Climate change and the apocalyptic imagination

Abstract

Climate change faces us with yet another in a long line of actual or potential disasters that have occurred over the last century. One powerful and recurring response to such events frames them as catastrophe from which either physical or spiritual escape is imagined. This article attempts a psycho-social analysis of this apocalyptic response to actual or imagined disasters and traces two variants of this response -the redemptive and the survivalist. Whilst such responses appear radical, I argue that they are essentially a defence in the face of despair that has already found expression within climate change science and activism. In contrast, I suggest that what is required is a realistic response to the possibility of climatic disaster, a possibility the probability of which cannot be known. The quandary we face is how to sound the alarm without being alarmist.

Ecology, psychoanalysis and global warming: present and future traumas

“…There is a sense of catastrophe in this position that precludes hope and action. Hoggett (2011) discusses the psychology of catastrophism and how this might be misinterpreted as 'depressive' in a Kleinian sense. As such, Hoggett appeals for anger, hope and passion as a necessary balance to catastrophe, a view that is also expressed by Macy and Johnstone (2012).…”

Inaction and environmental crisis: Narrative, defence mechanisms and the social organisation of denial

“…However, the Project has also been met with plenty of criticism and cynicism, not only from expected sources such as right-wing blogs (Worstall, 2010), but also from environmentalists (for example Kingsnorth and Monbiot, 2009;Gray, 2010;McIntosh, 2010;Monbiot, 2010;Townsend, 2010). Paul Hoggett's (2011) recent paper in this journal is notable in that, to this author's knowledge, it is the first to pay the Dark Mountain Project any academic attention.…”

From revelation to revolution: apocalypticism in green politics

“…On the one hand, critics such as Giddens (2015), who argue that fear-driven discourses which moralise about potential risks and dangers of climate change to induce greenethical behaviour in a consumption driven society are self-defeating. Apocalypticism is viewed as counterproductive because it enables opponents to label the environmental movement alarmist (Leiserowitz 2005) or hysterical (Hoggert 2011), while encouraging media sensationalism and fatalistic attitudes amongst publics which detract from political agency (McKinley 2008, Swyngedouw 2010, Feinberg and Willer 2011, even leading ultimately to the so called 'death of environmentalism' (Shellenberger and Nordhaus 2004). On the other hand, are commentators who argue that apocalyptic discourses play a vital role in creating the sense of urgency that is an essential spur to activism (Taylor 1991, Thompson 2009, while importantly challenging modernity's animating narrative myth of unbounded liberal progress (Ginn 2015).…”