Emergency Revisited

Abstract

In the first part of the article, the author analyses the last phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, which he terms “ex-communication”. A characteristic of this phase is not only virus”, but also the irrevocable transition to “living with the virus” but also the retroactive erasure of potentially valuable lessons from the pandemic for dealing with other crises. After outlining a new legal understanding of climate emergency in the second part of the text, the author concludes by focusing on the global warming debate in the 1970s. In doing so, he posits that we must search for the origin of all forms of “climate delay” (Lamb et al.) in the confluence of two contradictory tendencies during that period: the determination to stop global warming early and the techno-utopian desire to prevent the onset of an ice age by deliberately warming the atmosphere. The irony is that the caution offered as a way out of the contradiction not only failed to mitigate climate change but ultimately prevented the onset of an ice age for the foreseeable future. Such clear signals of the Anthropocene present us with a new choice, i.e. a choice between two versions of the self-evident, two versions of the impossible.