The Macondoization of the World

This chapter argues that globalization has made possible both environmental catastrophe, as symbolized by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and attempts to grasp and manage environmental change at the global level. Governing global environmental challenges in the face of the tragic requires some good by which we may discriminate between competing and often incommensurable goods, some mechanism for apprehending the tragic, justifying certain choices in the face of the tragic, and patterning or teaching acceptable responses to the tragic. The rise of religious imaginaries in global governance has opened the door further to religious ways of thinking about the tragic in global environmental governance.