Dear Colleagues,
As we commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall this week, it feels somewhat wry to remember the exhilarating mood in 1989, when, for a brief moment in history, everything seemed possible, certainly in this part of the world. The contrast is huge with today’s relentless messages of climate emergency, ‘untold suffering awaiting humanity’ if we don’t change course’, other catastrophic threats (as diligently listed by Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk), or last week’s ominous quote by a UN official that “due to climate change the SDG agenda might be out of reach” (or as she put it, “ pushing to meet the SDGs could be a matter of “trying to solve the problems of the 20th century” even as grave new 21st-century challenges loom”).
True, the right analysis is perhaps, as described in this excellent essay: The great paradox of our time: everything is both better and worse than ever before.But that’s little comfort for the younger generations...
