The Editor

London Review of Books

28 Little Russell Street

London, WC1A 2HN

Down to the politics, it indeed comes (Geoff Mann, Treading Thin Air, LRB 7 Sept 2023). That is, the framework in which decisions affecting humans in their collectivity are formed, and actions flowing from – or leading up to – those decisions are constituted. Public policy is the domain for thinking about these things. It is the mirror of historical exegesis: what needs to be done to reach a predetermined state in the future, even to guarantee a recognisable future. It deals fundamentally with uncertainty up to the catastrophism Mann alludes to. The latter has many forms – it might be losing the next election; unforeseen consequences of floating the pound; bad weather – a heavy frost may cripple the rail network for days; wildfires can close air corridors; and so on. The super-catastrophisms from cascading climate events are similar. The structures we have for working with the future breakdown. We lose the comfort of systems of government; stability of borders; tolerances built into public structures; and engineered networks for dealing with the calamitous unknown. We discover we do not own the world as we know it; we are afraid for ourselves and of the unknown in our neighbours. Our Medean fears take over – threats on all sides to be responded with destruction of our enemies, natural or man-construed, as the collaborative, superorganismic Gaia in us dies – using the vocabulary essayed by Tim Flannery, in “Here on Earth, an argument for Hope”, text 2010*. For once science is not really our friend: yes it is reassuring that while things are bad and getting worse we can measure the rate, and devise ways of efficiently adapting; we can understand what is happening and model what may – is likely to –  happen. But we do not have the language to move out of the vortex of poor – catastrophic, risky – actions; to a public policy sphere construed around new economies aligned with an expanded understanding of our place in the cosmos. Novel governance mechanisms, drawing on arguments for Hope – whether Flannery’s or his successors’, are there to be embraced.

*Although somewhat dated, it is also a good read and comfortingly scientifically literate. 

Stephen Horn