The age of climate denialism is far from over. The Future of Denial asks us to consider why we squander the short time we have left.
Will capitalists voluntarily walk away from hundreds of trillions of dollars in fossil fuels without force? And, if not, who will force them? The age of denial is over, or so we are told, yet emissions continue to rise while gimmicks, graft, and greenwash distract from new climate violence against the vulnerable.
Militias near Portland hunt imaginary left-wing arsonists during a wildfire because they cannot imagine the world is warming. Europe erects nets in the Aegean Sea to capture migrants pushed out by drought and war. An airline claims to be carbon neutral with carbon offsets. Politicians say we should fight global warming by greening the military. A coal company invents carbon offsets to justify a new facility. Drone strikes hit people living along the aridity line. Yes, Exxon knew as early as the 1970s, but the basics of global warming were already understood before the American Civil War. Like a return of the repressed, what we do not want to know keeps returning to harm the marginalized and shift blame.
By:
Tad DeLay
Imprint: Verso Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 153mm,
Spine: 24mm
Weight: 472g
ISBN: 9781839765438
ISBN 10: 1839765437
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 30 July 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction part I. Denial 1. How to Deny a Catastrophe 2. Footprints and Offsets part II. Sciences 3. Extinctions 4. Carbon Dioxide 5. What They Knew and When They Knew It part III. Decarbonization 6. Fossil Capital 7. Energy Trajectories 8. Decoupling and the Limits to Growth part IV. Management 9. What Does the Liberal Want? 10. Adaptation and Mitigation, or Technological Seductions part V. Barbarism 11. The Greatest Migration 12. The North Will Not Escape This Storm Epilogue Acknowledgments Index
Tad DeLay, PhD is a philosopher, religion scholar, and interdisciplinary critical theorist. His books include Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want?, The Cynic & the Fool, and God Is Unconscious. He is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Baltimore.
Reviews for Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change
"The contradictions of daily life in the global North in the face of accelerating climate change have become normalized. Sure there are those who refuse to ""believe"" in climate change, but even people who recognize the magnitude of the problem have to manage the chasm between how contemporary capitalism works and the radical otherwise that is required. This requires a vast arsenal of denial that we rarely if ever talk about, and Tad DeLay is its generous but unflinching diagnostician. This book uncovers not only the scams, lies and misinformation that sustain the degradation of people and planet, but just as importantly the repressions and suppressions that have for many become essential to making it through the day. It is also an excellent guide to how we might move forward without them, but without giving in to doom-saying. -- Geoff Mann, author of <i>In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy, and Revolution</i> An impressive, beautifully written and unsparing book. DeLay's precise, controlled fury lends itself to mournful ironies and asperous satire as he brutally exposes the sources of denial and weighs the options for a future beyond denial. Not a word is wasted in this vital intervention. -- Richard Seymour, authour of <i>The Twittering Machine</i>"
