Ecological Time (The Temporal Logic of Environmental Crisis)

At the heart of the current ecological crisis lies our relationship with time.

The arrow of time is the most fundamental ecological factor that intertwines us inextricably with the natural environment. Our fight against time's destructive tendency is reliant on obtaining food, a task we share with all life on the planet. Yet, our increasing emancipation from this perceived burden, especially with the advent of the market economy, has also entailed humanity’s radical detachment from nature. In western urban societies, the environment has thus come to figure as an external entity—to be exploited, protected, or admired—and no longer as the very arena in which the life-sustaining struggle with time is enacted and won daily. An account of this kind crystallizes in the assemblage of works by late-19th century materialist scholars–– from Darwin to Marx to Boltzmann––and naturalist writers of the rural world and peasant life––from Hardy to Zola to Blasco Ibáñez. These thinkers offer us theoretical tools for conceptualizing time ecologically, ultimately prompting us to ask today: what would it mean to reinstate time as the principal ecological concern governing our everyday life? In the response to this query lies our chance to reinforce the bond between humans and the environment as we have known it until very recently.