Don't Just Do Something, Sit There! Ecology, Theory,Ideology

Timothy MortonSomething is horribly wrong (*clip). Ecological thinking is this guy—JohnnyDeep, not Helena Bonham Carter. If we have properly absorbed themessage of ecology, it means we are going to feel like this guy, at least for awhile, no? This is what I'm calling dark ecology. Like the EPA just saidbasically global warming is real: “Oh great! Global warming is real! Tell allyour friends! Let's partay!” would be the wrong response.There's a pretty obvious reason why Republicans are in such denial aboutglobal warming. Accepting the truth of global warming would mean thatreality is not wired for libertarianism or individualism or rigid hierarchies,or almost any of the other right wing sacred cows.

2On the global warming and global warming denial sites I visit veryregularly, there seem to be two major genres of statement. One is aninjunction: “Well, global warming is happening, but just let Nature/evolutiontake its course.” This basically means that we have no responsibility for,nor should we feel any guilt about, suffering beings and changingecosystems. It also implies that somehow there's an automated processgoing on (called Nature) that we should not interfere with—an invisiblehand, if you will, hardwired into reality “over there” beyond our intentions,beyond society (which is itself of course modeled as a social contractbetween freely agreeing individuals). The other genre of statement is adenial of totality: “Well it snowed in Boise Idaho last week, so it's notwarming up where I am, so global warming is a crock of …”You will first observe that these two genres suffer from Freud'sborrowed kettle problem: there are too many reasons to deny globalwarming, reasons that contradict each other. Global warming is happening,and we should just let Nature take its course; global warming isn'thappening, so stop whining about it. There's a third statement genre,actually, something like: “Okay, it's happening, but there's no proof that wecaused it” (the reactionaries' favorite word is “anthropogenic global

3warming,” which makes it sound technical and scary and geeky). I guess thisgenre is somewhere in between denial and acceptance.What can we learn from these genres of global warming denial?Perhaps the first is that the perceived threat is (and I'm going to sound likeOscar Wilde here) far more than merely real—it's also a fantasmic threat,that is, a threat to reactionary fantasy as such. To accept global warming isto give up your fantasy that we are individuals who have just agreed on alevel playing field to have a social contract; that capitalism is an automatedprocess that must continue without intervention of even a mildly social-democratic kind (viz. the “Tea Parties” against Obama's resetting of the taxcode to Clinton era specifications). These two halves of reactionarysentiment are of course already intrinsically at odds with one another—oneis about agreements freely chosen, another is about an automated processyou have to leave alone. The global warming view, from the reactionarystandpoint, involves inverting both halves of the sentiment. First, society isnot an agreement between pre-social individuals but an already existingtotality for which we are directly responsible. And second—oh yes, thefirst inversion is also the second one (see how nicely my ecosocialist brainflattens out the contradiction here?).