Stolen future, broken present: The human significance of climate change

dc.contributor.authorCollings, David A.
dc.date.accessioned2018-03-20T15:46:24Z
dc.date.available2018-03-20T15:46:24Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractThis book argues that climate change has a devastating effect on how we think about the future. Once several positive feedback loops in Earth’s dynamic systems, such as the melting of the Arctic icecap or the drying of the Amazon, cross the point of no return, the biosphere is likely to undergo severe and irreversible warming.Nearly everything we do is premised on the assumption that the world we know will endure into the future and provide a sustaining context for our activities. But today the future of a viable biosphere, and thus the purpose of our present activities, is put into question. A disappearing future leads to a broken present, a strange incoherence in the feel of everyday life.We thus face the unprecedented challenge of salvaging a basis for our lives today. That basis, this book argues, may be found in our capacity to assume an infinite responsibility for ecological disaster and, like the biblical Job, to respond with awe to the alien voice that speaks from the whirlwind. By owning disaster and accepting our small place within the inhuman forces of the biosphere, we may discover how to live with responsibility and serenity whatever may come.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationCollings A, D. (2014). Stolen Future, Broken Present : The Human Significance of Climate Change. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. doi: 10.3998/ohp.12832550.0001.001en
dc.identifier.doi10.3998/ohp.12832550.0001.001
dc.identifier.endpage240
dc.identifier.isbn978-1-60785-314-5
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/5649
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherOpen Humanities Pressen
dc.relation.ispartofseriesCritical Climate Change
dc.relation.urihttps://openhumanitiespress.org/
dc.rights© 2014, David A. Collings. This is an open access book, licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike license. Under this license, authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy this book so long as the authors and source are cited and resulting derivative works are licensed under the same or similar license. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher. Statutory fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Read more about the license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
dc.subjectClimate changeen
dc.titleStolen future, broken present: The human significance of climate changeen
dc.typeBooken
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