Tuesday 11 October, 6.30pm until 8.30pm, Edale Room, Hallmark Hotel, Midland Road, Derby DE1 2SQ
Tickets: £7.50 (£5 concessions and East Midlands Salon Members) per person. Tickets are available from the Academy of Ideas website.
The prediction by a small-town American preacher that the Rapture was due to begin on 21 May 2011 caused much amusement in the international media and blogosphere – heightened when the date was amended to 21 October after Judgement Day yet again failed to arrive. Yet Harold Camping is only the most high profile, and by far the most mocked, prophet of the apocalypse this century. From the millennium bug paranoia which kickstarted the Noughties, through to the increasingly doom-laden predictions of runaway climate change, the menace of global jihad or the numerous warnings of flu pandemics, the 21st century citizen no longer needs a man with a sandwich board to be informed that ‘the end is nigh.’
While some blame rolling news coverage and a credulous public for the prevalence of this pessimistic outlook, there can be no doubting the modern world faces some very particular uncertainties, and if nothing else, the reaction to them is all too real. Intrusive security checks at airports and civil liberty clampdowns are a routine feature of the post 9/11 world; stockpiling of expensive flu vaccines by the WHO and governments are a constant source of controversy when pandemics do not arise; while the Fukushima meltdown reignited the debate over nuclear safety. At the same time, comparatively minor incidents such as 2010’s Icelandic volcano eruption lead to kneejerk closing down of European airspace, and scientists across the West are often the most ardent advocates of taking a ‘safety first’ attitude towards experimentation under the precautionary principle.
Is the obsession with ‘end times’ a sober assessment of the numerous risks we face, or symptomatic of a broader cultural unease with the ‘problems’ of modernity? Are we in need of a dash of Matt Ridley’s ‘rational optimism’ in looking forward to an ever-improving future, or is there a risk of Panglossian complacency in assuming we’re as safe and advanced as we could be? Should natural disasters such as the 2011 Tokyo earthquake and tsunami remind us that even the most modern societies are still surviving at nature’s mercy, or suggest instead that humanity should do much more to shape its own destiny?
 | Dr Mayer Hillman environmentalist; senior fellow emeritus, Policy Studies Institute; author/co-author of over 50 books, including How We Can Save the Planet and The Suicidal Planet |
 | Dr Ken McLaughlin lecturer in social work; author, Surviving Identity: vulnerability and the psychology of recognition |
 | Anthony O'Hear professor of philosophy, University of Buckingham; editor, Philosophy; director, Royal Institute of Philosophy |
 | James Woudhuysen visiting professor, London South Bank University |
| Chair: | |
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Dr Vanessa Pupavac
associate professor; co-director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham |
At Chris Huhne’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, the survival of the Earth trumps all other arguments
James Woudhuysen, Independent, 11 October 2011
Followers of an evangelical broadcaster who declared that Saturday would be Judgement Day are trying to make sense of the failed prediction.
BBC News, 23 May 2011
With the human population heading towards seven billion, spiked challenges the miserabilists who say this is a Very Bad Thing.
Brendan O'Neill, spiked, 14 January 2011
Almost all the stuff we need to do to slow global warming is stuff we probably want – and eventually, will need – to do anyway. We might do it a little earlier than otherwise, but if we plan for it, and stick to those plans, we can make the transition that much smoother, and more cost-effective.
Martin Wright, Green Futures, 4 February 2010
Time is fast running out to stop irreversible climate change, a group of global warming experts warns today. We have only 100 months to avoid disaster.
Andrew Simms, Guardian, 2 August 2008
The biggest risks include nuclear war, biotech plagues, and nanotechnology arms races. The good news is that the biggest existential risks are probably decades away, which means we have time to analyze them and develop countermeasures.
Ronald Bailey, Reason magazine, 19 July 2008
