Abstract:
I will begin with some introductory premises. The first is that there is no question that we are truly in dystopian times, living in a dark matrix of continuing economic ruination, constant war, intensifying impoverishment and displacement of peoples, and catastrophic ecological change. Just in the past year (the hottest on record) while I was working on this essay, in Ireland we had increasing toxicity and reduction in water supply, along with an array of ghost housing estates built without planning during the greed of the Celtic Tiger; and in my former home, the United States, we saw the destruction brought on by the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster as over 5,000,000 gallons of oil gushed from the well, the great bulk of which continues to endanger the wetlands and wildlife of the Gulf Coast. As James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, argues, we are at the edge of ‘tipping points … fed by amplifying feedbacks’, the most significant of which are the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice, the melting of frozen tundra, the drop in carbon absorption and the extinction of species.
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