William Vitek

Clarkson University

As if the Future Mattered: Philosophy for a Post-Carbon World

In a post carbon-fuel world, new social and political systems will have to provide liberty, education, political stability, economic mechanisms, and a social net without plentiful oil and natural gas. This traditional energy is not simply in our cars and trucks. It's in our food, water, clothes, medicines, and nearly every high tech product. It's even in our concepts of what it means to be free. Meeting this challenge will require the exploration of alternative social and political systems which surely deserve philosophical and ethical attention.

With scholarship support from the Center for Human and Nature, I will pursue work on a collection of essays focused on a future with far less access to carbon-rich resources than has been available for the last five hundred years, with the catastrophic climactic consequences created by this run on the carbon bank, and with the inability of short-term, quick-fixes to do much about either. The book is written with the long-haul in mind, and with the recognition that cultural and social changes of the sort that will be necessary to live within the boundaries of contemporary sunlight are significant; which is to say substantial, radical, disconcerting for those with the most to lose, and no doubt filled with discontinuities.

But it is in such a time when philosophy can be most productive and useful. First, it helps us understand what is going on in the transition from one worldview to another. Second, it addresses the most fundamental question facing human beings: what is a good way to live in the post-carbon world? And third, in its most practical forms philosophy can help us live our day-to-day lives with awareness, thoughtfulness, and conviction.

Written for an educated, general audience, the book will bring together a number of my essays and papers (with some still needing to be written), including:

“Time to Put Away the Parlor Games: What’s Wrong with the Academy”

“The Liberty-Traction Hypothesis: Acknowledging our Geological Inheritance”

“I’m Warm, Therefore I Think: The Delusion of Cartesian Thinking”

“Brother (and Sister), Can You Paradigm?”

“Recess is Over: Education and the Sovereignty of Ecosystems”

“Joyful Ignorance and the Civic Mind”

“The Limits Manifesto: No Harm, No Hubris, No Hurry”

“Citizenship for a New Century”

“What Are The Odds if We Continue to Bet On a Dead Horse?”

In addition to several speaking engagements, I will also continue my collaboration with Dr. Wes Jackson on two projects: A co-edited book titled The Upside of Ignorance: Prospecting for an Alternative Worldview (forthcoming in 2008 with the University Press of Kentucky), and a co-authored book tentatively titled Consulting the Genius of the Place: The Ecosystem as Real Deal and Conceptual Tool.