ABSTRACT
Greed, secrecy, and competitive strivings have been with us long before the time of Esau and Jacob. Conflicting legal claims to resources have concerned land use rights, water rights, mineral rights, or rights to the airspace above skyscrapers in New York. Securing legal rights over resources has repeatedly instigated armed conflicts, and the genocide of indigenous peoples. There is currently widespread human and nonhuman suffering due to overuse, misuse, and abuse of earth’s land, sea, and atmospheric resources. Due largely to our use of fossil fuel resources, the climatic system itself now moves toward a less stable state that is much less conducive to human life. How can psychoanalysis shed light on this process of unrelenting ecosystemic destruction? How can we learn from other branches of psychology, sociology, and the earth sciences to contribute to finding a way out of this impending and unfolding disaster? What is the interaction of the legal system of environmental protections with conscious and unconscious motivations and defenses?
