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  • Caring for the future

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Global Discourse on 18/04/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/23269995.2017.1300441

    Accepted author manuscript, 183 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Caring for the future?: a response to Rupert Read

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>05/2017
<mark>Journal</mark>Global Discourse
Issue number1
Volume7
Number of pages3
Pages (from-to)168-170
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date18/04/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Massively disruptive climate change, now inevitable, is the worst tragedy which human beings have yet brought on themselves. It is tragic in the full classical sense – a disaster entailed on the protagonist (here, humanity) by destructive weaknesses inherent in crucial strengths and virtues. There is thus no way of avoiding it by picking and choosing among our values, and its effects can neither be compensated for nor mitigated by prospective gains to offset against anticipated losses. But once we have discarded a strained and wilful last-ditch optimism, and recognised that we are not in control, we will still need to find genuine hope if we are to have any chance of coming through. This requires us to embrace the transformative power of tragic experience, letting go of values which we may hitherto have regarded as sacrosanct and welcoming the creative destruction of current assumptions and expectations as an affirmation of life.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Global Discourse on 18/04/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/23269995.2017.1300441