02.07.conference.guy baeten

Saving the planet, climate cataclysm and the staging of a Malthusian moment Guy Baeten University of Lund, Department of Human Geography, Sweden Conference on Environmental Conflict, Barcelona, 2-3 July 2010 ” The pulse of the earth”, installation in Copenhagen, Bella Center, COP15, 2009

thoughts ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]

Apocalyptic aphrodisiac ,[object Object],The apocalypse is part of our ideological baggage. It is aphrodisiac, nightmare, a commodity like any other. You can call it a metaphor for the collapse of capitalism, which as we all know has been imminent for more than a century. We come up against it in the most varied shapes and guises: as warning finger and scientific forecast, collective fiction and sectarian rallying cry, as product of the leisure industry, as superstition, as vulgar mythology, as a riddle, a kick, a joke, a projection. It is ever present, but never ’actual’: a second reality, an image that we construct for ourselves, an incessant production of our fantasy, the catastrophe in mind HM Enzensberger 1978 Chesley Bonestell

Making sense ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],F Buell 2004

Historical classics of environmental dystopia ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]

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[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],John Houghton, IPCC, 1996 Al Gore, 1995 Tony Blair, 2005 “ The science is clear. The global warming debate is over ” Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2006 ” reducing greenhouse gas emissions will contribute to the material salvation of the planet from mankind’s greed and indifference” Those who disagree with the existence of global warming are ”intellectually, politically, and morally bankrupt” “ Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to split into opposing factions on it ”

[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],The existing notion that environmental problems are scientific conundrums that can ultimately be resolved through the application of expert knowledge ignores the incontrovertible reality that these issues are situated at the intersection of inseparable social and technoscientific systems Maurie Cohen, 2007

Today: dystopia reproduces deeply uneven colonial, sexist, racist relations ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object]

Today: apocalyptic Malthusianism ,[object Object],“… in a few decades the Earth could cease to be the habitat of seven billion humans; it will save itself as it dispatches all but a few of those who now live in what will become the barren regions. We in Britain live on one of the safe havens where life can continue in the heat age.” “ But what if at some time in the next few years we realise, as we did in 1939, that democracy had temporarily to be suspended and we had to accept a disciplined regime that saw the UK as a legitimate but limited safe haven for civilisation. Orderly survival requires an unusual degree of human understanding and leadership and may require, as in war, the suspension of democratic government for the duration of the survival emergency. “ I suspect that effective action to sustain this island community will come from some form of internal tribal coherence and rare leadership, not from international or European good intentions.” James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, 2009 (He nominates Sir Crispin Tickell as the new environmental authoritarian leader) World faces 'perfect storm' of problems by 2030 John Beddington, 2009, government’s chief scientific advisor There are far too many people living in Britain already. Once our population passed the 20 million level around 1850, it became too numerous. We have long passed the line of sustainability. As for the planet, its maximum sustainable population is no more than 3 billion, I would say. UK population must fall to 30m Jonathon Porritt, chair Sustainable Development Commission Aubrey Manning

OPTIMUM POPULATION TRUST David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Paul Ehrlich, Aubrey Manning, Jonathon Porritt, Crispin Tickell, ... ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],Apocalyptic merger of deeply misanthropic, authoritarian, reactionary, conservative, post-democratic, xenophobic, elitist, approach to the environment

One apocalyptic future ,[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],The apocalyptic metaphor promises relief from analytical thought, as it tends to throw everything together in the same pot... Everything is conceived as a hidden sign of an imaginary totality: catastrophe in general. The tendency to hasty generalisation damages that residual power of clear thought that we still have left Enzensberger 1978

02.07.conference.guy baeten

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