Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Joseph Gelfer December 21 2012 is believed to mark the end of the thirteenth B’ak’tun cycle in the Long Count of the Mayan calendar. A growing number of people believe this date to mark the end of the world or, at the very least, the end of the world as we know it: a shift to a new form of global consciousness. While predominantly a North American phenomenon, 2012 also has a significant following in Australia and New Zealand. Via a textual analysis of a range of prophetic narratives and science fiction, this paper shows how the future- orientated imagination of the 2012 phenomenon in Australia and New Zealand oscillates between utopian and dystopian outcomes – the utopian largely framed by a transcendent vision of the New Age, the dystopian by immanent environmental destruction. Joseph Gelfer is an Adjunct Research Associate at the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University, and is currently editing the volume 2012: Reflections on a Mark in Time. He is editor of the Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, and author of Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy.
