Beyond Adaptation and Anthropomorphism

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-385
Author(s):  
Danika Drury-Melnyk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Gilbert Simondon

This paper attempts to bring the work of Gilbert Simondon into conversation with contemporary discourse on climate change and the Anthropocene. Though his work pre-dates the coining of the term, Simondon, with his non-anthropomorphic view of technology, is in many ways a philosopher of the Anthropocene. In this paper I contrast Simondon’s philosophy to the popular idea that technology is something we can use to adapt to the practical problems of the Anthropocene. I will begin by looking briefly at the narrative of adaptation in the Anthropocene. I will then discuss Simondon’s philosophy of individuation in order to understand why he rejects these narratives of adaptation. Next, I will look at his own ideas on the role that can be played by technology. Ultimately, I hope to describe why, for Simondon, a view of technology that centres on relation rather than on a particular view of the human subject is crucial to human life. The significance of a non-anthropomorphic approach to technology extends beyond the current ecological crisis to all manner of injustice, violence, and misunderstanding between human groups as well as the environment.

scholarly journals THE EFFECT OF THE UNITED STATES OUT OF PARIS AGREEMENT OF 2015 ON THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-151
Author(s):  
Hazazi Ridho Subarkah ◽  
Yanyan Mochamad Yani ◽  
Taufik Hidayat
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
Health Food ◽  
Literature Study

This research will discuss climate change, which causes national security threats to several countries. To tackle climate change, the United States ratified the Paris Agreement 2015, but in 2017 the United States left the agreement. The position of the United States is important because it is both an emitter and a cause of climate change. So that climate change influences the national security of the United States. This study was analyzed using the concept of safety and environmental safety. The idea of security used to analyze the threats caused by climate change to the United States national security threats, and the concept of environmental protection is to analyze the ecological crisis as a threat because it is no longer able to sustain human life. This research method with qualitative methods and data collection techniques through a literature study. The results of this study, based on the findings of climate change as a threat to the United States, can have an impact on health, food availability, requests, and coastal areas. It also disrupted military bases and operations in several international and domestic sectors.

scholarly journals Determinants of Support for Climate Change Efforts in the Global South

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 455-468
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Adugu
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ecological Modernization ◽  
New Ecological Paradigm ◽  
Sea Levels ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Greenhouse Emissions ◽  
Change Efforts

This paper addresses determinants that underpin support for climate change efforts. The study is based on Pew Research Center (USA), Spring 2015 Global Attitudes survey dataset, with a primary focus on climate change, collected from March 25 to May 27, 2015. Drawing on the new ecological paradigm and ecological modernization perspectives, the paper utilizing logistic regression, examines the relationship between individuals’ perception or awareness of the severity of climate change and their support for limiting greenhouse emissions; the extent to which individuals’ views on whether developing countries should do as much as the rich countries in addressing climate change predict the likelihood of their (individuals’) support for limiting greenhouse emissions. The logistic regression models reveal that people’s rational insight into the following consequences of climate change positively predicts support for limiting greenhouse emissions: severe weather like floods or severe storms; long periods of unusually hot weather; rising sea levels; years of schooling and age positively predict support for limiting greenhouse emissions. In general, knowing an individual’s country of residence offers no predictive value in determining whether the individual will support limiting greenhouse emissions. The notable exceptions are: South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. These four countries display positive and statistically significant coefficients in the logistic regression model predicting support for greenhouse emissions.       Keywords: climate change; environmental concern; greenhouse emissions; ecological crisis; Africa

Vibration, Difference, and Solidarity in the Anthropocene

Resonance ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-241
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Chung
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Black Skin

Taking the new materialist and climate change themes of Ashley Fure’s The Force of Things: an Opera for Objects as a departure point, this article examines sound studies’ recent invocations of new materialist philosophy alongside this philosophy's foundational concern toward the Anthropocene ecological crisis. I argue that new materialist sonic thought retraces new materialism’s dubious ethical program by deriving equivalencies of moral standing from logically prior ontological equivalencies of material entities and social actors rooted in their shared capacities to vibrate. Some sonic thought thus amplifies what scholars in Black and Indigenous decolonial critique have exposed as the homogenizing, assimilative character of new materialism’s superficially inclusional and optimistic ontological imaginary, which includes tendencies to obscure the ongoingness of racial inequality and settler-colonial exploitation in favor of theorizing difference as a superfice or illusion. As I argue in a sonic reading of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, some of new materialism’s favored analytical and ecological terms such as objecthood, vibrationality, and connection to the Earth are also terms through which anti-Blackness, colonial desire, and the universalization of Whiteness have historically been routed. This historical amnesia in new materialism enables its powerfully obfuscating premises. As a result, I argue that new materialist sound studies and philosophy risk amplifying the Anthropocene’s similarly homogenizing rhetorics, which often propound a mythic planetary oneness while concealing racial and colonial climate inequities. If sound studies and the sonic arts are to have illuminating perspectives on the Anthropocene, they must oppose rather than affirm its homogenizing logics.

Philosophy and Climate Change

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Independent Interest ◽  
The Social

Climate change is poised to threaten, disrupt, and transform human life, and the social, economic, and political institutions that structure it. In light of this, understanding climate change, and discussing how to address it, should be at the very center of our public conversation. Philosophy can make an enormous contribution to that conversation, but only if both philosophers and non-philosophers understand what it can contribute. The sixteen original articles collected in this volume both illustrate the diverse ways that philosophy can contribute to this conversation, and ways in which thinking about climate change can help to illuminate a range of topics of independent interest to philosophers.

This Sacred Life

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Wirzba
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Genetic Enhancement ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
God's Love ◽  
Bear Witness

In a time of climate change, environmental degradation, and social injustice, the question of the value and purpose of human life has become urgent. What are the grounds for hope in a wounded world? This Sacred Life gives a deep philosophical and religious articulation of humanity's identity and vocation by rooting people in a symbiotic, meshwork world that is saturated with sacred gifts. The benefits of artificial intelligence and genetic enhancement notwithstanding, Norman Wirzba shows how an account of humans as interdependent and vulnerable creatures orients people to be a creative, healing presence in a world punctuated by wounds. He argues that the commodification of places and creatures needs to be resisted so that all life can be cherished and celebrated. Humanity's fundamental vocation is to bear witness to God's love for creaturely life, and to commit to the construction of a hospitable and beautiful world.

Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Nirmala Thirumalaiah ◽  
Arul Aram I.
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Human Life ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The Public ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Change Communication ◽  
Regional Newspapers ◽  
The Times

Climate change conferences had wide media coverage – be it on newspaper, radio, television or the internet. The terms such as ‘climate change', ‘global warming', and ‘El Nino' are gaining popularity among the public. This study examines the news coverage of climate change issues in the major daily newspapers—The Times of India, The Hindu in English, and the Dina Thanthi, Dinamalar, and Dinamani in regional language (Tamil)—for the calendar years 2014 and 2015. This chapter describes how climate change influences nature and human life, and it is the basis for social and economic development. The news coverage of climate change and sustainability issues helps the reader better understand the concepts and perspectives of environment. Climate change communication in regional newspapers and local news stories may increase the public's interest and knowledge level regarding climate change and sustainability issues.

Deadly Delays, Saving Opportunities: Creating a More Dangerous World?

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Shue
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Climate System ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Third ◽  
Energy Regime ◽  
Human Habitat ◽  
Strong Claim

We now know that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are interfering with the planet’s climate system in ways that are likely to lead to dangerous threats to human life (not to mention nonhuman life) and that are likely to compromise the fundamental well-being of people who live at a later time. We have not understood this for very long—for most of my life, for example, we were basically clueless about climate. Our recently acquired knowledge means that decisions about climate policy are no longer properly understood as decisions entirely about preferences of ours but also crucially about the vulnerabilities of others—not about the question “How much would we like to spend to slow climate change?” but about “How little are we in decency permitted to spend in light of the difficulties and the risks of difficulties to which we are likely otherwise to expose people, people already living and people yet to live?” For we now realize that the carbon-centered energy regime under which we live is modifying the human habitat, creating a more dangerous world for the living and for posterity. Our technologically primitive energy regime based on setting fire to fossil fuels is storing up, in the planet’s radically altering atmosphere, sources of added threat for people who are vulnerable to us and cannot protect themselves against the consequences of our decisions for the circumstances in which they will have to live—most notably, whichever people inherit the worn-and-torn planet we vacate. As we academics love to note, matters are, of course, complicated. Let’s look at a few of the complications, concentrating on some concerning risk. Mostly, we are talking about risks because, although we know strikingly much more about the planetary climate system than we did a generation ago, much is still unknown and unpredictable. I will offer three comments about risk. The third comment is the crucial one and makes a strong claim about a specific type of risk, with three distinctive features.

Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility, and Global Climate Change

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Caney
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Common But Differentiated Responsibility

. . . It’s exciting to have a real crisis on your hands when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum things like the environment. . . . The world’s climate is undergoing dramatic and rapid changes. Most notably, the earth has been becoming markedly warmer, and its weather has, in addition to this, become increasingly unpredictable. These changes have had, and continue to have, important consequences for human life. In this chapter, I wish to examine what is the fairest way of dealing with the burdens created by global climate change. Who should bear the burdens? Should it be those who caused the problem? Should it be those best able to deal with the problem? Or should it be someone else? I defend a distinctive cosmopolitan theory of justice, criticize a key principle of international environmental law, and, moreover, challenge the “common but differentiated responsibility” approach that is affirmed in current international environmental law. Before considering different answers to the question of who should pay for the costs of global climate change, it is essential to be aware of both the distinct kind of theoretical challenge that global climate change raises and also the effects that climate change is having on people’s lives. Section 1 thus introduces some preliminary methodological observations on normative theorizing about global climate change. In addition, it outlines some basic background scientific claims about the impacts of climate change. Section 2 examines one common way of thinking about the duty to bear the burdens caused by climate change, namely the doctrine that those who have caused the problem are responsible for bearing the burden. It argues that this doctrine, while in many ways appealing, is more problematic than might first appear and is also incomplete in a number of different ways (sections 3 through 8). In particular, it needs to be grounded in a more general theory of justice and rights.

scholarly journals Creaturely Communal Ontology in Practice: John Zizioulas in Dialogue with Ritual Theory

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 506
Author(s):  
John W. Compton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Full Diversity ◽  
Ritual Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Foundational Work ◽  
As If

This article is born out of a deep concern for our current ecological crisis and serves as a beginning foundational work for how the Christian tradition can address global climate change. Our current way of being gives precedence to the autonomous individual, whose freedom is characterized by disregard for other creatures. John Zizioulas’ communal ontology demonstrates that as the world was created out of God’s loving will, it is comprised of relationship. Living into individuation and division is a refusal of this communion with other creatures and God, but the Eucharist serves as the ritual that brings Christians into communion through the remembrance of Christ. Ian McFarland’s work on the theology of creation provides the helpful nuance that creaturely movement in communion must include the full diversity of creatures. I then turn to Bruce Morrill’s work to demonstrate that the Eucharistic practice must have bearing beyond the walls of the church. It leads practitioners to live into eschatological hope and kenotic service to the world. John Seligman’s ritual theory demonstrates that ritual practice can accomplish these goals because it creates a subjunctive ‘as-if’ world in the face of the world that is perceived as chaotic. Through the continuous practice of the ritual, participants are then formed to live into this subjunctive ‘as-if’ world without ritual precedence. In this way, the Eucharistic practice can prepare practitioners to live into the kenotic service to a world broken by individuation that has led to global climate change and creaturely destruction.

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