The Worm at the Core touched on how humans have developed systems of culture and domination that suppose to keep us placated in the face of death. One thing that escaped me, though, is how the fear of death inspired such rapid technological innovation (and subsequently spawned a myriad of climactic issues) and why our fear of death does not spawn action in the face of the deadly consequences of climate change.

In a separate course, I am reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement. One of the points he makes, which I think applies neatly to this course, concerns the increasing rates of destruction and lack of infrastructure to adjust to climate events linked to climate change (Ghosh specifically talks of Mumbai’s lack of preparedness for cyclones). Ghosh also points out that, while much of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century concerned themselves with dominating nature, we have subsequently made ourselves more vulnerable to the volatility of the climate.

Western, industrialized societies view the Earth and, subsequently nature, as a resource to be mined, extracted, or dominated. The building of dams, destruction of mountains, and filling of lakes represent efforts to change the natural environment for the sake of human advancement at the expense of the natural environment. While we now understand the many scientific processes that cause hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc., we are still wholly unable to stop them or even effectively cope with them. The irony then is that, through the unfettered mining and exploitation of Earth’s resources, we have worsened the conditions we already struggle to cope with. In the quest to become the master of nature, nature has become even more untamable.

I think the emphasis on technology as the primary solution to climate change is hubristic. Already, our attempts to master nature have ended in disaster that harms the people least involved in the creation of the problem. Unchecked economic growth and technological advancement inherently fails to recognize and reflect on how we got to where we are in the first place, and not every society has sought to expel fear of death through the domination of the planet as the West has. We might look towards nations like Ecuador, who established the “rights of nature” in their constitution, recognizing Earth and nature as stakeholders in the conversation surrounding climate change. Substantial, effective change is not possible until this is recognized on a larger scale.