Stefan Skrimshire

For environmental thinkers of different stripes—from techno-scientific ‘eco-pragmatists’ to climate activists—the concept of human failure—whether psychological, moral, or spiritual—is at odds with the language of hope needed to generate meaningful action. As Clingerman’s work on geo-engineering attests, failing to adequately meet the challenge of climate and ecological crisis is frequently expressed as a state to be overcome, through divine or human techno-scientific intervention. Against such a view, I want to propose failure as generative of environmental ethical thinking, particularly in times of mass extinction and irrecoverable ecological devastation. I do this by linking failure with two concepts that have become important to environmental humanities scholars: first, the concept of mourning as an ethical disposition (via the philosophies of Benjamin, Freud, and Derrida) that can foster more just, compassionate and sustainable ways of living. Second, inviting further interaction with Clingerman’s work, I propose to link failure to the concept of environmental hermeneutics, by understanding language itself as a sign of human failure.

The Anthropocene concept allows human history to be imagined within the temporal framework of planetary processes. Accordingly, some environmentalists increasingly favour massively lengthening the temporal horizons of moral concern. Whilst there are defensible reasons for doing so, I wish to take issue with the ‘secular time’ perspective underlying some such approaches. To make my case, I present, in the first section, two recent manifestations of the long view perspective: a) ‘deep future’ narratives in popular climate science and futurism; b) the ideas behind the Long Now Foundation. In the second section, I apply a critical lens to these perspectives via classic analyses of secular time by Charles Taylor, Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. I conclude by suggesting that these post-secular critiques should be considered alongside recent approaches to the Anthropocene and the ‘geological turn’ from new materialist perspectives.

According to recent scientific reports, certain climatic tipping points can be understood as “points of no return,” in which, for instance, anthropogenic interference changes global temperatures irreversibly. Such an outcome presents a situation unlike any considered before by risk theorists, for it introduces an element of radical uncertainty into the very value (considered ethically, culturally, and politically) of taking action on climate change. In the following I argue that ethical bases for action that rely on traditional concepts of risk (such as the dominant precautionary principle) are vastly ill equipped to make sense of the catastrophes of the scale predicted by most climatologists today. Instead we need to understand the possibilities of political action beyond thresholds assumed by tipping-point calculations. This in turn means investigating action as a form of risktaking and as operating against the conservative connotations of environmental precaution. It also implies acting against the calculative assumption that one’s actions are meaningless “unless this happens by this time,” a sentiment propelled, perhaps, by the repetition in mainstream media of reference to the finality of points of no return.