By Iman Saif and Hafsa Najdan
Once again, we will first begin with a quick recap of our previous blog post in order to refresh our readers’ and then we will go forth with our blog post for today. In our last blog post, we applied the secondary source of Hannes Bergthaller essay, “ Fossil Freedoms: The Politics of Emancipation and the End of Oil “ to our case study of petroculture and petromodernity within Qatar. We established the myriad of consequences associated with the culture of petrodependency and the subsequent double-edged sword of moving towards petromodernity; the loss of development, wealth and status are enough to persuade many countries to look the other way in the face of petrodependency. It is this fact that allows us once again to admire Qatar’s decision and strategies (outlined in the first blog post!) to move towards petromodernity. For this blog post, we will be applying the concept of derangements of scale to petromodernity and petrodependency in order to emphasize the importance of this case study to our audience.
The concept of derangements of scale is one that is fascinating as it is subtly intertwined with all aspects of our lives. Let us first establish what exactly the concept of derangements constitutes. Derangements of scale refer to the perception of events on different scales- mainly the subjective, intellectual dismantling in conversations regarding the environment. An environmental issue may be categorized by an individual concerned with his daily habits and ease of convenience as something that is of little value but the same issue could be perceived as a moral call to action by an environmental activist. This then shows us the different “scales” of perception and introduces lack of clarity and reduces subsequent action and value in the masses- essentially the demarcation of effects and the general derangement of scale.
Evidence of this phenomenon can be found in modern societies’ projection of material condition as eternally available (i.e fossil fuels and oil) and brings forth dependency on these resources (i.e petrodependency). Though there have been attempts to bring awareness to issues of petrodependency, the method of conveying urgency and call to action, has been largely unsuccessful due to unrealistic derangements of scale. Countless times have we been told to “walk, rather than use public and private transport” , “ turn off all lights when not in use” and so forth but the question of the extent of its effects remains in the back of our minds. After all, do we not disregard these calls to action with a snort of mockery and continue about our day? However, have we once bothered to contemplate the matter of unity in regards to encouraging change and reform?
It is with this final question of reflection we ask to our audience, that we hope we have given sufficient indication of the importance behind Qatar’s petromodernity goals. Rather than choosing to stay content within a culture of petrodependency wherein there was indeed, temporary closure and false assurance of the limitless quantities of fossil fuels and oil resources to sustain our current modes of living, Qatar actively chose to shed its perception of petrodependency on a national and individual scale and confront the scale of human actions in the spatial world and it’s plethora of intellectual, societal and ethical containments.
Work Used:
Timothy Clarke, “Derangements of Scale” , 2020
