November 4, 2021

CRITIQUE Virtual Author-Meets-Critics The Last Parents on Earth: Raising Children in a World in Crisis with Elizabeth Cripps (Edinburgh) – 3 November 2021, 3 pm

A Virtual Author-Meets-Critics with Liz Cripps on her forthcoming book The Last Parents on Earth: Raising Children in a World in Crisis (MIT Press, 2023)

We raise our children in a flawed and fragile world. Climate change, pandemics, superbugs resistant to antibiotics. Extreme inequality, endemic poverty, institutionalised racism and sexism. What does it mean to be a ‘good parent’, in the face of all this? This book is one woman’s quest for an answer, as a philosopher and a mother. It asks what we owe our kids. Not only a world they can grow and prosper in, but a just one, where their children and grandchildren can flourish too, where all children can lead a decent life, and the amazing ecosystems around them can thrive. It shows why affluent mums and dads should be activists, should live and raise their kids differently. It acknowledges just how hard this is to do, in the face of social indifference, psychological blocks – and how much parents already have on their plates.

Commentators:

Dr Tim Fowler, Senior Lecturer in political theory, University of Bristol, and author of Liberalism, Childhood and Justice (Bristol, 2020).

Dr Marlies Kustatscher, Lecturer in childhood studies, University of Edinburgh, and deputy director of CERES, Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland.

Professor Harriet Shugarman, Executive Director of ClimateMama, professor of climate change and society and world sustainability, and author of How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change (New Society, 2020).
Professor Adam Swift, Professor of political philosopher, University College London, and co-author of Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships (Princeton, 2014).

Chair: Dr Philip Cook, Senior Lecturer, Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh.

Elizabeth Cripps is a moral philosopher and writer. She’s a senior lecturer in political theory, associate director of CRITIQUE, and the author of Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World (Oxford, 2013). Elizabeth has published widely in academic journals on climate justice, climate ethics and parental responsibilities, and she has another trade book forthcoming: What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care (Bloomsbury, 2022).

To register and receive the link, please go to Eventbrite.