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So I've been reading moral philosophers on climate justice for the past few weeks. Not once do they raise the question of whether oil and gas companies and nations blocking action at the UN have committed crimes.
These are philosophers writing about JUSTICE, people.
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These are philosophers writing about JUSTICE, people.
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Like the economists who think over 3C of warming is "optimal" fundamentally because they assume that business as usual is basically good, the philosophers cannot see that our current international petro-regime is criminal, even murderous, to its core.
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Maybe the philosophers have been influenced by the same liberal utilitarianism that led the UN to prioritize "sustainable development" *with fossil fuels* in order to try to lift people out of poverty. I mean, that would make sense.
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But reading around in all these different disciplines in order to write a proposal for "Keywords for a New Climate," I've been just floored by how so many institutionalized ways of seeing the world are just ... wholly inadequate to conceptualize the problem we're facing...
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Not to mention completely incapable of imagining solutions.
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For another example, in his brilliant *After Nature* @JedediahSPurdy talks about how the "standing doctrine" in constitutional law is built on a historical conception of private property, and concrete injury to said property...
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which doesn't provide much basic for courts to restrict GHGs or find for the plaintiffs in damage suits using nuisance claims.
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It just seems like, just ... every element of our culture, the collective fictions we've written to help us organize ourselves in the world, are just not up to climate change.
They were produced when we didn't know.
Climate change has taken us by surprise.
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They were produced when we didn't know.
Climate change has taken us by surprise.
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This thread is about to go to a heavy place. If you're not down with that get off now...
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So, in his Poetics, Aristotle describes the form that a tragedy should take (which is to say, how the plot should unfold and in what order).
And a key moment in any tragedy is the "anagnorisis," the moment when the hero recognizes the truth of his situation.
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And a key moment in any tragedy is the "anagnorisis," the moment when the hero recognizes the truth of his situation.
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Like, when Oedipus finally realizes that, lo!, he did kill his own father and has indeed been fucking his mother all these years, and *he* is the rot at the heart of Thebes who has been inadvertently seeding the plague throughout the city.
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In a tragedy this recognition comes *too late* for the hero to undo the damage he's done unknowingly.
The only way to "set the time right," as Hamlet puts it, is for him to sacrifice himself (or for him to be sacrificed by the plot) so history can move on.
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The only way to "set the time right," as Hamlet puts it, is for him to sacrifice himself (or for him to be sacrificed by the plot) so history can move on.
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Sometimes I feel like the recognition of what we've done with fossil fuels, the insights that we need to remake our world, are coming too late.
There is so much work to do to rewrite our collective fictions.
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There is so much work to do to rewrite our collective fictions.
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Of course all that might be a massive projection of how I feel about my own writing process ha ha ha.
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But, seriously, I do wish that Western culture could be rewritten to account for climate change -- metaphysically, ethically, economically, legally, poetically, spiritually, etc etc etc -- and, please, that it could be done as soon as possible.
/fin
/fin
*basis
