Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism

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Als je hiervoor toestemming geeft, kunnen we info uit je bestellingen samenvoegen met je favorieten, algemene klantinfo en gegevens van anderen als je ze hier toestemming voor hebt gegeven. Utopianism for a Dying Planet examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today’s thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of catastrophe. We have known for decades that the process known as global warming was a near-inevitable result of industrialisation. This burden should not fall unfairly on the lowest producers of emissions in the less developed world. Margaret Atwood is a more awkward case, because she long denied – implausibly – that her work was science fiction, even as it was widely read and analyzed as a prominent example of it).

Ending fossil fuel extraction within this decade, while warming would still continue for some time, could enable us to avoid its worst effects, and to level off global temperatures before the earth burns up. The main themes of the utopian tradition from the twentieth century onwards have been the reconstitution of self and society through technology. Claeys maintains that utopianism proper is not, contra its legion of critics, a perfectionist or millenarian doctrine.He surveys the development of these themes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before examining twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates about alternatives to consumerism. The utopian tradition, which has been critical of conspicuous consumption and luxurious indulgence, might light a path to a society that emphasizes equality, sociability, and sustainability. This move follows, in part, from his commitment to the enhanced sociability model of utopianism; he wants to exclude science fiction narratives because, on his account, they do not engage extensively with this topic.

So my book proposes that the history and concepts associated with the utopian tradition can be extremely helpful in the transition to sustainability.It is good to see the focus broadened away from climate change alone – which is all that 99% of politicians recognise as a problem (if they accept there are environmental problems at all) – to the even more existential issue of sustainability. To those minded to join up the dots, forest fires, melting glaciers and icecaps, record temperatures in the Arctic and elsewhere, spell out one narrative: we have reached a turning point in our battle against nature, and we are staring at imminent defeat. This will entail progressive taxation to end extreme concentration of wealth, and the abolition of tax havens and evasion, for the cost of achieving sustainability will be a substantial portion of the world’s wealth – many trillions of pounds. And so, in our reluctance to acknowledge the facts, and our own role in their making, we conspire together to ignore the coming maelstrom. This will entail an immediate move to renewable forms of energy, reforestation, a drastic reduction in the most dangerous forms of consumption, and many other measures.