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VIII. Earth Earns: An Open Participatory Earthropocene to Astropocene CoCreative Future

1. An Anthropocene Age: Human Civilization Takes Over and Changes Every Feature

Monastersky, Richard. The Human Age. Nature. 519/145, 2015. An introductory report on definitions, orientations, and aspects on the increasing adoption of a radical new evolutionary and historical era of humanity’s technological profligate florescence. Much more can be found in dedicated new journals such as Anthropocene (Elsevier), The Anthropocene Review (Sage), and others. The upshot, or overshoot, is that we all had better recognize that something epochal is going on which demands our attention and sustainable remediation. See also When did the Anthropocene Begin? by Jan Zalasiewicz, et al in Quaternary International (January 2015), which is most attributed to the “great acceleration” of the mid 20th century.

Morrell, Kevin and Frederik Dahlmann. Aristotle in the Anthropocene: The Comparative Benefits of Virtue Ethics over Utilitarianism and Deontology. Anthropocene Review. December, 2022. Cranfield School of Management, UK and Warwick Business School scholars seek to avail and join original Greek philosophies with third millennium national and planetary crises as we phenomenal peoples still try to viably abide on this precious biospheric home, See also herein Taming Gaia 2.0: Earth System Law in the Ruptured Anthropocene by Kim Rakhyun, et al (9/3, 2022), and Anthropocene Science, a new Springer journal this year.

In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individual In moral philosophy deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action.

Moser, Keith. Rethinking the Essence of Human and Other-Than-Human Communication in the Anthropocene Epoch: A Biosemiotic Interpretation of Edgar Morin’s “Complex Thought.”. Humanities. 7/2, 2018. We note this intriguing essay by a Mississippi State University professor of language studies as an insightful take on the nonagenarian French systems sage endeavor to articulate an expansive, semiotic sense of a natural literacy far beyond humans alone. An opening section is Communication as a Universal Property of Life whence one may gain an abiding sense of an “Ecosmos” and “eCosmos” as both ecological and loquacious.

The purpose of this essay is to explore the philosophical and linguistic implications of the French philosopher Edgar Morin’s “complex thought.” In stark contrast to standard communicative models which profess that Homo sapiens are the only organisms that are capable of engaging in semiosis, Morin unequivocally proves that other-than-human communication is laden with significance and purpose. Living on an imperiled planet that is increasingly defined by an anthropogenic, ecological calamity and spiraling further out of control with each passing day, Morin persuasively argues that we must transcend our myopic, anthropocentric frame of reference and adopt a more ecocentric view of communication. (Abstract)

Nicholson, Simon and Sikina Jinnah, eds. New Earth Politics: Essays from the Anthropocene. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016. An academic anthology with sections about Causes of the New Earth, Scholarship as Engagement, Pedagogies of Hope, New Earth Institutions, Social Movements, Geopolitics, Climate Change, and Narrative Frames for Living on a New Earth. Some chapters are Person/Planet Politics by Karen Litfin, Scholarship as Citizenship by Richard Falk, and Toward Sharing Our Ecospace by Joyeeta Gupta.

Novacek, Michael. Terra. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007. Reviewed more in the Greatest Earth section, its subtitle is Our 100-Million-Year-Old Ecosystem – And The Threats That Now Put It at Risk.

Oppermann, Serpil and Serenella Iovino, eds. Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. The editors are Hacettepe University, Ankara, and University of Turin literary scholars with several volumes to their credit, search Amazon. Some chapters here are Posthuman Environs by Jeff Cohen, Where is Feminism in the Environmental Humanities by Greta Gaard, The Extraordinary Strata of the Anthropocene by Jan Zalasiewicz, Worldview Remediation in the First Century of the New Millennium by J. Baird Callicott, and How the Earth Speaks Now by Wendy Wheeler. We also note a 2014 collection Material Ecocriticism by the editors, re second quote. See also The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities. edited by Ursula, Heise, et al (Routledge, 2017). But the postmodern academic mindset of such well intended works seems to daunt an effective message because it cannot imagine a greater, encompassing creative reality from which any salutary identity, purpose and guidance might be gained.

At a time when the narrative and theoretical threads of the environmental humanities are more entwined than ever with the scientific, ethical, and political challenges of the global ecological crisis, this volume invites us to rethink the Anthropocene, the posthuman, and the environmental from various cross-disciplinary viewpoints. The book enriches the environmental debate with new conceptual tools and revitalizes thematic and methodological collaborations in the trajectory of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Alliances between the humanities and the social and natural sciences are vital in addressing and finding viable solutions to our planetary predicaments. (publisher)

Material Ecocriticism offers new ways to analyze language and reality, human and nonhuman life, mind and matter, without falling into well-worn paths of thinking. Bringing ecocriticism closer to the material turn, the contributions to this landmark volume focus on material forces and substances, the agency of things, processes, narratives and stories, and making meaning out of the world. This broad-ranging reflection on contemporary human experience and expression provokes new understandings of the planet to which we are intimately connected.

Purdy, Jedediah. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. So as to engage this rampant era of technological human globalization, a Duke University professor of law seeks to identify and scope a suitable democratic abidance. The old representative modes won’t do any more, if they ever did (consider the current 2016 election). A novel turn is deftly cast as “post-humanism” whence human beings need integrate and assimilate individual selves into a supportive natural ecology. In regard, threads of a “new animism, ecocentrism, politics of nature” in as modes of a dynamic autopoietic self-organization are recommended. The author, just 40 years old, is seen as one of the brightest scholars to come along, so maybe these insights will gain the notice and implementation they deserve.

Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics―a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. The Anthropocene demands that we draw on all these legacies and go beyond them. With human and environmental fates now inseparable, environmental politics will become either more deeply democratic or more unequal and inhumane. Where nothing is pure, we must create ways to rally devotion to a damaged and ever-changing world.

Rhodes, Lynn. Verge of Collapse? Survival of Civilization in the Anthropocene. Comparative Civilizations Review. 72/Spring, 2015. The environmentalist author was formally director of the California State Parks. Herein he graphically lays out a path to an alternative Ecological Civilization which draws on Andrew Targowski’s model (search) as a measured response to Jared Diamond’s clarion 2011 work Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Rockstrom, Johan, et al. Climate Change: The necessary, the possible and the desirable Earth League climate statement on the implications for climate policy from the 5th IPCC Assessment. Earth’s Future. 2/12, 2014. In this new online journal hosted by the American Geophysical Union, thirty leading environmental scientists such as Hans Schellnhuber, April Humble, Sander van der Leeuw, and Nicholas Stern, issue this manifesto. As the abstracts details, while biospheric weather has been relatively stable for some past millennia, it is now in a stressed state due to human Anthropocene civilizational impacts. This reality, which must be acknowledged and faced, then requires “a necessary and possible Global Transformation” to a beneficial sustainable homeostasis if we are to survive and flourish.

The development of human civilisations has occurred at a time of stable climate. This climate stability is now threatened by human activity. The rising global climate risk occurs at a decisive moment for world development. World nations are currently discussing a global development agenda consequent to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which ends in 2015. It is increasingly possible to envisage a world where absolute poverty is largely eradicated within one generation and where ambitious goals on universal access and equal opportunities for dignified lives are adopted. These grand aspirations for a world population approaching or even exceeding nine billion in 2050 is threatened by substantial global environmental risks and by rising inequality. Research shows that development gains, in both rich and poor nations, can be undermined by social, economic and ecological problems caused by human-induced global environmental change. Climate risks, and associated changes in marine and terrestrial ecosystems that regulate the resilience of the climate system, are at the forefront of these global risks. We, as citizens with a strong engagement in Earth system science and socio-ecological dynamics, share the vision of a more equitable and prosperous future for the world, yet we also see threats to this future from shifts in climate and environmental processes. Without collaborative action now, our shared Earth system may not be able to sustainably support a large proportion of humanity in the decades ahead. (Abstract)

Rockstrom, Johan, et al. Safe and Just Earth system boundaries. Nature. May 31, 2023. Thirty senior environmentalists from across Europe, China, Australia and the USA including Marten Scheffer and Timothy Lenton post a studious array of both specific and comprehensive recommendations for personal, local and planetary sustainable health and well being. We enter in this Anthropocene section for clearly, as the G20 summit motto states One Earth, Family, Future, we must unite and transcend to a viable ecosphere unity.






The stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked, yet their interdependencies are rarely recognized so they are often treated independently. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change. We propose that our assessment provides a quantitative foundation for safeguarding the global commons for all people now and into the future.

Rockstrom, John, et al. The planetary commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding Earth-regulating systems in the Anthropocene. PNAS. 121/5, 2024. 22 coauthors including Will Steffen and Timothy Lenton with a main base at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research propose an expansive perception of our finite world beyond global with its more human emphasis to a whole Earth-planet lifesphere concept. In regard we refer to an a organic, protocellular Earthropocene vista is advanced on this cite.

The Anthropocene signifies a trajectory of the Earth system that is far from the Holocene now fraught with rising risks of irreversible and unmanageable shifts in ecological functioning. We urgently need a new global approach to safeguard critical Earth system regulations more effectively. The global commons scenario is existing guide to governing biophysical systems. In the light of our Anthropocene age, this requires a focus beyond national borders. We propose a new planetary commons modelwhich can include shared geographic regions and environmental vitalities. The new planetary ecosphere view should have integral stewardship obligations aimed at restoring and strengthening planetary resilience and justice. (Abstract)

Rodriques, Pablo and Catarina Lira. The Bio-Evolutionary Anthropocene Hypothesis. Biological Theory. Online July, 2019. With a subtitle of Rethinking the Role of Human-Induced Novel Organisms in Evolution, Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botanico do Rio de Janeiro bioecologists consider ways that novel organisms will evolve as a result of our invasive human-induced “Anthroposphere” as it impacts and changes every fauna and flora bioregion.

Anthropogenic changes in the biosphere, driven mainly by human cultural habits and technological advances, are altering the direction of evolution on Earth, with ongoing and permanent changes modifying uncountable interactions between organisms, the environment, and humankind itself. While numerous species may go extinct, others will be favored due to strong human influences. The Bio-Evolutionary Anthropocene hypothesizes that directly or indirectly human-driven organisms, including alien species, hybrids, and genetically modified organisms will have major roles in the evolution of life in all habitats. We predict that humankind and novel organisms will interact within a strong evolutionary bias that will lead to unexpected, and probably irreversible, outcomes of life on our planet. (Abstract excerpt)

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