Ecological Risk: Climate Change as Abstract-Corporeal Problem

Abstract

This essay uses Ulrich Beck’s concept of risk society to understand the threat of catastrophic climate
change. It argues that this threat is “abstract-corporeal”, and therefore a special kind of threat that
poses special kinds of epistemic and ecological challenges. At the center of these challenges is the
problem of human vulnerability, which entails a complex form of trust that both sustains and threatens
human survival.