Little Apocalypse

How Green Funeral Practitioners Reconfigure the Iconography of Climate Catastrophe

Abstract

Media accounts of climate-driven weather events often include dramatic images of floods, fires, and barren ground. These motifs communicate the life-and-death salience of climate-related threats even as they contribute to a sort of apocalyptic paralysis. These motifs are ritually engaged at another nexus of ecology and mortality: green funeral practices. Green funeral practitioners experience their own moments of hesitation and paralysis as they engage archetypal motifs of mortality. Some practices, however, help them pass through these little apocalyptic thresholds toward ecological efficacy. Practices in which this pattern is evident include burning bodies in open air cremation, securing bodies through inhumation, and experiencing seasons of barrenness in conservation burial grounds. While the efficacy-generating nature of these green funeral practices is the focus of this article, the concluding section suggests implications for baptismal theology in an era of ecological emergency.