LA CATÁSTROFE CLIMÁTICA COMO PROFECÍA SECULAR Y MILENARIA

Abstract

The climate change movement is a powerful cultural entity. It neither affirms nor denies the reality of its central narrative, which is for science to decide, and yet it is culture that explains the power and prevalence of its narrative, the political and social responses to it, and the apparent will of many people to incur immense costs in order to avoid a supposed existential threat, even though our ability to alter its consequences is still doubtful. This narrative uses fear as a powerful motivator that is instilled from childhood and whose apocalyptic condemnation is determined in advance by collective disobedience, while salvation is promised to the pious and repentant who comply with its onerous provisions, many of them useless. In 1983, Michael Barkun, now professor emeritus at Syracuse University in New York, published a meticulous essay that prophetically identifies the emergence of a “new apocalypticism” in the highly politicized media discourse of our time. Selected excerpts are shared below, subjecting them to current public debates on the subject, particularly emphatic in their catastrophic projections and dire consequences.