ourselves, and not only to what might as a consequence go wrong for the future. If what is wrong is progressivism, and this has provided the impetus for genuine advances in material welfare, our environmental situation is tragic<\/em> in the full sense \u2013 major damage ensuing from and expressing destructive weaknesses structurally inherent in important strengths. Tragedy thus conceived entails losses which can\u2019t be mitigated or compensated, but it can also reveal us to ourselves in ways from which we may be able to learn.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t really predict what will happen on the ground as global economic and ecological systems unravel, having at best a reasonable idea of where the survival of something recognisable as civilisation is most probable. We must therefore arm ourselves with insight and flexibility rather than with plans, and I offer no \u201cblueprint for retrieval\u201d, but rather some relevant illustrations of what may<\/em> be possible politically, educationally and economically, if we approach what is coming with a realism grounded in genuinely non-optimistic life-hope.<\/p>\n

.......................................<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

John <\/em><\/strong>is a freelance philosophy teacher and writer, and honorary Research Fellow in the department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion<\/a> at Lancaster University, where he also runs the department\u2019s Schools Outreach programme. \u00a0He edited Valuing Nature? Economics, Ethics and Environment<\/em> (Routledge, 1997), co-edited (with Stephen Gough) Learning, Natural Capital and Sustainable Development: Options for an Uncertain World<\/em> (Routledge, 2005), wrote The Sustainability Mirage<\/em> (Earthscan, 2008), and has published various related articles.<\/p>\n

Unmissable. \u00a0I look forward to these even more than to a new Stephen Poliakoff film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A date for everyone's dairy, I'd say. \u00a0John Foster will speak on\u00a0After Sustainability :\u00a0 denial, hope, retrieval on April 30th at the University of Bath as part of the I-SEE seminar series. \u00a01600 (for tea). \u00a0This is John's Abstract: Why...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-updates","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3009\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}