The good ancestor

Science writer Richard Fisher's well-argued case for taking a long-term view opens up possibilities - and hope.

- VERONIKA MEDUNA

THE LONG VIEW: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time, by Richard Fisher (Wildfire, $39.99)

In times of ever-shortening attention spans and increasingly threatening crises, British geologist turned science writer Richard Fisher's book is a welcome antidote to doomism.

Essentially, it is a cultural history of our relationship with time. But the book's focus is on the growing philosophical movement of longtermism, and Fisher builds a convincing, and very readable, argument for adopting a longer perspective to improve our chances of tackling slow-burning threats such as climate change and ecological collapse collectively and fairly. As an added benefit, we might gain a more optimistic outlook in the present.

If you stop long enough to take notice, it's obvious that we have surrendered to short-term thinking. It's reflected in politics driven by election cycles rather than issues, economic strategies defined by quarterly targets and annual profits, and constant multichannel information flows that rarely slow to reflect.

Fisher argues that many of us, at least in the West, have embraced a blinkered, present-focused approach to life, with little time to learn from history and at best muted awareness of how our collective actions shape the future.

Among the almost inevitable consequences