On Extinction and Denial: How humanity is coping with the climate crisis.

This week we are starting at the End. 

This week on the show myself and lucy are joined by Tad Delay and Ben ware. Tad the author of Future of Denial:The Ideologies of Climate Change. He’s also an assistant Professor of Philosophy at Baltimore City Community College. Ben Ware author of On Extinction: Beginning Again At The End. Ben is the Co-director of the centre for Philosophy and art at Kings College London. 

I imagine if you’re listening or watching  this you’re probably in some state of shock when it comes to how humanity is responding to the collapse of the planet as we know it. Maybe you’re also finding yourself cringing or at odds with how some of those who are most seemingly committed to stopping climate breakdown go about their business. How are we to understand how humanity is reacting at this moment. Are we in denial about the end of the world? Are some of us enjoying the idea of the end? Is learning more and more facts about climate change actually helping? Or are we finding comfort in being correct about the rolling doom. 

We decided to bring ben and Tad together to discuss there work as they both draw on psychoanalysis to understand how we’re reacting at the end of the world. We discuss how our relation to time affects our ability to act on climate change, how denial can manifest itself in government action, the joy at the end of the world and how joe biden can be the “best president on climate” while opening oil and gas fields and support a genocide in Gaza. 

Links
Tad has done a great series of podcast discussing his book with varies thinkers and contemporaries. Listen to it here
https://open.spotify.com/show/64e8AfK6GmHyhztfTVY8sI?si=6c756546bfe94433

You can pick up Ben's book On Extinction: Beginning at the end from Verso here
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2604-on-extinction

And you can get Tad's book Future to Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change from Verso here.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2857-future-of-denial

Shout outs
Kairos, a new venue in London exploring radical ideas for social and cultural change in response to the climate and nature crises.  @KairosClub
https://www.kairos.london/

All the staff at Stepping hill hospital in Stockport 

Richard Seymour @leninology

Unite UCU
@UniteUCU

Support the show