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Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed--and What It Means for Our Future , Dale Jamieson (New York : Oxford University Press , 2014), 266 pp., $29.95 cloth.
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In 1988 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring climate change to be a common concern of mankind and urging states to treat it as a priority issue. Twenty-five years, two international agreements, and countless international conferences later, the upward trend of greenhouse gas emissions has barely budged.
Should we declare "game over" and admit defeat? The subtitle of Dale Jamieson's new book--"why the struggle against climate change failed"--suggests that the answer is yes. Jamieson remarks in the preface that he was finally able to finish his book, which he began more than two decades earlier, because he now knows how the story ends. The owl of Minerva can spread its wings, he says (paraphrasing Hegel), because "dusk has started to fall" (p. ix).
Reason in a Dark Time is Jamieson's attempt to understand what went wrong-- "why we are stuck with [climate change] and what we can learn from our failures to get out of the ditch" (p. ix). Although Jamieson characterizes the Enlightenment faith in reason as a "dream," and recognizes that it is in particularly short supply in climate change policy, he is very much a man of the Enlightenment himself--hence his title, with its emphasis on reason, even in dark times, and his stated goal, which is to make readers think. Reason in a Dark Time succeeds admirably in this task. Although much of the ground Jamieson explores is well trodden, he has a gift for translating complexities into simple, often arresting terms, and is able to make even familiar material seem fresh.
Jamieson is a distinguished philosopher at New York University, but Reason in a Dark Time is not primarily a work of philosophy. Instead, it ranges over many disciplines. In one chapter, Jamieson provides a...