VIII. Earth Earns: An Open CoCreative Earthropocene to Astropocene PediaVerse

A. The Old World: Its Archaic, Polar, War Torn, Rapacious Critical Life Support Condition

Watriss, Wendy, et al, eds. Changing Circumstances: Looking at the Future of the Planet. Amsterdam: Schilt Publishing, 2016. As the quote says, this is a coffee-table illustrated volume which tries to inspire a public sensibility of a whole Earth and identity, so as to summon a remedial response. Lead essays by Watriss, artistic director of FotoFest International, the environmentalist Thomas Lovejoy, and British activist Geof Rayner set the urgent scene.

This book is an expansive presentation of international contemporary photography, video, and new media art addressing the challenges presented by global change. It shows the works of 34 international artists, focusing on the ways in which these media reflect on our relationship, as individuals and as a society, to the natural environment around us.
An important aspect of this presentation is how individual artists are using their work to address the impact of human behavior on the natural environment. The purpose of the book is to provoke, through visual art, new ways of thinking about how we see our role within the natural environment and our connection(s) to the rest of the planet―and how this affects our future.

Watson, Robert, editor-in-chief. Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. This edition from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is backed up by three large volumes: The Scientific Basis; Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; Mitigation.

Whitty, Julia. The Thirteenth Tipping Point. Mother Jones. November/December, 2006. Twelve bioregions or earth metabolic functions are cited as critically poised systems: Amazon Rainforest, North Atlantic Current, Greenland Ice Sheet, Ozone Hole, Antarctic Circumpolar Current, Sahara Desert, Tibetan Plateau, Asian Monsoon, Methane Clathrates, Salinity Valves, El Nino, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If anyone of these became radically altered, it would dramatically affect global climate and creaturely habitation. The 13th major influence to offset such events is an intentional shift in human life style from competitive consumption to ecological sustainability.

Xu, Chi, et al. Future of the Human Climate Niche. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 117/11350, 2020. International scholars from China, the UK, USA, Denmark and the Netherlands including Tim Lenton and Marten Scheffer point out that while anthropo sapiens has spread all over the Earth, the most inhabiting populations have confined themselves to narrower, defined zones. By this view, these preferred areas come under even more impact, constraint and imminent peril.

We show that for thousands of years, humans have concentrated in a surprisingly narrow subset of Earth’s available climates, characterized by mean annual temperatures around ∼13 °C. This distribution likely reflects a human temperature niche related to fundamental constraints. We demonstrate that depending on scenarios of population growth and warming, over the coming 50 y, 1 to 3 billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 y. Absent climate mitigation or migration, a substantial part of humanity will be exposed to mean annual temperatures warmer than nearly anywhere today. (Significance)

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