A moral maze
I rarely listen to BBC Radio’s The Moral Maze. The sound of the panellists’ un-mazelike certainties clashing off each other grates on my nerves too quickly. But yesterday’s programme on climate change and the IPCC 1.5C report contained a lot more sense than I’d expected and a useful spectrum of viewpoints to explore, even though (or because) they were never going to meet.
Among the ‘witnesses’, Charlotte du Cann asked “Do we want to be in a civilisation that doesn’t care about extinction?” I didn’t sense that every panellist was overly concerned. Darkly ironic, then, that she was challenged on the Dark Mountain Project she’s part of supposedly ‘giving up the fight against climate change’. Her response: “I don’t think it’s about giving up. I think it’s about taking a step back and having a look from a different perspective … Whether it’s giving up flying, giving up meat — those things are really important. But there’s another part, and that’s the cultural project, that’s the culture with which we are surrounded. Whether it’s stories or art or the way we speak to each other. Even saying something’s a ‘fight’; that language isn’t necessarily the right way to go forward.”