A safe operating space [see previous post for definition] is a kind of temporality, one amidst indifferent, intersecting temporalities. Our fragile existence floats in the vast time and space of the planetary, and in the shorter times of ecosystems, the faster times of viruses and diseases, the times of economics, the times of anger and prejudice, and the warp speed of the digital—to mention a few. A human temporality is a temporary shelter of intimacies, comforts, food, ideals, stories, projects, and plans that cushion us against impingements of temporalities kept in check first by planetary boundaries and second by internalized ethics, as well as governments. These cushions are our dikes and sea walls. In breaching Holocene boundaries, we have subjected ourselves to temporalities inimical to many of the boundaries we have unconsciously relied on. Slow, unseen, background changes have gathered speed and erupted perilously as heat waves, fires, floods, famines, and viruses. Unseen viruses spread because they adapt faster than we can. We try to keep pace with new vaccines. Rockstrom published his essay on “safe operation space” for humanity in 2009, and today in the New York Times, he and his co-author speak directly to the intertwined crises that face us. It is called a “polycrisis,” whereby all the crises are happening at once and they are interrelated temporalities that lead to “slow violence” mingled with many forms of “fast violence.”
Rob Nixon coined the term “slow violence,” which he defines as “a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous but instead incremental, whose calamitous repercussions are postponed for years or decades or centuries.” He provides examples of slow violence, and I am adding a few: structural adjustment programs; degradation of ecosystems; deforestation; radioactive fallout from atom bomb testing in the Marshall Islands; acidifying and rising oceans; lack of health insurance; a diet of ultra-processed food; private equity firms buying foreclosed homes, rental properties, and farmlands; failure to fund public media; redlining; not listening; failure to provide 40 acres and a mule, etc. Each choice has antecedents, and each choice unleashes the long-term consequences that become what Nixon calls “slow violence.” In some cases, it is difficult to figure out who or what is responsible—but not always.
There are also instances of fast violence that become slow violence: some of the above; domestic abuse; rape; the internment of children and migrants; sudden displacement due to floods and fires; so much of what we read in the news…. Slow violence ripens in the background and is experienced as fast violence, making it easy to lose sight of the links in the causal chain and to blame our neighbor. “Violence,” from the point of view of physics is force; from the point of view of humans, it is unwarranted, unjust damage. There is no justice at the level of the planetary, which is why we need human justice. Because planetary changes have become an emergency, it means they now intersect with human temporality, but the upside is that this violence has created the possibility of a change in consciousness. A change in consciousness is also the possibility of intervening.