scholarly journals Hatred of the Earth, Climate Change, and the Dreams of Post-Planetary Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Brad Tabas
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Human Destiny

      This text examines the effects of climate change on cultural ideas regarding the colonization of space. More specifically, this paper explores the ways which the looming danger of climate catastrophe has fueled the growth of post-planetary culture: a culture that dreams of a human destiny beyond the Earth. It takes as its object both science fiction texts and non-fiction futurological pronouncements by scientists and entrepreneurs. What emerges from this study is the observation that unlike climate skeptics, post-planetarists believe that climate change is real. Yet like climate skeptics, they subordinate climate action to other priorities, putting the construction of a means of escaping this planet above climate action. But why do these post-planetarists wish to fly? Via a close reading of David Brin’s Earth, we argue that one of the key characteristics of post-planetary culture is a feeling of hatred and alienation towards the Earth. This hatred is both re-enforced by the ravages of climate change even as it contributes to this destruction by blocking post-planetarists from whole-heartedly engaging in climate action. In order to illustrate an antidote to this pathological cultural reaction to our current crisis, I present a close reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, exploring how this text is both a critique of post-planetarism and a guide to renewing our love for the Earth.

Patrick Moore, Arthur C. Clarke and ‘British Outer Space’ in the mid 20th century

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Dunnett
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Human Destiny

This article seeks to explore a notion of ‘British outer space’ in the mid 20th century with reference to the British Interplanetary Society and the works of Patrick Moore and Arthur C. Clarke. Geographies of outer space have been examined following early work by Denis Cosgrove on the Apollo space photographs. Cosgrove’s work has encouraged a growing body of work that seeks to examine both the ‘Earth from space’ perspective as well as its reciprocal, ‘space from Earth’. This article aligns itself with the latter viewpoint, in attempting to define a national culture of ‘British outer space’. This is found to have an important connection with the British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933 near Liverpool, which went on to influence the works of Patrick Moore, who edited the magazine Spaceflight and presented the television programme The Sky at Night, and Arthur C. Clarke, who became known as a science fiction writer through his early novels in the 1950s. The themes of audience participation and human destiny in outer space are examined in a close reading of these two case studies, and further engagement with cultures of outer space in geography is encouraged.

scholarly journals Staying Alive: Science Fiction in the Age of the Anthropocene — Philip K. Dick’s Pessimistic Humanism

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tallulah Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Scientific Advancement ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

In recent years, literary studies have become increasingly invested in environmentalism. As science reveals the negative impacts of climate change, and demonstrates a growing concern for humanity’s contribution, literature operates as a form of cultural documentation. It details public awareness and anxieties, and acts as a conduit for change by urging empathetic responses and rendering ecological controversy accessible.To explore the relationship between literature and environmental politics, this paper will focus on the work of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and his dystopian visions. In his particular brand of sci-fi, there is no future for humanity. Science and technology fail to pave the way for a better and fairer society, but rather towards, as far as Dick is concerned, extinction. He argues that scientific advancement distances us from reality and from a sense of “humanness”. His pessimistic futures are nihilistic but tender; nurturing a love for humanity even in, what he considers to be, its final hours.Unlike the work of other prominent sci-fi writers, Dick’s fiction does not look towards the stars, but is in many ways a return to earth. The barren landscapes of Mars and other planets offer no comfort, and the evolution of the human into cyborgs, androids and post human species is depicted as dangerous and regressive. Dick’s apocalyptic visions ground his readers in the reality around them, acting in the present for the sake of the earth and humanity’s survival. His humanism is critical of grand enlightenment ideas of “progressivism”, and instead celebrates ordinariness. In the shadow of corporate capitalism and violent dictatorial governments, Dick prefers the little man, the ordinary everyday domestic hero for his narratives. His fiction urges us to take responsibility for our actions, and prepares us for the future through scepticism and pessimism, and a relentless fondness for the human.

scholarly journals Sustainability in the Anthropocene: Between Extinction and Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2538
Author(s):  
Manuel Arias-Maldonado
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Policy Goal ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One

The pursuit of environmental sustainability has been affected by two significant developments in the last years. On the one hand, the Anthropocene hypothesis suggests that the human impact on the environment has increased to such a degree, that natural systems are now disrupted at a planetary level. The most dangerous manifestation of the Anthropocene is climate change, where there is need for greater urgency in the face of insufficient climate action. There are a number of scientists who currently warn of the possibility that failing to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may render the Earth uninhabitable in the first place. A first goal of this paper is thus to ponder how the sustainability paradigm may be affected in the face of this threat and whether, in fact, sustainability may be displaced by “habitability”. On the other hand, some climate policies are eliciting the reaction of a populist movement—from Trumpism to the gilets jaunes in France—that opposes the rise of environmentally-related taxes and denies climate change or questions the severity of its effects. Both as a concept and as a policy goal, sustainability thus finds itself under double pressure: as it must focus on keeping the planet inhabitable, while the political opposition to measures directed towards decarbonization also increases. In what follows, the paper suggests that sustainability should be understood as a technocratic project to keep the planet safe for humanity rather than imposing a new way of life for all its inhabitants. This is not to imply that moral or ideological debate is to be curtailed, but rather to differentiate between achieving environmental sustainability and seeking the reshaping of socionatural relations.

scholarly journals Is Climate Change a Threat to International Peace and Security?

2021 ◽  
pp. 527
Author(s):  
Mark Nevitt
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Intergovernmental Panel ◽  
Climate Assessment ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
International Climate ◽  
National Climate Assessment ◽  
The U.S

The climate-security century is here. Both the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) and the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment (“NCA”) recently sounded the alarm on climate change’s “super-wicked” and destabilizing security impacts. Scientists and security professionals alike reaffirm what we are witnessing with our own eyes: The earth is warming at a rapid rate; climate change affects international peace and security in complex ways; and the window for international climate action is slamming shut.

scholarly journals Climate Fiction and its Narratives

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-68
Author(s):  
Ana-Clara Rey Segovia
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Energy Crisis ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Climate Fiction

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the narratives about a possible environmental collapse and its consequences have multiplied. This is due to a growing awareness about issues such as climate change or the energy crisis. The so-called ‘climate science fiction’ or cli-fi has reflected these concerns in highly successful films, like the two analysed here: The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008), a remake of the 1951 classic. In this paper, I approach both films through an analysis of their plot and narrative structure, focusing mainly on the evolution of their main characters and storylines. I argue that these mainstream productions avoid any examination of the actual causes of the environmental crisis, turning it into a matter of individual responsibility based on Judaeo-Christian values such as guilt and redemption, especially those about the apocalypse.

scholarly journals Christopher G. Weeramantry, Tread Lightly on the Earth: Religion, the Environment, and the Human Future

ICR Journal ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 749-752
Author(s):  
Zarina Nalla
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Renewable Energy ◽  
International Law ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Society Business ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
Primary Focus

Most religions tell us that nature is the beautiful and perfect handiwork of God worthy of respect and protection. These principles should be integrated into international law if we are to address the current crisis facing humanity. Christopher Gregory Weeramantry discusses these ideas comprehensively in his book. The work received support from the World Future Council (WFC), an independent think-tank founded in 2007 in Hamburg, Germany, whose members are active in governmental bodies, civil society, business, science and the arts. The WFC’s primary focus has been on the issue of climate change by promoting laws such as the renewable energy Feed-in Tariff.

scholarly journals The Anarchical Society and Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Falkner
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
English School ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Climate Regime ◽  
School Text ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Cooperative Solutions

The Anarchical Society is the first major English School text that addresses the rise of global environmentalism. Based on a close reading of Bull’s classic text, this essay applies his pluralist perspective to the international politics of climate change. Bull’s pluralism offers valuable insights into the scope for, and limitations of, international climate action: it identifies the persistent value and interest differences that prevent deep international cooperation; it highlights the centrality of inter-state bargaining; and it stresses the importance of crafting cooperative solutions that reflect the realities of power asymmetry. However, while Bull acknowledges the need to move towards deeper, solidarist, forms of cooperation, his perspective is found to be wanting when it comes to understanding the modalities of such a shift. Bull has little to say on how to construct a solidarist response and how non-state actors might develop new forms of transnational governance beyond the state-centric climate regime.

Standing with the Earth: From Cosmopolitical Exhaustion to Indigenous Solidarities

2019 ◽  
pp. 340-356
Author(s):  
Barbara Glowczewski
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Field Experience ◽  
Aboriginal Australians ◽  
Aesthetic Responses ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Activist Movements ◽  
Creative Forces

This essay shows that the exhaustion of the earth, of certain ontologies, and of our creative forces, are all interconnected, just as the ethico-aesthetic responses to this exhaustion are inseparable from cosmopolitics. More and more activist movements struggling against the destruction of their living environments – especially because of the extractive industries that accelerate the climate change and poison the water and the air, – look for alliance with and inspiration from Indigenous people, such as Aboriginal Australians, whose vision of the Earth is not to deny nature on the pretext that it would have succumbed to human technologies. This article proposes to respond to the reduction of ontologies in anthropology with a “slow anthropology” that would be “standing with the Earth”, a slow anthropology based on a field experience, ecosophically inspired by visions and creativity of Indigenous peoples and of their allies, and by the Science Fiction according to Haraway, Stengers and Meillassoux. First published in 2017.

Perdre la mesure… Or, The Ecologics of Extinction

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Stefan Herbrechter
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Solar System ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Current Level ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Human Race ◽  
World Picture ◽  
Adequate Measurement ◽  
Ecological Catastrophe

The article takes its cue from Olivier Rey's recent book Une question de taille (a question of size) and develops the idea of humanity ‘losing its measure, or scale’ in the context of contemporary ecological catastrophe. It seems true that the current level of global threats, from climate change to asteroids, has produced a culture of ambient ‘species angst’ living in more or less constant fear about the survival of the ‘human race’, biodiversity, the planet, the solar system. This indeed means that the idea of a cosmos and a cosmology may no longer be an adequate ‘measurement’ for scaling the so far inconceivable, namely a thoroughly postanthropocentric world picture. The question of scale is thus shown to be connected to the necessity of developing a new sense of proportion, an eco-logic that would do justice to both, things human and nonhuman. Through a reading of the recent science fiction film Interstellar, this article aims to illustrate the dilemma and the resulting stalemate between two contemporary ‘alternatives’ that inform the film: does humanity's future lie in self-abandoning or in self-surpassing, in investing in conservation or in exoplanets? The article puts forward a critique of both of these ‘ecologics’ and instead shows how they depend on a dubious attempt by humans to ‘argue themselves out of the picture’, while leaving their anthropocentric premises more or less intact.

„Raps“

POETICA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 282-313
Author(s):  
Robert Stockhammer
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
Cultivated Plant ◽  
Materiality Of Language

Abstract The recent controversy about the possibility of defining a new geological era called ‘Anthropocene’ has far-ranging consequences. The new notion forces us to rethink the dichotomy between the entities formerly referred to as men and nature and to conceive of their relation as an interrelation. The relevance of these considerations for literary studies is not limited to the anthropocene as a subject matter of literature, or to the possible use of literature as a means of enhancing the reader’s awareness of climate change. Rather, what is at stake is the relation of language to the new interrelation between man and nature, including the poetical and metalinguistic functions that emphasize the materiality of language. The present article explores the relation between the materiality of language and the materiality of things by way of a close reading of a single poem written by Marcel Beyer. Devoted to the cultivated plant rape, the literary traditions which this poem invokes reach beyond nature lyrics into georgic. An excursus recalls this genre of agriculture poetry and distinguishes it from pastoral, especially with regard to its use of language.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document