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This course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities by theme and case studies in order to ground students with a vocabulary for comprehending and discussing our current global climate crisis.
This book uses fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Within these pages there is much hard science, of atmospheric and oceanic physics, usually helpfully explained by a passing expert; but also speculative military strategy – the invention of “pebble mob” missiles, which converge on a target speedily from all directions, renders almost all military hardware redundant – plenty of economic history and much comforting detail about the grey civility of Switzerland in winter.
This book proposes the first critical history of the Anthropocene, a new epoch in which what we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin, and this shakes 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. This book dissects a new theoretical buzzword and explores paths for living and acting politically in this rapidly developing geological epoch.
This book charts a possible course to a liveable future. Climate Restoration will require not just innovative technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but social and economic transformation. Looking at industrial-scale seaweed farms, the grinding of rocks to sequester carbon at the bottom of the sea, the restoration of wetlands, and reforestation, Buck examines possible methods for such transformations and meets the people developing them. Rejecting the idea that technological solutions are some kind of easy workaround, Buck outlines the kind of social transformation that will be necessary to repair our relationship to the earth if we are to continue living here.
In this book, Holly Buck argues that focusing on emissions draws our attention away from where we need to be looking: the point of production, and that it is time to plan for the end of fossil fuel and the companies that profit from them. The fossil fuel industry provides jobs, as well as a source of revenue for some frontline communities. Conventional wisdom says that fossil fuels will be naturally priced out when cheaper, but this raises as many problems as it addresses. The book tackles these problems seriously and also sets out a roadmap that offer opportunities for more liveable, inclusive future.
This book explores geoengineering questions from perspectives ranging from sociology and geography to ethics and Indigenous studies. After an introductory chapter in Part One, Part Two explores how social and environmental justice, Indigenous, and intersectional perspectives can be mobilized to challenge geoengineering from the perspective of civil society. Part Three brings greater emphasis to the capitalist state as the main actor able to address climate change by laying out different views on the actual implications of deploying both CDR and SRM strategies from the perspective of state action and economic planning. Part Four examines geoengineering as a class project in its imperialist, class struggle, and political dimensions.
This work by Thomas Malthus, first published in 1798, argues that that infinite human hopes for social happiness must be vain, for population will always tend to outrun the growth of production. The increase of population will take place, if unchecked, in a geometric progression, while the means of subsistence will increase in only an arithmetic progression. Population will always expand to the limit of subsistence. Only “vice” (including “the commission of war”), “misery” (including famine or want of food and ill health), and “moral restraint” (i.e., abstinence) could check this excessive growth.
This book, organized both chronologically and topically, contains four versions of the lecture notes taken by Kant's students of his university courses in ethics given regularly over a period of some thirty years. The notes are very complete and expound not only Kant's views on ethics but many of his opinions on life and human nature. Much of this material has never before been translated into English. These include the Opus postumum, Kant’s unfinished magnum opus on the transition from philosophy to physics; transcriptions of his classroom lectures; his correspondence, and his marginalia and other notes.
This book is where Bentham develops his theory of utilitarianism. Main issues discussed in this book includes the principle of utility, principles adverse to that of utility, the four sanctions or sources of pain and pleasure, how to measure value of a lot of pleasure or pain, kinds of pleasures and pains, circumstances influencing sensibility, human actions, intentionality, consciousness, motives, human dispositions, consequences of a mischievous act, cases unmeet for punishment, the proportion between punishments and offences, the properties to be given to a lot of punishment, division of offences, the limits of the penal branch of jurisprudence.
This book collects essays from leading scholars about how monuments have functioned throughout the world and how globalization has challenged Western notions of the “monument.“ This book considers three broad processes relevant to the creation and sustenance of monuments- Travel, Time, and Destruction/Reconstruction- and ponders these issues across different periods and cultures. Examining how monuments preserve memory, these essays illustrate that a monument’s power pertains to its beauty, design, size, expense, location, or age value, and demonstrate how phenomena as diverse as ancient drum towers in China and ritual whale-killings in the Pacific Northwest serve to represent and negotiate time.
This work, published in 1689, states the political philosophy of the English philosopher John Locke. In the first treatise, Locke refutes Sir Robert Filmer’s defense of the divine right of kings. In the second treatise, Locke defines political power, and elaborates on his philosophy regarding the state of nature and the social contract, property, and organization of government. In this book, Peter Laslett has revised his own amended second edition (1970) of the Two Treatises, and he argues in the fully reset and revised introduction that the Two Treatises were not a rationalization of the events of 1688 but rather a call for a revolution yet to come.
First published in 1949, this work is a foundational text in wildlife ecology, envisioning and embracing an ethic that treats land not as a commodity but as a community of soil, water, plants, and animals. Part One tells what Leopold’s family sees and does at its weekend refuge, a sand farm in Wisconsin, from too much modernity. Part Two recounts some of the episodes in his life that taught him that the company is out of step. Part Three sets forth some of the ideas whereby the dissenters rationalize their dissent.
This book is an anthropological, historical, and philosophical exploration of immortality as a secular and scientific category. Based on an ethnography of immortalist communities—those who believe humans can extend their personal existence indefinitely through technological means—and an examination of other institutions involved at the end of life, Abou Farman argues that secular immortalism is an important site to explore the tensions inherent in secularism: how to accept death but extend life; knowing the future is open but your future is finite; that life has meaning but the universe is meaningless. The book also interrogates the social implications of technoscientific immortalism and raises important political questions.
Using the design and building of the Clock of the Long Now as a framework, this is a book about the practical use of long-time perspective: how to get it, how to use it, and how to keep it in and out of sight. Here are the central questions it inspires: How do we make long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare? One needs the space and reliability to predict continuity to have the confidence not to be afraid of revolutions. Taking the time to think of the future is more essential now than ever, as culture accelerates beyond its ability to be measured.
This book discusses the topic of de-extinction. Wray introduces us to renowned futurists like Stewart Brand and scientists like George Church, who are harnessing the powers of CRISPR gene editing in the hopes of “reviving” extinct passenger pigeons, woolly mammoths, and heath hens. She speaks with Nikita Zimov, who together with his eclectic father Sergey, is creating Siberia’s Pleistocene Park—a daring attempt to rebuild the mammoth’s ancient ecosystem in order to save earth from climate disaster. More cautionary voices are also heard, like those of researcher and award-winning author Beth Shapiro (How to Clone a Woolly Mammoth) and environmental philosopher Thomas van Dooren.
This book tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert presents the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Published in 1962, this book argues that pesticides should properly be called “biocides” because of their impact on organisms other than the target pests. Specifically, Carson noted the harm DDT inflicted on bird populations and warned of a future spring characterized by the lack of birdsong. She also questioned the then-dominant paradigm of scientific progress and the philosophical belief that man was destined to exert control over nature. She argued that the success of pesticides is necessarily limited because the target pests tend to develop immunity, while risks to humans and the environment will increase as the pesticides accumulate in the environment.
How and why are white men increasingly identifying as victims of social, economic, and political change? This book seeks to answer this question by examining textual and performative examples of white male rhetoric—as found among online misogynist and incel communities, survivalists and “doomsday preppers,” gender-motivated mass shooters, gun activists, and political demagogues. Using sources ranging from reality television and Reddit manifestos to gun culture and political rallies, Kelly ultimately argues that death, victimhood, and fatalism have come to underwrite the constitution of contemporary white masculinity. The book also generates nuanced theoretical accounts of the relationship between particular forms of mediation and the intersecting ideologies of race and gender.
In order to suggest vitalistic, perhaps even optimistic, ways to negotiate some of the difficulties in thinking and acting in the world, this book explores five key contemporary themes: identity, spirituality, art, death, and the apocalypse. Collapsing activism, artistic practice and affirmative ethics, while introducing some radical contemporary ideas and addressing specifically modern phenomena like death cults, intersectional identity politics and capitalist enslavement of human and nonhuman organisms to the point of 'zombiedom', this book navigates the ways in which we must compose the human differently, specifically beyond nihilism and post- and trans-humanism and outside human privilege.
