A Slow and Endless Horror - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 101

the coming decades this history of violence will continue outside of state
control, becoming an endemic feature in failed states around the world.
Throughout the past several centuries, then, human beings have never
been assured that the life they know will endure; on the contrary, the
prospect of global violence, the atempted decimation of whole peoples,
and in recent decades, the destruction of the entire human race have
loomed large as distinct possibilities. We have been living with disas-
ter for a long time. By now we may have become used to the possibil-
ity that the entire lifeworld in which we live is terribly fragile and that
humanity itself may disappear. In response, however, we have atempted
to beat back the forces of destruction in the hope we can put the worst
behind us and enter an era of peace. In the United States, for example,
we have tended to assume that the emancipation of the slaves put the
most egregious forms of oppression safely in the past. The international
community, having founded the United Nations, warded off a nuclear
war, survived the Cold War, and prevented the outbreak of many other
conflicts, may also believe that it has finally marked out the boundary of
disaster's kingdom.
How well does climate change fit within this history? In her remark-
able Earthseed series, composed of the novels Parable of the Sower and
Parable of the Talents , Octavia Butler depicts a future United States
wracked by the consequences of climate change, speculating that in a
society torn by violence, insecurity, poverty, and lawlessness, slavery will
return. The form of slavery she envisions is more sexual and economic
than racial, based in the exploitation of individuals rather than a vis-
ible category of persons. Nevertheless, her work suggests that if things
go awry, the forms of injustice we Americans think we have surpassed
will return.
While we have not often contemplated these possibilities in the
debate about climate change, her suggestion has the ring of truth. If a cri-
sis is deep enough and lasts long enough, all bets will be off; the guaran-
tees of the Constitution will not protect the poor from the rich or the
weak from the strong. After all, they have never done so completely, and
even now the batle to guarantee civil rights for all continues. Butler's
novels remind us that we have not eradicated inequality and exploitation
from our society; the endurance of class privilege and deep poverty, as