Tag Archives: climate change

Video of “Coupled Urban Metabolism” panel discussion

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On April 19, 2018, Stephanie Pincetl, of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, presented her ideas on coupled urban metabolism at a panel discussion on the OU campus. The event was the culmination of a series of posts on the blog about papers Dr. Pincetl had suggested to us as “inputs” to the urban metabolism concept. The panel included Bryce Lowery, of the OU Department of Regional and City Planning, Katy Marshall, of the OU Department of Biology, and Peter Soppelsa of the OU Department of the History of Science, each of whom contributed posts to the series. We thank the Gibbs College of Architecture, the OU Department of Geology, the Oklahoma Biological Survey, the OU Department of Biology, and OU’s Headington College for supporting Dr. Pincetl’s visit to OU, and making this video possible.

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Video of “Cities and Our Future” panel discussion

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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 due to an ice storm), she presented her ideas
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Who Will Lead?

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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”

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CITATION:
Hill, A. 2015.  Agriculture and Human Values, vol. 32: pp. 551-563.
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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”

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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 →

Prospection and the Anthropocene

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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”

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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 →

The Iconoclastic Anthropocene: On How We Choose to Destroy Art

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Ivo Bazzechi Cimabue FloodOn November 4, 1966, the Arno overflowed its banks into the streets of Florence. A number of prominent foreign art historians, including Frederick Hartt and John Shearman, arrived soon thereafter to assist their Italian colleagues, working generally under the oversight of the Uffizi’s conservation director Umberto Baldini, in developing a response to a cultural emergency: the Italian Renaissance was underwater. Their collective expertise facilitated the arduous work of restoring what could be salvaged from the flood, which had Continue reading →

“Climate, Environment and Early Human Innovation: Stable Isotope and Faunal Proxy Evidence from Archaeological Sites (98-59ka) in the Southern Cape, South Africa”

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CITATION:

Roberts, P., C. S. Henshilwood, K. L. van Niekerk, P. Keene, A. Gledhill, J. Reynard, S. Badenhorst and J. Lee-Thorp. 2016 PLoS One 11(7):e0157408.

ON-LINE AVAILABILITY:
ABSTRACT:

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa, and in particular its Still Bay and Howiesons Poort lithic traditions, represents a period of dramatic subsistence, cultural, and technological innovation by Continue reading →

Surviving the Anthropocene Part 2: Of Omega Points and Oil

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My previous post lamented the flawed presentation of climate change at the David Koch-funded Hall of Human Origins and suggested that a spiritual-scientific ideology, traceable in part to Teilhard de Chardin, infuses the Smithsonian’s Human Origins initiative and related events. In this follow-up, I take a closer look at this ideology and its connection to broader currents in contemporary evolutionary thought and the Anthropocene. Continue reading →

Surviving the Anthropocene: Big Brains and Big Money at the Smithsonian

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We welcome Lisa Sideris, of Indiana University, as a guest on the blog . . . click for her bio, or go to the “Who we are” tab. This is the first installment of a two-part post; please come back again Friday for the conclusion.

In late May this year, two related attractions drew me to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in D.C.  One was an ambitious-sounding Continue reading →

The real inconvenient truth?

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This will not be a very scientific post, but it is also not a rant. I am trying to understand something: why is there so little large scale planning and discussion about the inevitable and grave consequences of climate change?

There is a surprising amount of Continue reading →

The fundamental ethical adaptation: anthroponomy

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We welcome to the blog Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, of Case Western Reserve University, for the next in our series on Environmental Political Theory.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t like the term “environmentalism.” I think every human should take care of her home, want to be mindful of other forms of life on Earth, and should Continue reading →

Hypothesized Hope

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THIS POST IS PART OF OUR ANTHROPOCENE BIOSPHERE PROJECT–A SERIES OF POSTS ON ERLE ELLIS’ ‘ECOLOGY IN AN ANTHROPOGENIC BIOSPHERE‘ (ECOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS, 85/3 (2015))

In preparation for Erle Ellis’ visit to OU’s campus in April, I’ve spent some time considering topics I hope we can address during his visit. Continue reading →