Tragedies on the stage take place over a limited period of time. The protagonist is presented with a dilemma. He (it is usually a he) makes a choice. Terrible consequences rapidly ensue. As soon as Macbeth kills King Duncan, he is damned – his drunken porter turns his castle into hell, and unnatural signs of turmoil, such as horses eating each other, follow that same night. So swift is the action in the Scottish play that Macbeth and his wife want to speed up time, doing the deed “quickly”, feeling the “future in the instant” or willing to “jump the life to come”. The play hurtles towards its conclusion as the prophecies of the three witches come to pass, with devastating neatness.
But the tragedy of environmental disaster unfolds along a much more extended timescale. The bleaching of the coral reefs, the shrinking of the Arctic polar ice, the extreme droughts and floods taking place worldwide, are symptoms and portents of decisions already taken whose full consequences have not yet been felt.
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