A THEATRICAL INACTION: CLIMATE CHANGE RISK, BUREAUCRATIC INERTIA, AND ETHICAL ABDICATION IN STEVE WATERS’S THE CONTINGENCY PLAN
Makaleler > Tam Makale · 2026
Yazarlar: Nesrin YAVAŞ
Çukurova Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, Hakemli Üniversite Dergisi, Uluslararası, TR Dizin (Ulakbim), 2026, cilt 35, ss 1-15
DOI: 10.35379/cusosbil.1666351
Özet
This article examines Steve Waters’s two-part play, The Contingency Plan (2009), as a theatrical critique of the structural and ethical failures underlying contemporary climate governance. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as risk society, the banality of bureaucratic evil, climate justice, and intergenerational ethics, the analysis reveals how the play dramatizes the disjunction between climate change knowledge and political action. When read together, these four frameworks disclose how climate irresponsibility is systematically produced not as a result of information deficit but through a coordinated regime of avoidance operating across the dimensions of risk, ethics, justice, and temporality. Waters depicts policymakers who acknowledge the severity of climate risk yet remain inert due to administrative inertia, short-term political calculations, and the prevalence of formal gestures that substitute for transformative intervention. The article demonstrates how The Contingency Plan critiques performative governance, the moral consequences of delayed responsibility, and the burden shifted onto future generations. Rather than presenting a narrative of denial, the play stages a more insidious form of inaction—one in which risk is recognized but decisive action is perpetually deferred. In this context, the play functions as both a fictional policy document and as an ethical case study that reflects real-world failures in climate governance. Ultimately, the article argues that theatre, as a form of climate storytelling, does not merely mirror institutional breakdowns but offers an emotionally resonant and ethically urgent mode of critique. The Contingency Plan thus stands as a compelling call to action, reminding us that a timely and transformative climate response is not a matter of political choice but a moral necessity.