ABSTRACT
Most writers are concerned with how globalities are created, asserted and deconstructed by means of concepts, language, ideas and ideologies. They ask after the many uses of the term 'global', the actors who invoke it, the context of assembly and the stakes involved. Solutions to putatively global problems have figured multiple, often competing views of agency and power at many scales: carbon accounting for self-monitoring individuals; carbon trading in national and international markets; carbon taxes imposed by governments on corporations and consumers; or military concern with climate change as a threat to international security. As archetypal narratives, both the closed world and the green world reflect vital aspects of human experience: conflict, loss and the inevitability of death, on the one hand; the bodily and spiritual sustenance of nature and the redemptive power of love, on the other. Green-world drama thematizes the restoration of community and cosmic order through the transcendence of rationality, authority, convention and technology.
