Reclaiming time from its tyranny

We are running out of time on the climate crisis—yet ‘slow living’ is a key to its solution.

Time is running out. Whether it be rapidly rising temperatures, droughts and wildfires, mounting climate-related human-rights concerns, exponential growth in conflicts, forced migration or famine, we are amidst the greatest existential threat in human history.

The climate crisis is unprecedented in its scope and impact, its consequences unpredictable, volatile and ominous. With the increasing failure to curb greenhouse-gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement and the proliferation of dangerous hyper-consumption, it is clear something must urgently be done.

Yet it is crucial to take a step back and assess why we are facing such severe, even irreversible environmental degradation. By assessing what got us here, we can identify what needs to change to get out.

Economic reprioritisation

In 2006 the groundbreaking Stern Review pioneered the notion of economic reprioritisation, from boundless economic growth towards sustainable, environmentally sensible policies. Prof Stern described climate change as the greatest ‘market failure’ ever—he now acknowledges this truly underestimated the severity of the risk.

Since then, increasing scholarly and policy attention has been given to moving beyond growth, specifically to ‘post-growth’. The global obsession with, and headlong pursuit of, higher gross domestic product—and the associated excess consumption—has become a death sentence.

Increasing awareness of the destructive impact of infinite economic expansion has led to calls to sideline GDP as the primary metric of economic success and development. Post-growth demands the seizure and scaling down of unnecessary and destructive production and a recalibration of economic priorities, centred on overall human wellbeing.

Ahead of this month’s Summit of the Future in New York, the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, released a policy brief calling for UN member states to shift away from GDP and the corresponding environmental degradation and developmental asymmetry. Guterres argued for a new framework also taking into account wellbeing, education, equality and opportunities—allowing for more even development and more equitable societies yet less ecological despoliation.

Environmental policies are often seen to be linked to sacrifice and the abandonment of prosperity. Advocates such as David Pilling and Jason Hickel, and even senior policy-makers such as Guterres, aim to shift this narrative, emphasising that a greener world is not darker nor, necessarily, less prosperous. Through a recalibration of priorities, sustained, measured and equitable economic development is possible, providing a bulwark against an environmental armageddon and creating a fairer world.

Crisis of time

While the climate crisis and post-growth are rightly garnering attention, another crisis hangs over us. Inextricably linked to, and a catalyst for, the climate crisis, this is the crisis of time.

Time, and our relationship with it, is commonly taken for granted. Yet philosophers such as Immanuel Kant have long emphasised that temporal understanding is crucial to the human experience. Rather than a silent hum in the background, our conception of time is fundamental to the way we experience our world, work and each other: it structures our working day, affecting when and how we work and our productivity, daily practices (individual and communal) and relationships to space and reality.

Nor are such conceptions singular. Conventionally, western industrial-capitalist societies are bounded by the sociologist Max Weber’s notion of ‘rational’ social action, in which time is sequential, progressive and linear. This emphasises the individual completing one task at a time and its output; scheduling is vital and time is quantified. These ‘monochronic’ societies tend to be future-oriented and to value growth.

In ‘polychronic’ societies, by contrast, tasks can be carried out simultaneously, with greater emphasis on interpersonal relationships, community and fluidity. They tend to be more in synchrony with the earth’s circadian rhythms and less likely to pursue unsustainable growth.

The proliferation of the monochronic emphasis on tasks over interpersonal relationships has led to what some sociologists are calling a ‘crisis of time’ or dyschronia. And with the onset of the climate catastrophe, a new sensitivity to our relationship with time is evident.

‘Beasts of burden’

In The Scent of Time, Han Byung-Chul argues that time has become atomised. We are living in an age where time ‘is lacking a proper rhythm’ and our discordant relationship with it is associated with widespread poverty and inequality and, ultimately, severe environmental degradation.

Essentially, the monochronistic emphasis on output has necessitated the commodification of time. Rather than something to be experienced, it has become an asset to be optimised: ‘time is money’. Wealth creation is inextricably linked to the quantification of time and the headlong pursuit of efficiency, resulting in the primacy of GDP, super-productivity and hyperconsumption—all seen as carrying infinite potentiality in the quest for growth for its own sake.

With the emphasis on efficient and indeed accelerated labour, individual humans have become for Byung-Chul ‘beasts of burden’, unable to have a fulfilling experience of time but beholden to a seemingly ever-increasing pressure for productive output. This has been encouraged globally by western notions of ‘development’, where states compete for mobile investment in a race to the bottom of low-cost manufacturing.

Working-time reduction

Slowly but surely, however, the importance of our relationship with time has been gaining traction in the policy sphere, with increasing attention to reduction of working time. Its advocates argue that by, decoupling work from growth, a more environmentally sustainable and equitable society is possible. Contrary to a common misconception, the average pre-industrial worker worked far less than modern-day counterparts, a result of their slower tempo of life.

Reducing working time can also help combat gender inequality, by allowing parents to share the load of care and reduce the all-too-common female career sacrifice. This can be part and parcel of a more comprehensive re-evaluation of our temporal understanding of society as a whole.

We stand on the precipice of environmental catastrophe—at the least—with a warped conception of time. This has enabled the ruinous obsession with GDP and made the human experience increasingly less enjoyable. By slowing down, figuratively and literally, we can improve our relationships with our world and each other.