The Ecological Catastrophe Facing Democracy

In this article we aim to analyze the specific temporal regimes associated with the discourses of environmental – and especially, climatic – catastrophe. By empirically describing and analyzing the images of the future used in catastrophist discourses, we seek to demonstrate that these discourses lead to anti-democratic political positions. Hence, we normatively argue for the replacement of these discourses by another understanding of the future, of temporality, and of time itself, and we theoretically define the lineaments of such an understanding. Finally, our aim is not to challenge the severity of the current ecological crises but rather, by way of reframing these crises in a present setting, and by pointing to their contradictory multiplicity, to contribute to a serious assessment of their nature. Only thus, is it possible to acknowledge the possibility of a democratic politics of socio-ecological relations.