Parents for a Future

Rupert Read

From Shelf: Recommended Ethical Business Books

A short book proposing a way of thinking about - and taking action against - our dire ecological predicament. The intention is that it should function as a short, sharp and timely response to our present situation, intended for a general, non-specialist audience, something like Paulo Giordano's How Contagion Works, or Paul Krugman's Fuzzy Math.

That our ecological future appears grave can no longer come as any surprise. And yet we have so far failed, collectively and individually, to begin the kind of action necessary to shift our path away from catastrophic climate collapse.

In this stark and startling little book, Rupert Read helps us to understand the direness of our predicament while showing us a metaphor and a method - a way of thinking - by which we might transform it. From the relatively uncontroversial starting point that we love our own children, we are introduced to a logic of care that iterates far into the future: in caring for our own children, we are committed to caring for the whole of human future; in caring for the whole of human future, we are committed to caring for the future of the natural world. Out of such thinking, hope emerges.

As Read demonstrates in this urgent call to action, accepting that we care for our own offspring commits us to a struggle on behalf of us all.