Water crisis in California: the earth responds
When I recently returned from a trip to California I took something with me that is very precious to that state, something that is causing all kinds of problems for California, but is absolutely essential to everyone and everything in California. I Continue reading
Christianity and Stewardship, North and South
The popularity of Lynn White’s argument shows that it is too easy to think that Christianity is inevitably opposed to an environmental perspective or that evangelicals will reject mainstream climate science. In a previous post, I looked at Continue reading
Are we the walrus?
This post was supposed to be about the People’s Climate March. As I sat down to draft it, however, a headline about a different climate-related gathering caught my eye: tens of thousands of Pacific walruses have again Continue reading
Why “habitability?”
Welcome to the “public” launch of this site! We (see “Who we are“: click or use the menu above) have been posting since late June, and after some tweaks to the site are now ready to present what we are doing. I have re-posted the first entry, which lays out one of the main themes we want to explore; there are already 20 entries that examine it and/or other ideas. We hope you will explore what we have written so far (see the Users’ guide for an explanation of the types of posts we do, and how to find them). We plan to post every Monday morning–please come back, or follow us (buttons in the sidebar on the right or below if you are on a mobile device). Most of all, we invite your comments–we are eager to learn from the conversation!
Environmentalism has plenty of buzzwords already–sustainability and resiliency come right to mind. Does it make sense to propose another? In a sense that is what we are doing by making habitability the focus of this blog. In this initial post I’d like to try to suggest why that theme is worth exploring—with the acknowledgment from the outset that its content is not well developed.
In a very obvious way discussions of the Anthropocene immediately raise the question of
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“The onset of the Anthropocene”
CITATION:
Bruce D. Smith and Melinda A. Zeder. 2013. Anthropocene, Vol. 4, pp. 8-13.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
A number of different starting dates for the Anthropocene epoch have been proposed, reflecting different Continue reading
What does the future look like?
As I said in a previous blogpost, there is no dispute among scientists that massive change is happening to our planet right now and that is very likely human induced. What is under debate though are Continue reading
“Shell middens and other anthropogenic soils as global stratigraphic signatures of the Anthropocene”
CITATION:
Jon M. Erlandson. 2013. Anthropocene, 4, pp. 24-32.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
Other web source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.12.001
ABSTRACT:
Evidence for aquatic foraging, fishing, and scavenging by hominins dates back at least two million years, but aquatic resource use intensified with Continue reading
“A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”
CITATION:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1993. Trans. Roger D. Masters. In Collected Writings of Rousseau (Volume 3) . Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
Other web source: http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq_04.htm
ABSTRACT:
In this work Rousseau offers a conjectural history of humanity. It begins in the primeval “state of nature,” in which individuals lead Continue reading
“Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change”
CITATION:
Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2012. New Literary History, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 1-18.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
This article begins by describing how the figure of the human has been thought in anticolonial and postcolonial writing—as that of the Continue reading
The Pizzly Bear as a Mascot for the Anthropocene
One of the debates about the Anthropocene is about just how precisely the term should be used. In a post this week at the Anthropocene Review blog Clive Hamilton complains about the imprecision he sees in Continue reading
Invaders all around us
Many of us are horrified by stories of invasive species wreaking havoc on ecosystems, upsetting the natural balance, and even impacting humans directly.
The example of Chikungunya that I mentioned in my last post demonstrates Continue reading
“An anthropogenic marker horizon in the future rock record”
CITATION:
Corcoran, P.L., Moore, C.J., and Jazvac, K. 2014. GSA Today, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 4-8.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Recognition of increasing plastic debris pollution over the last several decades has led to investigations of the imminent dangers posed to Continue reading
“From Biophilia to Cosmophilia: The Role of Biological and Physical Sciences in Promoting Sustainability”
CITATION:
Lucas F. Johnston. 2010. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 7-23.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.v4il.7
ABSTRACT:
Ideas from the life sciences and the physical sciences, particularly the ideas that Continue reading
Pitfalls and potentials in dating the onset of the Anthropocene
Just when (and how) did humans begin influencing the planetary system? Recent posts on this blog – notably those by Zev and Stephen on creation myths, Noah’s on cosmopolitanism, and David’s on Holocene climate – have spurred me to think about how delimiting a chronological date on the start of the Anthropocene influences how we think about habitability. Here I present some musings.
As initially conceived by non-archaeologists, the start of the Anthropocene was placed Continue reading
Biology in a changing world
Our world is undergoing a massive change, induced by humans. There is no debate about this among scientists. There is debate, however, about the consequences of this change.
Like many other organisms we actively alter our environment and become ecosystem engineers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_engineer). A classical example for this process is Continue reading
Cosmopolitanism in the Anthropocene
What does it mean to live in the Anthropocene? On one hand, it means that the human species has transformed the climatic and environmental processes of its entire planet. So radically are we changing our biosphere that we may bring about the collapse of our economic system[1] and perhaps even a sixth “mass extinction event”[2].
But announcements of the Anthropocene do not merely describe. They also prescribe. Like any environmental matter Continue reading
Inhabiting the Anthropocene 
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