An Introduction: A Critical Geopolitics of ‘Climate Fear/Terror’: Roots, Routes and Rhetoric

Abstract

On the ‘doomsday clock’ of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which intends to caution ‘how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction’, ‘climate change’ joins the other two alarmist categories, namely ‘nuclear,’ and ‘biosecurity’. At the same time, there is a grudging acknowledgement of the fact, at least by some, that the geopolitics of fear, deployed at diverse sites by different agencies — individually and/or collectively — in pursuit of various interests and agendas, has failed to yield the desired results, including a change in public and private behavior and for that matter the ushering in of radical social movements (Lilley 2012). On the contrary, it appears to have resulted in ‘catastrophe fatigue, the paralyzing effects of fear, the pairing of overwhelmingly bleak analysis with inadequate solutions, and a misunderstanding of the process of politicization’ (ibid.:16; emphasis added). Could this be the reason that some of these multifaceted discourses of fear — that somehow remain open to political contestation and interrogation — are now being scaled up and upgraded by various regulatory agencies and alliances to the discourse of ‘climate terror’? This discourse can only have counter-terror as its Other in order to completely erase the hope (the Other of fear) of re-ordering and regulating spaces and societies allegedly more vulnerable to climate change and its threat-multiplying effects.