Infinite Responsibility - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 135

Notes
114. For a harrowing discussion of a recent failure to halt genocide, see Roméo
Dallaire and Brent Beardsley, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of
Humanity in Rwanda (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004).
115. Library of Congress, Bill Summary and Status, 105th Congress (1997-1998),
S. Res 98, htp://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:S.R ES.98:.
116. Al Gore, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (Emmaus,
Pennsylvania: Rodale, 2009).
117. For classic discussions of infinite responsibility, see Emmanuel Levinas,
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority , translated by Alphonso Lingis
(Pitsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), especially 220-247, and
Levinas, Otherwise Than Being: Beyond Essence , translated by Alphonso Lingis
(Pitsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), especially 131-162. For
a recent meditation on similar themes as they bear on our current ethical
and political dilemmas, see Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of
Commitment, Politics of Resistance (New York: Verso, 2007).
118. Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (New York:
Peng uin, 20 06).
119. Diamond, Collapse , 277-308.
120. Stephen Jay Gould, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (New
York: Norton, 1977), 14; see also 38, 62.
121. For further reflections on biblical religion and its relevance for our response
to climate change, see chapter twelve.
122. In the midst of disaster, people can demonstrate an amazing capacity for
generosity; see Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary
Communities that Arise in Disaster (New York: Penguin, 2009). But if climate
change becomes truly severe, it will constitute an ongoing, endless disaster,
in contrast to the specific, local events Solnit describes, stretching the human
capacity for generosity much further.
123. For discussions of grieving for environmental devastation and loss, see
Phyllis W hindle, “The Ecology of Grief,” in Ecopsychology: Restoring the
Earth, Healing the Mind , edited by Thomas Roszak, Mary Gomes, and Allen
Kanner (New York: Sierra Club Books, 1995), 136-149; Kristine Kevorkian,
“Environmental Grief,” Ecology Global Network , February 15, 2012, htp://
www.ecology.com/2012/02/15/environmental-grief/; and Marie Eaton,
“Environmental Trauma and Grief,” Curriculum for the Bioregion Initiative,
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College, August 2012, htp://
serc.carleton.edu/bioregion/sustain_contemp_lc/essays/67207.html.