Last week, our first guest speaker for the Climate Change in History Dream Course was Dr. Gregory Cushman, associate professor of international environmental history at the University of Kansas. Cushman reported on Continue reading
Tag Archives: climate change
Climate Change in History Dream Course
detail of Winslow Homer, Hurricane, Bahamas (1898)
This week, Dr. Suzanne Moon and I begin team-teaching “Climate Change in History” (HSCI 3473: History of Ecology and Environmentalism) as a Presidential Dream Course, a program which allows University of Oklahoma faculty to upgrade an existing course into its dream version, with guest lectures Continue reading
Plastics Recycling: A Global Overview
MSS Optical sorting machine
Humans are currently producing about 100 pounds of plastic per person per year on this planet (~250 pounds the US) and at the current rate of increase that number will be Continue reading
Earth Plasticity and Plasticity of Perception
One of my earliest memories as a freshman at UCLA took place in the front row of a cavernous, wood-paneled lecture hall equipped with a black-topped resin demonstration table. The class was Introductory Geology, and the professor a bearded, pony-tailed free spirit giddy with the anticipation of Continue reading
Petro Pete, Plastic Mascot for Plausible Denial
In 2016, the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board (OERB) published the fourth volume of its “Petro Pete” series of illustrated children’s books. To promote Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream, K-2 classes throughout the state were invited Continue reading
Climate Change and the Anthropocene
Are climate change and the Anthropocene inseparable? In the absence of human-made climate change, would we still be talking about and living in the Anthropocene? Anyone might be forgiven for thinking that Continue reading
Pondering a diorama to perceive the Anthropocene
“This sprawling epic is as lively as a natural history museum diorama.” (Stephanie Zacharek, review of “10,000 BC”)
Perceiving means to become conscious of, to realize, to understand, to grasp. Natural history museums strive to enable the public to perceive, commonly in re-creations of past worlds. Who hasn’t gazed over a diorama of the Carboniferous Period, for example, Continue reading
Flying Over Greenland
I try not to panic about the Anthropocene. Continue reading
Sensing High Water in Venice
Flood warning siren in Venice (from Sounds Like Noise)
Visiting Venice this summer suggested some intellectual bridges between cities (see our previous series on the Urban Anthropocene), and our new theme (Perceiving the Anthropocene). How do cities help us perceive the Anthropocene— Continue reading
Video of “Coupled Urban Metabolism” panel discussion
On April 19, 2018, Stephanie Pincetl, of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, presented her ideas on coupled urban metabolism at a Continue reading
Video of “Cities and Our Future” panel discussion
Earlier this spring, Cindy Simon Rosenthal offered a series of three posts on the topic of “Cities and Our Future: Governance in the Anthropocene.” On March 6, 2018 (rescheduled
Continue reading
Who Will Lead?
This is the first in Dr. Rosenthal’s three-part series on “Cities and Our Future: Governance in the Anthropocene.”
When President Trump proclaimed that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, he claimed to represent the “citizens of Pittsburgh not Paris.” Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto was quick to respond, tweeting Continue reading
“Moving from ‘matters of fact’ to ‘matters of concern’ in order to grow economic food futures in the Anthropocene”
CITATION:
Hill, A. 2015. Agriculture and Human Values, vol. 32: pp. 551-563.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Agrifood scholars commonly adopt “a matter of fact way of speaking” to talk about the extent of neoliberal rollout in the food sector and the viability of “alternatives” to capitalist food initiatives. Over the past few decades Continue reading
“Cities in the age of the Anthropocene: Climate change agents and the potential for mitigation”
CITATION:
Pincetl, S. 2017. Anthropocene, Vol. 20, pp. 74-82.
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Cities are human creations where many of the emissions causing climate change originate. Every aspect of daily life in cities Continue reading
The Tragedy of Coral Bleaching
Coral bleaching of Lizard Island. Photo credit: Trond Amundsen
If you have ever been lucky enough to see a tropical reef, you will know what I mean: these are places of Continue reading
Prospection and the Anthropocene
I’d like to share two recent items from the news that make a sobering pairing.
The first is an opinion piece in the New York Times by psychologist Martin Seligman and Times science writer John Tierny summarizing a new theory about human beings that emphasizes our orientation toward the future. Continue reading
“Relative impacts of mitigation, temperature, and precipitation on 21st-century megadrought risk in the American Southwest”
CITATION:
Ault, T.R. et al. 2016. Science Advances, vol. 2, e1600873
ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:
Megadroughts are comparable in severity to the worst droughts of the 20th century but are of much longer duration. A megadrought in the American Southwest would impose unprecedented stress on Continue reading
