Planetary Crisis: Consumption and Resource Management in Byron's 'Darkness'

This essay argues that Lord Byron uses multiple images of consumption in 'Darkness' to engage in a broader conversation about the merits of conservation and resource management. I suggest that Byron offers a critique of consumption that identifies how waste and excess are direct products of humanity's self-indulgent gluttony. In his poem, Byron admonishes reckless overeating by insinuating that it leads, inevitably, to the planet's destruction due to a lack of natural resources. Byron suggests that humanity's extinction will come not from an outside or unearthly force but rather from the greed of our stomachs, thereby reinforcing the need to exercise restraint and self-discipline in the way resources are consumed by human civilisation. I conclude that Byron's focus on consumption reveals a complicated and multi-layered understanding of the environment that places human eating at the centre of the crisis.