Climate Fundamentalisms? Social fault lines and reactionary forces in a time of climate crisis.

The apocalyptic future of the climate crisis looms large in the cultural imagination: news reports, opinion pieces, dystopian fictions - all project to a not-too-distant future where human civilisation collapses, or the world-as-we-know-it ends. Yet there is another concept, also drawn from the study of religion, relevant to the climate crisis: one that points us not towards the future - but rather the past. This paper will explore the utility of the concept ‘fundamentalism’ in understanding the social effects of climate change. Whilst acknowledging its limitations as a descriptive category, scholarship on ‘fundamentalism’ nonetheless identified a key fault line in 20th century society - reaction against the destabilising trends of modernity. In the 21st century, climate change is fast displacing modernity as the destabilising force. This paper considers what we can learn from fundamentalism about identifying emerging social fault lines and conflicts in the era of climate change.