Alliances in the Anthropocene

Alliances in the Anthropocene
Author: Christine Eriksen
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2020-02-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811525331

This book explores how fire, plants and people coexist in the Anthropocene. In a time of dramatic environmental transformation, the authors examine how human impacts on the planetary system are being felt at all levels from the geological and the arboreal to the atmospheric. The book brings together the disciplines of human geography and art history to examine fire-plant-people alliances and multispecies world-making. The authors listen carefully to the narratives of bushfire survivors. They embrace the responses of contemporary artists, as practice becomes interwoven with fire as well as ruin and regrowth. Through visual, textual and felt ways of being, the chapters illuminate, illustrate, impress and imprint the imagined and actual agency of plants and people within a changing climate — from Aboriginal ecocultural burning to nuclear fire. By holding grief and enacting hope, the book shows how relationships come to be and are likely to change due to the interdependencies of fire, plants and people in the Anthropocene.

Biochemical Adaptation

Biochemical Adaptation
Author: George N. Somero
Publisher: Sinauer
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-03-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781605355641

The abiotic characteristics of the environment—including temperature, oxygen availability, salinity, and hydrostatic pressure—present challenges to all biochemical structures and processes. This volume first examines the nature of these perturbations to biochemical systems and then elucidates the major adaptive strategies that enable organisms from all Domains of Life—Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya—to conserve common types of biochemical structures and processes across a wide range of environments. In addition to these conservative adaptations that foster a biochemical unity among diverse species, other adaptations can be viewed as innovative changes that enable organisms to exploit new features of the environment that may themselves be the result of biological activities.

Adaptation in the Anthropocene

Adaptation in the Anthropocene
Author: Pramova, E.
Publisher: CIFOR
Total Pages: 6
Release: 2020-03-24
Genre:
ISBN:

Key messagesEcosystems provide people with services that enable adaptation to climate change, which we refer to here as 'adaptation services'.But adaptation services do not flow automatically: some input from people is needed.We identified five types of mechanisms that support the production of adaptation services.These mechanisms are related to: (i) multifunctional and traditional ecosystem management, (ii) proactive management of transformed ecosystems, (iii) use of novel adaptation services, (iv) collective ecosystem management, and (v) appreciating, using and valuing adaptation services.Understanding these mechanisms can lead to an improved flow of adaptation services and more options for livelihoods and well-being under climate change.This InfoBrief summarizes the findings of a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series B (Lavorel et al. 2020).

Break Up the Anthropocene

Break Up the Anthropocene
Author: Steve Mentz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 86
Release: 2019-05-29
Genre: Civilization, Modern
ISBN: 9781517908621

Takes the singular eco-catastrophic "Age of Man" and redefines this epoch We live in a new world: the Anthropocene. The Age of Man is defined in many ways, and most dramatically through climate change, mass extinction, and human marks in the geological record. Ideas of the Anthropocene spill out from the geophysical sciences into the humanities, social sciences, the arts, and mainstream debates--but it's hard to know what the new coinage really means. Break Up the Anthropocene argues that this age should subvert imperial masculinity and industrial conquest by opening up the plural possibilities of Anthropocene debates of resilience, adaptation, and the struggle for environmental justice. Forerunners: Ideas First Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead

Anthropocene Fictions

Anthropocene Fictions
Author: Adam Trexler
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2015-04-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813936934

Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have transformed the Earth’s atmosphere, committing our planet to more extreme weather, rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, and mass extinction. This period of observable human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems has been called the Anthropocene Age. The anthropogenic climate change that has impacted the Earth has also affected our literature, but criticism of the contemporary novel has not adequately recognized the literary response to this level of environmental crisis. Ecocriticism’s theories of place and planet, meanwhile, are troubled by a climate that is neither natural nor under human control. Anthropocene Fictions is the first systematic examination of the hundreds of novels that have been written about anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on climatology, the sociology and philosophy of science, geography, and environmental economics, Adam Trexler argues that the novel has become an essential tool to construct meaning in an age of climate change. The novel expands the reach of climate science beyond the laboratory or model, turning abstract predictions into subjectively tangible experiences of place, identity, and culture. Political and economic organizations are also being transformed by their struggle for sustainability. In turn, the novel has been forced to adapt to new boundaries between truth and fabrication, nature and economies, and individual choice and larger systems of natural phenomena. Anthropocene Fictions argues that new modes of inhabiting climate are of the utmost critical and political importance, when unprecedented scientific consensus has failed to lead to action. Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism

Adventures in the Anthropocene

Adventures in the Anthropocene
Author: Gaia Vince
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 157131928X

A science journalist travels the world to explore humanity’s ecological devastation—and its potential for renewal in this “compelling read” (Guardian, UK). We live in times of profound environmental change. According to a growing scientific consensus, the dramatic results of man-made climate change have ushered the world into a new geological era: the Anthropocene, or Age of Man. As an editor at Nature, Gaia Vince couldn’t help but wonder if the greatest cause of this dramatic planetary change—humans’ singular ability to adapt and innovate—might also hold the key to our survival. To investigate this provocative question, Vince travelled the world in search of ordinary people making extraordinary changes to the way they live—and, in many cases, finding new ways to thrive. From Nepal to Patagonia and beyond, Vince journeys into mountains and deserts, forests and farmlands, to get an up close and personal view of our changing environment. Part science journal, part travelogue, Adventures in the Anthropocene recounts Vince’s journey, and introduces an essential new perspective on the future of life on Earth.

Knowledge For The Anthropocene

Knowledge For The Anthropocene
Author: Carrillo, Francisco J.
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 180088429X

With human-induced environmental impacts disrupting human life in deeper ways and at a wider scale than anything previously experienced, this multidisciplinary book looks at the ways that current knowledge bases seem inadequate to help us deal with such realities. It offers a critical appraisal of the current knowledge infrastructure, including science, technology, innovation, education and informal knowledge systems.

Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change

Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change
Author: Allen Thompson
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2012-03-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262300788

An analytically precise and theoretically probing exploration of the challenge to our values and virtues posed by climate change. Predictions about global climate change have produced both stark scenarios of environmental catastrophe and purportedly pragmatic ideas about adaptation. This book takes a different perspective, exploring the idea that the challenge of adapting to global climate change is fundamentally an ethical one, that it is not simply a matter of adapting our infrastructures and economies to mitigate damage but rather of adapting ourselves to realities of a new global climate. The challenge is to restore our conception of humanity—to understand human flourishing in new ways—in an age in which humanity shapes the basic conditions of the global environment. In the face of what we have unintentionally done to Earth's ecology, who shall we become? The contributors examine ways that new realities will require us to revisit and adjust the practice of ecological restoration; the place of ecology in our conception of justice; the form and substance of traditional virtues and vices; and the organizations, scale, and underlying metaphors of important institutions. Topics discussed include historical fidelity in ecological restoration; the application of capability theory to ecology; the questionable ethics of geoengineering; and the cognitive transformation required if we are to “think like a planet.”

Climate Change in the Anthropocene

Climate Change in the Anthropocene
Author: Kieran D. Ohara
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2022-03-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0128203099

Climate Change in the Anthropocene reviews current science on anthropogenic sources and projections for climatic change. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book covers this rapidly changing field, including the drivers of climate change, the physics and chemistry behind the science of climate change, paleoclimates, climate variables, a comparison of global warning of 1.5° vs 2°C and the impacts of these climatic changes both at a global and a U.S. regional level. Infographics throughout help to explain concepts in a visual way, providing users with a better understanding of climate change. In addition, the book is ideal for advanced researchers who need to explain the underpinning science of climate change for grant applications and working with policy experts, etc. This is an essential book for anyone whose work is impacted by climate change in the earth and environmental sciences. - Reviews the science behind climate change projections with a view that is written for graduate students and researchers across the earth and environmental sciences - Contains 1-2 infographics in each chapter that create a visual explanation of key concepts and processes behind global and planetary change - Includes coverage of general and planetary changes as well as local examples of climate change in action - Presents case studies throughout the book from a variety of climate science researchers, bringing foundational knowledge and advances in the field to life with real world examples

Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future

Addressing Tipping Points for a Precarious Future
Author: Timothy O'Riordan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2013-08-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0197265537

Tipping points are zones or thresholds of profound changes in natural or social conditions with very considerable and largely unforecastable consequences. Tipping points may be dangerous for societies and economies, especially if the prevailing governing arrangements are not designed either to anticipate them or adapt to their arrival. Tipping points can also be transformational of cultures and behaviours so that societies can learn to adapt and to alter their outlooks and mores in favour of accommodating to more sustainable ways of living. This volume examines scientific, economic and social analyses of tipping points, and the spiritual and creative approaches to identifying and anticipating them. The authors focus on climate change, ice melt, tropical forest drying and alterations in oceanic and atmospheric circulations. They also look closely at various aspects of human use of the planet, especially food production, and at the loss of biodiversity, where alterations to natural cycles may be creating convulsive couplings of tipping points. They survey the various institutional aspects of politics, economics, culture and religion to see why such dangers persist.