Waiting in Petro-Time

Abstract

To describe the multiple, colliding temporalities of climate change I put forward the concept of petro-time. Petro-time asserts that time itself has been compressed through millennia to become fossil fuels, and then burned, resulting in climate chaos. In this essay, I take up one aspect of petro-time, the feeling of waiting. I articulate this feeling of waiting through the opera Sun & Sea (Marina) by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė, which explores the affective dimensions of climate change for those of us with the wealth and privilege that, so far, mostly shelters us from its worst effects. But climate change is always there, on the horizon, looming. This reality sits at the back of the brain, emerging in moments of relaxation as a “nagging malaise,” depicted in the opera through “insidiously pleasant melodies.” The tension that many of us experience in relation to climate change, where it cannot be sustained as the crisis that it is, instead blends into a background anxiety. I argue that waiting (for adequate policies, for climate relief) is felt differentially across the globe but that it also might provide a pause to recommit to climate solutions that don’t repeat the injustices of the past.