Abstract
Depictions of life in the Anthropocene often envision a future of environmental catastrophe where natural resources have been depleted and the Earth has been ravaged by storms and drought, finally turning into uninhabitable wasteland. The term ‘environmental apocalypse’ has been coined to highlight the similarities between the current environmental condition and biblical descriptions of the end of the world. This chapter shows that notions of environmental apocalypse are strongly related to a modernist understanding of linear time. Through an engagement with postcolonial theology, this chapter argues that a more politicized understanding of the environmental apocalypse comes about when the end of the world is conceived as variably distributed across geographical, social, and material divides in the present. To highlight the importance of spatializing the environmental apocalypse, this chapter introduces examples from the field of biodiversity preservation, specifically, the politics of seeds.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Further Reading
Keller, C., Nausner, M. and Rivera, M. 2004. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. St. Louis: Chalice Press.
Martínez Andrade, L. 2015. Religion without Redemption: Social Contradictions and Awakened Dreams in Latin America. London: Pluto Press.
McNeish, W. 2017. From Revelation to Revolution: Apocalypticism in Green Politics. Environmental Politics 26(6): 1035–1054.
Skrimshire, S. 2014. Climate Change and Apocalyptic Faith. WIREs Climate Change 5: 233–246.
Westhelle, V. 2010. After Heresy: Colonial Practices and Post-Colonial Theologies. Eugene: Cascade Books.
References
Brummett, B. 1991. Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric. New York: Praeger.
Buell, F. 2010. A Short History of Environmental Apocalypse. In S. Skrimshire (ed.) Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. London and New York: Continuum.
Burke, A., Fishel, S., Mitchell, A., Dalby, S. and Levine, D. J. 2016. Planet Politics: A Manifesto from the End of IR. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44(3): 499–523.
Carvalhaes, C. 2019. Lex Naturae: A New Way into a Liturgical Political Theology. In R. Rosario Rodríguez (ed.) T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology. London: T&T Clark, 449–466.
CBS. 2008. A Visit to the Doomsday Vault. 20 March. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-visit-to-the-doomsday-vault/ [accessed 12 February 2020].
Chaskey, S. 2014. Seedtime: On the History, Husbandry, Politics, and Promise of Seeds. New York: Rodale.
Crop Trust. 2017. Svalbard Global Seed Vault. https://www.croptrust.org/our-work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/ [accessed 1 February 2021].
Dalby, S. 2014. Rethinking Geopolitics: Climate Security in the Anthropocene. Global Policy 5(1): 1–9.
Davis, H. and Todd, Z. 2017. On the Importance of a Date, or Decolonizing the Anthropocene. ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 16(4): 761–80.
Dillon, M. 2011. Spectres of Biopolitics: Finitude, Eschaton, and Katechon. The South Atlantic Quarterly 110(3): 780–792.
Fagan, M. 2017. Who’s Afraid of the Ecological Apocalypse? Climate Change and the Production of the Ethical Subject. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(2): 225–244.
Fava, S. 2013. Environmental Apocalypse in Science and Art: Designing Nightmares. London and New York: Routledge.
Feinberg, M. and Willer, R. 2011. Apocalypse Soon? Dire Messages Reduce Belief in Global Warming by Contradicting Just-World Beliefs. Psychological Science 22(1): 34–38.
Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late-Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ginn, F. 2015. When Horses Won’t Eat: Apocalypse and the Anthropocene. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105(2): 351–359.
Globus Veldman, R. 2012. Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse: How Imagining the End Facilitates Moral Reasoning among Environmental Activists. Ethics & the Environment 17(1): 1–23.
Goldenberg, S. 2015. The Doomsday Vault: The Seeds That Could Save a Post-Apocalyptic World. Guardian, 20 May. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/20/the-doomsday-vault-seeds-save-post-apocalyptic-world [acessed 14 February 2021].
Gore, A. 2016. The Case for Optimism on Climate Change. https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_the_case_for_optimism_on_climate_change?language=nl [accessed 31 January 2021].
Guterres, A. 2019. Secretary-General’s Remarks at Opening Ceremony of UN Climate Change Conference COP25. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2019-12-02/secretary-generals-remarks-opening-ceremony-of-un-climate-change-conference-cop25-delivered [accessed 31 January 2021].
Hall, J. R. 2009. Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hennessy, J. 2019. Sydney Looks like a Smoke-drenched Apocalyptic Nightmare. Business Insider, 10 December. https://www.insider.com/sydney-smoke-bushfires-causes-climate-change-2019-12 [accessed 31 January 2021].
Hulme, M. 2010. Problems with Making and Governing Global Kinds of Knowledge. Global Environmental Change 20: 558–564.
Kinchy, A. 2012. Seeds, Science, and Struggle: The Global Politics of Transgenic Crops. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Lilley, S., McNally, D., Yuen, E. and Davis, J. 2012. Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth. Oakland: PM Press.
Löwith, K. 1949. Meaning in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
McNeish, W. 2017. From Revelation to Revolution: Apocalypticism in Green Politics. Environmental Politics 26(6): 1035–1054.
Nausner, M. 2012. Postkoloniale Theologien. Verkündigung und Forschung 57(2): 117–131.
Northcott, M. 2015. Eschatology in the Anthropocene: From the Chronos of Deep Time to the Kairos of the Age of Humans. In C. Hamilton, Gemenne, F. and Bonneuil, C. (eds) The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. London and New York: Routledge, 100–111.
Ray, J. 2012. The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Richard, P. 1995. Apocalypse: A People’s Commentary on the Book of Revelation. Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Rothe, D. 2019. Governing the End Times? Planet Politics and the Secular Eschatology of the Anthropocene. Millennium: Journal of International Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1177/0305829819889138.
Skrimshire, S. 2010. Introduction: How Should We Think about the Future? In S. Skrimshire (ed.) Future Ethics: Climate Change and Apocalyptic Imagination. London: Continuum.
Stott, P. A. and Thorne, P. W. 2010. How Best to Log Local Temperatures? Nature 465: 158–159.
Tatschner, F. 2018. Dekolonisierte Eschatologie. Ein Versuch der Veränderung christlicher Zeitlichkeitsvorstellungen. In A. Nehring and Wiesgickl, S. (eds) Postkoloniale Theologien II: Perspektiven aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer GmbH, 53–72.
Taylor, M. L. 2004. Spirit and Liberation: Achieving Postcolonial Theology in the United States. In C. Keller, Nausner, M. and Rivera, M. (eds) Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. St Louis: Chalice Press.
Thistlethwaite, S. and Potter Engel, M. 1990. Introduction: Making the Connections among Liberation Theologies around the World. In S. Thistlethwaite and Potter Engel, M. (eds) Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers.
Turnhout, E., Dewulf, A. and Hulme, M. 2016. What Does Policy-relevant Global Environmental Knowledge Do? The Cases of Climate and Biodiversity. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 18: 65–72.
Ward, K. 2008. Augenblick: The Concept of the ‘Decisive Moment’ in 19th- and 20th-Century Western Philosophy. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate.
Washington Post. 2020. Australia’s Apocalyptic Fires Are a Warming to the World. 6 January. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/australias-apocalyptic-fires-are-a-warning-to-the-world/2020/01/06/138a4ffc-30b8-11ea-91fd-82d4e04a3fac_story.html [accessed 31 January 2021].
Weber, J. 2018. Al Gore Is Still Optimistic. Bloomberg Businessweek, 20 September. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-09-20/al-gore-beholds-the-climate-apocalypse-and-is-still-optimistic [accessed 8 January 2021].
Westhelle, V. 2012. Eschatology and Space: The Lost Dimension in Theology Past and Present. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wojcik, D. 1997. The End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America. New York: New York University Press.
Wolfe, J. 2017. Eschatology. In J. Rasmussen, Wolfe, J. and Zachhuber, J. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 676–696.
Yountae, A. 2018. Postcolonial/Decolonial Theology. In C. D. Rodkey and Miller, J. E. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 727–734.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Alt, S. (2021). Spatializing the Environmental Apocalypse. In: Chandler, D., Müller, F., Rothe, D. (eds) International Relations in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53014-3_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53014-3_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53013-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-53014-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)