Carbon-neutrality is dead.
So, now what?
After carbon-neutrality was declared an official goal in the 2015 Paris Agreement it became fashionable for governments and corporations to declare their intention to become carbon neutral by 2050 or soon thereafter. This was never more than an empty promise, however. The deadline was set far enough in the future to make immediate action unnecessary and few if any governments or corporations ever accepted a realistic plan to actually achieve carbon-neutrality. A decade later, they have largely given up pretense. Some have officially given up the goal; others have silently voided or discarded it. Of course, carbon-neutrality by 2050 was...
The Possibility of a Revolution
(This is part 6 in the No Time for Utopia series.) In The Ethics of Climate Insurgency I argued that an insurgency aimed at overthrowing the enemies of our children is not morally justified because it is unlikely that β in the present situation β such an insurgency can succeed. It may seem that that conclusion also makes a discussion of the possibility of some kind of revolution to avoid catastrophe and establish something like the Lesser Dystopia is moot, but that is not exactly the case for (at least) two reasons. Firstly, in considering the possibility of a revolution...
The Ethics of Climate Insurgency
(This is part 5 in the No Time for Utopia series.) Letβs say that you want to avoid the Mad-Maxian hell of societal collapse that climate change is making increasing likely, then how can and should you try to do that? Youβd have an incredibly powerful and well-connected enemy, and just asking them to give up their short-term profits in order to save the planet isnβt likely to have any effect β at least, it hasnβt had any effect thus far. Then what? Very many different answers can be given to that last question, but I want to focus here...
Crisis and Inertia (1)
Physical objects resist any change in their position and state of motion. This is inertia, often defined as the physical principle that moving objects keep moving in a straight line with constant speed unless or until something stops them or changes their direction. Inertia doesnβt just apply to physical objects, however, but to social (and other kinds of) objects as well. Social structures and systems, or βinstitutionsβ, are as inert as physical objects. If an institution is moving in a certain direction, it will keep moving in that direction with more or less constant speed (which can be zero, of...
The Hegemony of Psychopathy (Excerpt)
This is an edited collection of excerpts from my book/pamphlet The Hegemony of Psychopathy that was just published. (It can be purchased in paperback or downloaded for free in PDF format at the publisher’s website.) * * * The Holocaust has received surprisingly little attention from social and political philosophers. This is surprising because the scale and extent of the atrocities involved in the Holocaust should be impossible to ignore. If we humans can do that, then that makes a difference β or should make a difference β for our beliefs about the ideal society, for example. At the very...