(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The challenges of the climate crisis require not only technical and political action, but also that our world view and human view change. Latour believes that the eco-crisis and the insights it brings show us that all living beings are deeply dependent on each other. People not only realize their existence in interaction with other people, but also by living in harmony with nature, which facilitates their existence and maintenance.
With the four essays in the publication, Latour wants to problematise how several features of the Christian tradition have stood in opposition to man's relationship with nature. In classical Christian thought, Latour argues, theologians have preached that salvation involves a distancing from the world and its contents, including nature. In other words, religious beliefs have often been preached along with one world hostility. In light of the eco-crisis, Latour writes that he wants a change in this rhetoric and the way of thinking among believers, especially in Catholic France, where he himself was from.
But Latour is not only critical of Christianity. He is particularly excited about Pope Francis' papal letter from 2015, Laudato Si' – About caring for our common home. More specifically, Latour is interested in the way the Pope links the issue of poverty and social inequality with the climate crisis. The metaphors of the Pope, writes Latour, mean that Mother Earth is understood as the most oppressed and neglected of all the poor. She is depleted and mistreated by our predatory drive. The juxtaposition of the eco-crisis with the problem of poverty makes the Pope's contribution a breakthrough, Latour believes.
According to the Pope, the climate crisis is also a class problem, as those who know the most about the consequences of our ecological predation are the poorest and most vulnerable.
According to the Pope, the climate crisis is also a class problem, as those who know the most about the consequences of our ecological predation are the poorest and most vulnerable. Drought, bad crops and natural disasters point to a relationship between the economically impoverished and the ecological crisis we have created. In the Christian tradition, Latour therefore sees an opportunity to unite these problematics during the same struggle.
Salvation versus ecology?
Although the Pope's project is ambitious, writes Latour, serious problems remain in the way Christians understand fundamental features of their faith. An example is that many people see God and the sacred as something infinitely higher than the earthly. While scientifically speaking we can argue that man is dependent on nature, and that the eco-crisis is a result of our one-sided exploitation of it, religious thinking usually emphasizes a indifference towards the natural world.
A clear example of this is James Watt, who was US Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan. To justify his choice to allow loggers and coal companies to invade national parks and forests in the United States, Watt claimed that there was no point in protecting nature in the United States, since Jesus would return in a few generations anyway and end this world. "Why", thought Watt, "should one care about nature and not let the companies serve anyone fast money when Jesus is going to end the world in a few years anyway?”
Although Watt's point of view is vulgar and simple, Latour writes, he believes that it is representative of how many religious people think. The world and nature appear here as unimportant in the light of God overnatural and saving power. Although pitting God and creation against each other has its theological problems in light of Pope Francis' papal letter, such an attitude is nevertheless very widespread. It is not unusual that the most militant climate skeptics often also have a positive and religious expectation of the end of the world. The end of the world is actually something many religious people look forward to, as a finale where the saved will be saved and the sinners lost.
Drought, bad crops and natural disasters point to a relationship between the economically impoverished and the ecological crisis we have created.
Although Latour admits his theological shortcomings, he aptly challenges today's theologians. Especially in his critique of doomsday thinking where humanity will face a just judgment, Latour asks how such notions are compatible with the gloomy climate apocalypse humanity is awaiting. How can religious promotion of the end of the world be reconciled with the need to save the planet as our most central basis of life?
So, although the Pope's letter thematizes a harmonious relationship between God and nature and encourages humanity to respect creation as sacred, the notion of the end of the world remains something many Christians pleases themselves, which is evident in recent documentaries such as Praying for Armageddon, where Norwegian directors show the way in which evangelical Christians in the USA support Israel in order to accelerate apocalyptic prophecies from the Revelation of John. These tensions are problematized and highlighted in ecological terms in the current publication.
The new climatic regime
The very core of Latour's argument is that theology and other worldviews have to adapt to what he calls "the new climatic regime": that we live in a world with a multiplicity of beings who are mutually dependent and who live side by side on a soil that is vulnerable to destruction. Latour claims that there must now be an end to a demonization of the earthly from a religious point of view, and that we are required to pay extra attention to the earth in a time where it is denied and mistreated.
But also beyond theology, Latour wants our world view and human view to be based on the deep and mutual dependence in which all living beings live. From this perspective, the religious hopes for the end of the world can be read as one individualistic desire that salvation is something that includes he lived groups over others. Such an exclusive understanding of salvation stands in contrast the new climatic regime, which emphasizes an interdependence between all living beings.
The individual person
Latour's criticism is therefore not only directed at theology, but also at ideals of the individual as a free and independent being. Anthropocentric thinking is connected here with individualism and neoliberalism. Individualistic and exclusionary ideals appear to Latour as a one-sided and aggressive way of relating to nature and people.
The notion of the isolated and self-sufficient individual is wrong.
Of course, we can live a life that is based on making the world bend to our will and goals, but such an attitude, according to Latour, is precisely to blame for the climate crisis and predatory exploitation of nature taking place. In recent thinking and criticism of individualistic ideals, it has become increasingly clear that the notion of the isolated and self-sufficient individual is wrong. Man can only realize himself through others.
Now it remains to realize that this realization does not only take place in our relationship with other people, but also in our relationship with the earth. Latour suggests that our relationship with sister earth is at least as important as the relationship with our human brothers and sisters. The conditions of possibility for our existence are not only anthropological, but ecological.
