An Alternative Narrative of Climate Change: Against Fear, Survivalism, and Over-securitization

As a scholar of biblical studies who has been researching the underlying ontological and epistemological issues regarding current approaches to climate change in international relations over the last few years, I hope to invite church leaders to consider some current strategies in dealing with the challenge of global warming and to start a conversation on an alternative mindset within the church.

Climate politics today is strongly driven by an impetus to control, manage, and govern crises and risks, and thus the emphasis is on securitization. What is at stake is our use of apocalyptic rhetoric in climate discourse, which has the potential to develop an antagonistic understanding of nature and climate change, push the logic of risk and threat to macro-securitization, and shift political powers from individual agency to international institutions and governments. Climate change-related problems are undeniable and serious. To be clear, technology and institutions can be instrumental in God’s healing and restoration of hope in this world. This essay interrogates the dominant survivalist mindset in the mainstream society, not completely absent among Christians, which believes that stronger crisis control and management by world powers can grant people security, well-being, and life. This discussion is intended to underscore that the fundamental commandment that Christ followers be the salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13–16) requires initially a critical understanding and engagement with a significant issue at a local and global level. As Christian believers, we face a generational task to consider how to formulate a distinctively biblical and theological response to climate change. But the first step at this critical juncture is to inform ourselves on the nature of the challenge.

The Language of Apocalypse and a Rhetoric of Doom

To convey how rapidly anthropogenic activities are driving the Earth system to what many believe to be tipping points—“large-scale discontinuities”—in the climate system,¹ climate experts and average citizens commonly utilize dramatic metaphors and scenarios of emergency, destruction, catastrophe, and extinction to describe the devastating effects of deforestation, hurricanes, floods, and other disasters that seem to be accelerating because of global warming. Today’s overwhelmingly cataclysmic environmental images warn that living organisms on this planet, including the human race, have a very limited time to prepare a response to an impending crisis. Depictions of life in the Anthropocene envision a future of environmental catastrophe, characterized by despair, chaos, and annihilation. According to this perspective, the future does not offer much hope, and people cannot do much to heal the already ailing planet threatened with gradual extinction.

Scholars from various disciplines have noted that critiques of environmental insecurity overuse alarmist and apocalyptic language, generating fear-driven interpretations and implications of the image of an endangered planet. Misperception and mismanagement of global catastrophic risk, such as climate change, can bring about extreme measures in countering the impending crisis in its apocalyptic possibilities. Today, common metaphors adopted to describe environmental challenges are those of “war” and “enemy,” expressing  climate change as an apocalypse, a well-known biblical image to signaling an imminent and unstoppable danger and threat. However, despite the ubiquitous use of apocalyptic imagery in global climate change discourse, not many people are aware of the impact apocalyptic language and imageries have on debates about global climate change as well as the consequential connection between fear and the over-securitization of climate change. The logic of apocalypse applied to climate politics puts in motion “a ‘political eschatology’ that is ‘concerned with the end of things’ and gives rise to a modern politics of security that ‘derives from the positive exigencies of government and rule that arise in restricting that end.’”²

The fact that an epidemic of rational and irrational fear, terror, and insecurity in global politics propels efforts to anticipate and govern terrorism, pandemics, and climate challenge is well acknowledged by social theorists and political theorists alike. Societal fears and anxieties are known to be politically manipulated and become economic and security policies and institutions that otherwise would have been rejected.³ A pervasive use of the theologically infused political rhetoric of doom in the global climate discourse testifies to the permanence of political theology, as reactionary politics of fear personify climate change as a deadly enemy. Yet specifically in the climate discourse, the question of how notions of the theologico-political—specifically the apocalyptic imagination—serves to dominate, produce, and reproduce politics and policies of insecurity and security seems to be overlooked. The trap of excessive, disruptive, and fear-mongering practices and policies that continue to concentrate and centralize fear and power result in an increasing macro-securitization around the world. This phenomenon is clearly seen in the ongoing securitization of climate change.

The introduction to “Climate Change and International Responses Increasing Challenges to US National Security through 2040,” issued by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, contains dire warnings concerning the security issues that will emerge because of climate change. It states,

We assess that climate change will increasingly exacerbate risks to US national security interests as the physical impacts increase and geopolitical tensions mount about how to respond to the challenge. Global momentum is growing for more ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions, but current policies and pledges are insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Countries are arguing about who should act sooner and competing to control the growing clean energy transition. Intensifying physical effects will exacerbate geopolitical flashpoints, particularly after 2030, and key countries and regions will face increasing risks of instability and need for humanitarian assistance.⁴

Climate impact is expected to raise geopolitical tensions as countries argue about how to accelerate and what constitutes a fair portion of responsibility that must be assigned to each country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Also, as extreme effects of climate change threaten the already limited natural resources such as food and water, cross-border conflicts will only intensify because of growing migration and unilateral geoengineering. Particularly, developing countries are in more vulnerable positions as they are not able to adapt to the physical changes caused by climate change and ensuing corollary effects such as growing and potential internal instability and violent conflicts. Simply put, global climate change today is seen as a security threat, and the range of security issues continues to expand—classified into national, human, international, and ecological security. ⁵

By framing climate change in the language of existential threat, risk, and otherwise apocalyptic catastrophe, a dominant response to the challenge of the Anthropocene in recent ecological politics and policy has been to treat climate change as a security issue in need of governance, management, and control.⁶ Exaggerated paranoia about climate-induced risks and dangers overstates the likelihood and calls for precautionary policies that may be characterized as overreactions.⁷ This is in no way to minimize the many effects of climate change, which exacerbate existing tensions and conflicts in international relations and domestic politics.⁸ Likewise, one cannot gainsay the legitimacy and value of research and policies concerned with environmental security. However, it is important to recognize that, since the end of the Cold War era, the definition of security has continued to proliferate.⁹ This phenomenon is particularly extensive and controversial in the research and debate on the link among environmental change, conflict, and security. ¹⁰

Objectively speaking, the future of climate is unknown and unknowable, yet climate politics heavily relies on apocalyptic imaginaries to mobilize public opinions and policies to advance new and existing climate imperatives. Emergent threats and risks are complex, uncertain, and potentially catastrophic. Studies show that urgent cries of climate apocalypse are, in fact, not as effective as one might think in propelling citizens to change their behavior. Apocalyptic discursive practices fuel politics of fear, urgency, and exceptionality by transforming climate change into an unknowable and unquantifiable sort of threat and risk that must be dealt with through aggressive reactive policies and an antagonist understanding of security.

Risk management, preventive approaches, and policies that appeal to security are increasingly called for in climate discourse.¹¹ Julia Trombetta, a researcher in politics and environment, observes that “[m]any appeals to environmental security have been made not only with the intent of prioritizing issues but also with that of transforming the logic of security and the practices associated with it.”¹² On the whole, even when climate change rhetoric does not use explicitly apocalyptic language, an antagonist framing of climate change is considered to have far-reaching implications in the global security agenda. The concept and treatment of climate change within the framework of security produces and reproduces the problematic understanding of nature as an enemy that unleashes chaos and destruction. Studies show that arguments that push for security and governance typically speak of “catastrophes as types of events that remain shrouded in uncertainty, confound expectation and challenge the predictive, preventive and protective knowledge of security experts.”¹³ Natural fearfulness underpins an anticipation of the end of the world. Fear and hopelessness spread as apocalyptic environmentalism impacts core metaphysical assumptions and political actions. Apocalyptic forms of environmentalism lead to some of the most contentious aspects of social and political change. Ill-founded notions of the apocalyptic in the climate discourse can lead to a “deadlock or a sense that there are intractable obstacles to taking action.”¹⁴ Doomist interpretations of climate change may promote philosophical arguments that it is too late to take action and defer responsibility to technocracy and bureaucracy from engaging personally with a challenge that affects social justice and economic costs. Hopelessness and deferral of responsibility caused by apocalyptic climate discourses, which highlight a catastrophic endpoint, in the end legitimize and authorize all-powerful governance structures and support arguments that push for taking aggressive measures of control and security in the name of efficiency.

An Alternative, Hopeful Narrative and
an Inaugurated Eschatology

Clearly, there is need for critical rethinking and reorientation of environmental security discourses that assume and problematize climate change as a security issue.¹⁵ Again Trombetta explains, “Security is about survival, urgency, and emergency. It allows for exceptional measures, the breaking of otherwise binding rules and governance by decrees rather than by democratic decisions. Moreover, security implies a ‘decisionist’ attitude, which emphasizes the importance of reactive, emergency measures. This set of practices is not necessarily codified nor can it be identified by specific rules.”¹⁶ It must be stressed that the extreme language of doom can only hope for human survival, not a flourishing of the cosmos. The climate change-security relationship is concerned only with existence and extinction. Climate change is considered to be a problem multiplier as environmental and security issues interlock in the context of military security, energy security, and various forms of human security. Securitization of global environmental policy mainly anticipates worst possible scenarios, and thus it is driven by the logic that mass destruction will require crisis management: protection, perception, and action to govern threats and contingencies.¹⁷ This alarmist and exceptionalist stance is unfortunately not confined only to the discourse of the Anthropocene in this modern age.

Scholars have pointed out that the logic of apocalypse suffers from the contradiction of systematic ignorance that influences the typical attitude characterizing climate policy—the will to know the future.¹⁸ The vagueness and systematic lack of knowledge that veils the danger of climate change only exacerbate the condition of ignorance and perception of apocalypse. In this line of thinking, the antagonism of climate change animating the apocalypse is bound to translate into over-securitization that normalizes and justifies exceptional politics and security to control and govern catastrophe at all times. As mentioned above, this kind of approach gives free rein to an attitude and discourse of permanent risk management that thrives on fear and insecurity. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben writes, “Messianic time is the time that time takes to come to an end” (italics original).¹⁹ He challenges his readers not to renege on their individual ethical and political vocation to an integral transformation of the self and ways of living in this penultimate and messianic time—the now time.

The warning of the tipping point from climate scientists and our neighbors who have lost homes and livelihood to the devastating effects of global warming indicates that now is the penultimate hour when we must stop leaning on the transnational institutions of power and knowledge for salvation. We must reject passivity and disavow any deferral of hope and possibilities in exchange for security called survival. Technocracy- and bureaucracy-driven modernity dictates that the logic of apocalypse that frames current approaches to climate change requires that we surrender historical action to the powers of this world. An alternative and hopeful narrative of climate change can rise above the discourse of limits and mere existence and instead recognize that we live in the “penultimate [realities] which make up our everyday human and social condition”²⁰ and push us to strive for an integral transformation of the self and of ways of living wherever we have been placed in a time such as this.

Faced with such a dire reality, where shall Christian people turn their eyes and minds? In John 17:13–16 Jesus prays for his disciples. Here, all Christians are called to be “in the world” but not “of the world.” This attitude is directly pertinent to the situation we are experiencing with the challenge of climate change. There are woeful adversity, suffering, and empirical facts to corroborate the existential fear, anxiety, and desire to securitize the future against the climate-induced catastrophes. Additionally, as Christian people who confess that we belong to the holy catholic church—the true Christian church of all times and all places—we are called to com-passion with our sisters and brothers in Christ around the world who are directly in the crossways of the climate change-related humanitarian emergencies.

While acknowledging the legitimate value of the interconnection between the environment and security, it is important to stress that the church’s climate change discourse does not have to lean on the hopeless imageries of catastrophe, crisis, or emergency to proffer effective and compelling visions for life in the face of the effects of climate change. Readers of the prophetic literature in Scripture may remember that writers from various walks of life and different sociopolitical and climate-related hardships preached fiercely about both bewildering catastrophes and confident hope. Solely going by human security concerns, power resources will continue to shift around the global geopolitical scene while claims to material resources only intensify. Christians prayerfully living in this world, but not of this world, can and must rise above a mindset of insecurity and securitization.

Attitudes toward climate change within the church are not too different from the rest. They are split between “not yet” and “here already”—a cleavage that stems from the tension in the inaugurated eschatology of “already but not yet.”²¹ Parts of the Global North perceive the climate crisis as “not yet” here, while for many in the Global South it is “here already.” A reframed apocalyptic approach to the conditions, normative sources, and implications of the climate crisis will show that the doctrine of Christ’s incarnation, suffering, death, and resurrection juxtaposed with the universality of the climate crisis can solve the conundrum of the Christian “inaugurated eschatology” as manifested broadly in the notion of time by the secular world.²² According to the inaugurated eschatology, on the one hand, the end times were already inaugurated at the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Hence, humanity can access the kingdom promises right now. On the other hand, the world is living in the end times, and it awaits the imminent return of Christ when the eventual consummation of God’s promises will happen. The two-sided reality is divided between a faction that embraces the belief that humanity is now living in the latter days vs. those who believe that the telos of all history is a separate era located somewhere in the future. In dealing with climate change, an eschatological belief for the future must be firmly rooted in the present depth of human existence and what God is doing now and here in collaboration with his children. In the words of the systematic theologian Jürgen Moltmann, history “becomes the field in which the heavenly lordship of Christ is disclosed in Church and sacrament. In place of the eschatological ‘not yet’ (noch nicht) we have a cultic ‘now only’ (nur noch), and this becomes the key-signature of history post-Christum. It is understandable that this disclosure of the eternal, heavenly lordship of Christ can then be regarded as a continuation of his incarnation.”²³ New creation is cosmic and not just an individual hope for salvation. “The present ‘day of salvation’ is a temporal anticipation of the eschatological moment.”²⁴ In other words, the belief in eschatology compels the church to be first informed and engage prayerfully and creatively with our Creator and Redeemer God’s ongoing project to heal creation in the context in which we each have
been planted.