Download or read book The Great War and the Anthropocene written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-11-07 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume places the Eastern, especially the Austro-Russian, fronts of the Great War centre stage, examining the little-known environmental and spatial dimensions in the history of the war. The focus is particularly on the Austrian crown land of Galicia, which was transformed from a neglected periphery into a battleground of three imperial armies, and where for the first time, nature was a key protagonist. The book balances contributions by emerging and established scholars, and benefits from a multi-language approach, expertise in the field, and extensive archival research in national archives. Contributors are Hanna Bazhenova, Gustavo Corni, Iaroslav Golubinov, Kerstin Susanne Jobst, Tomasz Kargol, Alexandra Likhacheva, Oksana Nagornaia, David Novotny, Christoph Nübel, Gwendal Piégais, Andrea Rendl, Kamil Ruszała, Nicolas Saunders, Kerstin von Lingen, Yulia Zherdeva, and Liubov Zhvanko.
Download or read book The Great Acceleration written by J. R. McNeill and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Earth has entered a new age—the Anthropocene—in which humans are the most powerful influence on global ecology. Since the mid-twentieth century, the accelerating pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a massive uncontrolled experiment. The Great Acceleration explains its causes and consequences, highlighting the role of energy systems, as well as trends in climate change, urbanization, and environmentalism. More than any other factor, human dependence on fossil fuels inaugurated the Anthropocene. Before 1700, people used little in the way of fossil fuels, but over the next two hundred years coal became the most important energy source. When oil entered the picture, coal and oil soon accounted for seventy-five percent of human energy use. This allowed far more economic activity and produced a higher standard of living than people had ever known—but it created far more ecological disruption. We are now living in the Anthropocene. The period from 1945 to the present represents the most anomalous period in the history of humanity’s relationship with the biosphere. Three-quarters of the carbon dioxide humans have contributed to the atmosphere has accumulated since World War II ended, and the number of people on Earth has nearly tripled. So far, humans have dramatically altered the planet’s biogeochemical systems without consciously managing them. If we try to control these systems through geoengineering, we will inaugurate another stage of the Anthropocene. Where it might lead, no one can say for sure.
Download or read book Defiant Earth written by Clive Hamilton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-06-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'. The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself. What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment – even to the point of geoengineering – is now impossible because we have rendered the Earth more unpredictable and less controllable, a disobedient planet. At the same time, all attempts by progressives to cut humans down to size by attacking anthropocentrism come up against the insurmountable fact that human beings now possess enough power to change the Earth's course. It's too late to turn back the geological clock, and there is no going back to premodern ways of thinking. We must face the fact that humans are at the centre of the world, even if we must give the idea that we can control the planet. These truths call for a new kind of anthropocentrism, a philosophy by which we might use our power responsibly and find a way to live on a defiant Earth.
Download or read book After Nature written by Jedediah Purdy and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic
Download or read book Learning to Die in the Anthropocene written by Roy Scranton and published by City Lights Publishers. This book was released on 2015-09-07 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton draws on his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate change. The result is a fierce and provocative book."--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History "Roy Scranton's Learning to Die in the Anthropocene presents, without extraneous bullshit, what we must do to survive on Earth. It's a powerful, useful, and ultimately hopeful book that more than any other I've read has the ability to change people's minds and create change. For me, it crystallizes and expresses what I've been thinking about and trying to get a grasp on. The economical way it does so, with such clarity, sets the book apart from most others on the subject."--Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy "Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can muster. While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and important challenge from an elegant writer and original thinker. A critical intervention."--Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate "Concise, elegant, erudite, heartfelt & wise."--Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire "War veteran and journalist Roy Scranton combines memoir, philosophy, and science writing to craft one of the definitive documents of the modern era."--The Believer Best Books of 2015 Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought--the shock and awe of global warming. Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic stability, but to civilization itself . . . and to what it means to be human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer, wetter, more chaotic world we now live in--the Anthropocene--demands a radical new vision of human life. In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014), Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our mortality. Plato argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. If that’s true, says Scranton, then we have entered humanity’s most philosophical age--for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The trouble now is that we must learn to die not as individuals, but as a civilization. Roy Scranton has published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.
Download or read book The Shock of the Anthropocene written by Christophe Bonneuil and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dissecting the new theoretical buzzword of the “Anthropocene” The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped into a state unknown for millions of years. How did we get to this point? Refuting the convenient view of a “human species” that upset the Earth system, unaware of what it was doing, this book proposes the first critical history of the Anthropocene, shaking up many accepted ideas: about our supposedly recent “environmental awareness,” about previous challenges to industrialism, about the manufacture of ignorance and consumerism, about so-called energy transitions, as well as about the role of the military in environmental destruction. In a dialogue between science and history, The Shock of the Anthropocene dissects a new theoretical buzzword and explores paths for living and acting politically in this rapidly developing geological epoch.
Download or read book We re Doomed Now What written by Roy Scranton and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American Orwell for the age of Trump, Roy Scranton faces the unpleasant facts of our day with fierce insight and honesty. We’re Doomed. Now What? penetrates to the very heart of our time. Our moment is one of alarming and bewildering change—the breakup of the post-1945 global order, a multispecies mass extinction, and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. Not one of us is innocent, not one of us is safe. Now what? We’re Doomed. Now What? addresses the crisis that is our time through a series of brilliant, moving, and original essays on climate change, war, literature, and loss, from one of the most provocative and iconoclastic minds of his generation. Whether writing about sailing through the melting Arctic, preparing for Houston’s next big storm, watching Star Wars, or going back to the streets of Baghdad he once patrolled as a soldier, Roy Scranton handles his subjects with the same electric, philosophical, demotic touch that he brought to his groundbreaking New York Times essay, “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene.”
Download or read book The Birth of the Anthropocene written by Jeremy Davies and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world faces an environmental crisis unprecedented in human history. Carbon dioxide levels have reached heights not seen for three million years, and the greatest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs appears to be underway. Such far-reaching changes suggest something remarkable: the beginning of a new geological epoch. It has been called the Anthropocene. The Birth of the Anthropocene shows how this epochal transformation puts the deep history of the planet at the heart of contemporary environmental politics. By opening a window onto geological time, the idea of the Anthropocene changes our understanding of present-day environmental destruction and injustice. Linking new developments in earth science to the insights of world historians, Jeremy Davies shows that as the Anthropocene epoch begins, politics and geology have become inextricably entwined.
Download or read book Adventures in the Anthropocene written by Gaia Vince and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A science journalist travels the world to explore humanity’s ecological devastation—and its potential for renewal in this “compelling read” (Guardian, UK). We live in times of profound environmental change. According to a growing scientific consensus, the dramatic results of man-made climate change have ushered the world into a new geological era: the Anthropocene, or Age of Man. As an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince couldn’t help but wonder if the greatest cause of this dramatic planetary change—humans’ singular ability to adapt and innovate—might also hold the key to our survival. To investigate this provocative question, Vince travelled the world in search of ordinary people making extraordinary changes to the way they live—and, in many cases, finding new ways to thrive. From Nepal to Patagonia and beyond, Vince journeys into mountains and deserts, forests and farmlands, to get an up close and personal view of our changing environment. Part science journal, part travelogue, Adventures in the Anthropocene recounts Vince’s journey, and introduces an essential new perspective on the future of life on Earth.
Download or read book Security in the Anthropocene written by Cameron Harrington and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2017-08-31 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The belief that »Nature« exists as a blank, stable stage upon which humans act out tragic performances of international relations is no longer tenable. In a world defined by human action, we must reorient our understanding of ourselves, of our environment, and our security. This book considers how decentred and reflexive approaches to security are required to cope with the Anthropocene - the Human Age. Drawing from various disciplines, this bold reinterpretation explores the possibilities for understanding and preparing a future that will look vastly different than the past. The book asks to dig deeper into what it means to be human and secure in an age of ecological exception. "In a growing field of interdisciplinary work on the Anthropocene, ›Security in the Anthropocene‹ sets itself apart. It blends ideas from criminology, international security studies and the environmental humanities to provide unique interdisciplinary insight into the challenges of living on an increasingly turbulent earth." - Audra Mitchell, Balsillie School of International Affairs/Wilfrid Laurier University "This essential, groundbreaking book offers a new conceptual framework that recalibrates what security means in the Anthropocene. Not content on simply highlighting the state of crisis fostered by existential risks in this new era, Cameron Harrington and Clifford Shearing invite us to imagine a more positive and caring form of security." - Benoit Dupont, University of Montreal "Harrington and Shearing's fine book explores evocatively how humans might cope with a world that is fundamentally changed through a critical appraisal of how new impacts on the Earth system shift the conditions of security. This is a tour de force of how our concepts of security create the world that afflicts us. The authors argue, convincingly, that there can be no security in the Anthropocene without an expanded vision of care." - John Braithwaite, Australian National University
Download or read book Anthropocene A Very Short Introduction written by Erle C. Ellis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The proposal that the impact of humanity on the planet has left a distinct footprint, even on the scale of geological time, has recently gained much ground. Global climate change, shifting global cycles of the weather, widespread pollution, radioactive fallout, plastic accumulation, species invasions, the mass extinction of species - these are just some of the many indicators that we will leave a lasting record in rock, the scientific basis for recognizing new time intervals in Earth's history. The Anthropocene, as the proposed new epoch has been named, is regularly in the news. Even with such robust evidence, the proposal to formally recognize our current time as the Anthropocene remains controversial both inside and outside the scholarly world, kindling intense debates. The reason is clear. The Anthropocene represents far more than just another interval of geologic time. Instead, the Anthropocene has emerged as a powerful new narrative, a concept through which age-old questions about the meaning of nature and even the nature of humanity are being revisited and radically revised. This Very Short Introduction explains the science behind the Anthropocene and the many proposals about when to mark its beginning: the nuclear tests of the 1950s? The beginnings of agriculture? The origins of humans as a species? Erle Ellis considers the many ways that the Anthropocene's "evolving paradigm" is reshaping the sciences, stimulating the humanities, and foregrounding the politics of life on a planet transformed by humans. The Anthropocene remains a work in progress. Is this the story of an unprecedented planetary disaster? Or of newfound wisdom and redemption? Ellis offers an insightful discussion of our role in shaping the planet, and how this will influence our future on many fronts. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Human Planet written by Simon L. Lewis and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the Anthropocene and “a relentless reckoning of how we, as a species, got ourselves into the mess we’re in today” (The Wall Street Journal). Meteorites, mega-volcanoes, and plate tectonics—the old forces of nature—have transformed Earth for millions of years. They are now joined by a new geological force—humans. Our actions have driven Earth into a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. For the first time in our home planet's 4.5-billion-year history a single species is increasingly dictating Earth’s future. To some the Anthropocene symbolizes a future of superlative control of our environment. To others it is the height of hubris, the illusion of our mastery over nature. Whatever your view, just below the surface of this odd-sounding scientific word—the Anthropocene—is a heady mix of science, philosophy, history, and politics linked to our deepest fears and utopian visions. Tracing our environmental impacts through time, scientists Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin reveal a new view of human history and a new outlook for the future of humanity in the unstable world we have created.
Download or read book The Anthropocene Unconscious written by Mark Bould and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Ducks, Newburyport to zombie movies and the Fast and Furious franchise, how climate anxiety permeates our culture The art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness. The Anthropocene - the term given to this geological epoch in which humans, anthropos, are wreaking havoc on the earth - is to be found bubbling away everywhere in contemporary cultural production. Typically, discussions of how culture registers, figures and mediates climate change focus on 'climate fiction' or 'cli-fi', but The Anthropocene Unconscious is more interested in how the Anthropocene and especially anthropogenic climate destabilisation manifests in texts that are not overtly about climate change - that is, unconsciously. The Anthropocene, Mark Bould argues, constitutes the unconscious of 'the art and literature of our time'. Tracing the outlines of the Anthropocene unconscious in a range of film, television and literature - across a range of genres and with utter disregard for high-low culture distinctions - this playful and riveting book draws out some of the things that are repressed and obscured by the term 'the Anthropocene', including capital, class, imperialism, inequality, alienation, violence, commodification, patriarchy and racial formations. The Anthropocene Unconscious is about a kind of rewriting. It asks: what happens when we stop assuming that the text is not about the anthropogenic biosphere crises engulfing us? What if all the stories we tell are stories about the Anthropocene? About climate change?
Download or read book Anthropocene Encounters New Directions in Green Political Thinking written by Frank Biermann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-07 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the significance of the Anthropocene for environmental politics, analysing political concepts in view of contemporary environmental challenges.
Download or read book Anthropocene Geopolitics written by Simon Dalby and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We now find ourselves in a new geological age: the Anthropocene. The climate is changing and species are disappearing at a rate not seen since Earth’s major extinctions. The rapid, large-scale changes caused by fossil-fuel powered globalization increasingly threaten societies in new, unforeseen ways. But most security policies continue to be built on notions that look backward to a time when geopolitical threats derived mainly from the rivalries of states with fixed boundaries. Instead, Anthropocene Geopolitics shows that security policy must look forward to quickly shape a sustainable world no longer dependent on fossil fuels. A future of long-term peace and geopolitical security depends on keeping the earth in conditions roughly similar to those we have known throughout history. Minimizing disruptions that would further put civilization at risk of extinction urgently requires policies that reflect new Anthropocene “planetary boundaries.” This book is published in English. - Depuis la fin de la dernière période glaciaire, l’humanité a transformé sa niche écologique, modifié sa position dans l’écosystème, provoqué des changements climatiques radicaux et affecté la diversité des espèces aux quatre coins du monde, ce qui a entraîné l’apparition d’une nouvelle époque géologique, l’Anthropocène. À l’échelle planétaire, les activités humaines exercent un impact direct sur les frontières qu’elles transforment durablement alors que ces mêmes frontières ont constitué le cadre naturel dans lequel l’humanité a pu prospérer durant les dix derniers millénaires. Les changements rapides qui affectent notre système terrestre remettent directement en cause les anciennes hypothèses qui considéraient des frontières stables comme le principal fondement de la souveraineté. Aujourd’hui, ces postulats périmés doivent impérativement être réévalués. Paradoxalement, la phase de mondialisation actuelle nécessite une redéfinition de la notion même de frontières stables. En effet, l’élargissement des droits de propriété et des champs de compétence pourrait en fait prévenir la mise en œuvre de mesures d’adaptation efficaces visant à répondre aux enjeux du changement climatique. Garantir la survie d’une économie fondée sur la consommation de combustibles fossiles demeure à ce jour une priorité politique comme le fait de devoir faire face aux catastrophes naturelles à l’échelle mondiale – ce qui rend les objectifs de durabilité d’autant plus difficiles à atteindre dans un environnement en pleine mutation où les rivalités politiques exacerbées façonnent la politique globale contemporaine. L’entrée de la Terre dans une nouvelle époque géologique, l’Anthropocène (l’ère de l’homme), représente un formidable défi éthique, qu’il convient de relever en établissant une véritable politique de durabilité, et ce, au moment où l’humanité s’engage dans la dernière phase du processus de mondialisation. Dans un tel contexte, pour être réellement efficaces, les connaissances et les perspectives résultant des analyses académiques et des initiatives pratiques de toute nature devront être intégrées dans une vision globale.
Download or read book The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit written by Jan Zalasiewicz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reviews the evidence underpinning the Anthropocene as a geological epoch written by the Anthropocene Working Group investigating it. The book discusses ongoing changes to the Earth system within the context of deep geological time, allowing a comparison between the global transition taking place today with major transitions in Earth history.
Download or read book Interrogating the Anthropocene written by jan jagodzinski and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume weaves together a variety of perspectives aimed at confronting a spectrum of ethico-political global challenges arising in the Anthropocene which affect the future of life on planet earth. In this book, the authors offer a multi-faceted approach to address the consequences of its imaginary and projective directions. The chapters span the disciplines of political economy, cybernetics, environmentalism, bio-science, psychoanalysis, bioacoustics, documentary film, installation art, geoperformativity, and glitch aesthetics. The first section attempts to flesh out new aspects of current debates. Questions over the Capitaloscene are explored via conflations of class and climate, revisiting the eco-Marxist analysis of capitalism, and the financial system that thrives on debt. The second section explores the imaginary narratives that raise questions regarding non-human involvement. The third section addresses ’geoartisty,’ the counter artistic responses to the speculariztion of climate disasters, questioning eco-documentaries, and what a post-anthropocentric art might look like. The last section addresses the pedagogical response to the Anthropocene.
