The Ends of the World

The Christian West has lived with apocalyptic prospects for more than 2000 years, where the end of the world was associated with the second coming of Christ, with eschatology or the last things as described in the New Testament. For evangelical Christians in America, this is still a very present and defining reality, which is one reason for the neglect of environmental issues as they are convinced we are already living in the end times. As many readers will be aware, this stance is correlated with right wing Republican politics. Our individual lives also have an eschatological structure at least in respect of physical death, although many no longer believe in the other elements of judgement, heaven and hell. And now, in the Anthropocene – some would say Capitalocene - Age, we have further collective threats hanging over us arising directly from our overall impact on planetary ecosystems, both in terms of numbers and consumption. People as eminent as Lord Martin Rees give us only a 50% chance of survival to 2100.

The authors both live in Brazil, and are hence familiar with Amerindian cosmologies that have cyclical and periodic purgations and renewals - they characterise these as anthropomorphic, while our current view is anthropocentric. This background allows them an interesting perspective on one of the main themes of the book, the Enlightenment inheritance of inevitable progress towards a more desirable future. Economic progress characterised by continuous GDP growth is still the default position of governments around the world, and these people 'find repugnant the very idea of deceleration, degrowth, applying brakes, descent – sufficiency (p. 121). And yet this opposite trend is also apparent in what I call glocalisation – people buying local produce at farmers' markets and engaged in renewing their local communities. The Slow Movement is a further manifestation of this counter-culture as are views represented for more than 40 years in Resurgence and The Ecologist.

This tension or dichotomy is apparent in the terminology of humans or moderns vs Terrans, those on the side of the Earth. The future of the former, techno-moderns, welcomes acceleration, and there is even a document called The Acceleration Manifesto anticipating a technological Rapture after the Singularity when we will be able to upload the contents of our minds into a machine, and thus achieve a cyber-immortality. Moderns typify exceptionalism, where we have gained a degree of control over nature with its accompanying alienation and the covering over of Nature with human accretions. Accelerationists believe that we must choose between the animal we were and the machine we will be. They believe in a perpetual plus ultra – (always further) while the authors call for a movement plus intra – reflecting, slowing down, resisting computer zombification.

One of the important thinkers cited in the book is Isabelle Stengers, a former collaborator and co-author with Ilya Prigogine. She writes about the intrusion of Gaia as an unwelcome force or event that threatens a new barbarism – we need to stop and think – plus intra. Environmental degradation is in fact inseparable from capitalist development and the pressure of our numbers and resource consumption already mentioned – hence the birth of 'sustainable development' but the advantages have accrued to the few rather than the many in an uneven process. Humans as moderns are responsible before Terrans, which probably include most readers of this publication. However, the distinction is probably too sharp as many of us sit on both sides of the fence. We maintain a consumer lifestyle, perhaps with conscious choices, while also lending support to Terran protests and movements. Nor are we the main drivers now – as I pointed out in The Protein Crunch, it is the Chinese and Indian middle class, whose demand swamps ours. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to register as a Terran and play a small part in co-creating a sustainable future – and books such as these help one think more clearly.