Abstract
This chapter introduces the idea of energy as a paradox. Climate change too is paradoxical: simultaneously all-encompassing and absent. The chapter summarizes the book and introduces the perspectives of the energy orthodoxy and the heterodoxy. The former preaches the energy of unlimited ‘volts.’ The latter preaches the energy of ‘virtues,’ which are bounded by the golden mean. Our high-energy civilization is premised on the gamble that growth and the control of Fate can be sustained. Our future is either green growth or degrowth.
The most thought-provoking thing about our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking
Martin Heidegger 1954
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Gardiner, Stephen. 2010. A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gardiner, Stephen, et al. 2011. Climate Ethics: Essential Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1954. Was heisst Denken? (What is Called Thinking?). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Jamieson, Dale. 2014. Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed – And What It Means for Our Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leopold, Aldo. 1945. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press.
Milly, P.C.D., et al. 2008. Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management? Science 319 (5863): 573–574.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Briggle, A. (2021). Introduction. In: Thinking Through Climate Change. Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53587-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53587-2_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53586-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-53587-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)