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Search Results for 'climate change'

“This is a fossil fuel war”

Posted in Climate change, tagged , , , , , on March 27, 2022 | 1 Comment »

The invasion of Ukraine has shifted media attention away from many other things, Covid and climate among them. But the climate implications of the war have not gone unnoticed. To start with the obvious: Russia is a petrostate. As Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air analyst Lauri Myllyvirta writes, More than a third […]

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Ukraine, the “migrant crisis,” & the future

Posted in Cultural politics, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 14, 2022 | Leave a Comment »

Here are some thoughts on the humanitarian, historical, moral, and environmental implications of the crisis of refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They were prompted by questions asked of me by a public radio interviewer. I’m still working on the answers (and the interview has not aired, as far as I can tell). Comments […]

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Invasion of Ukraine

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 26, 2022 | Leave a Comment »

Readers of this blog may know that I have longstanding research as well as personal/family connections in Ukraine and that I have sometimes run a parallel blog on issues related to that country. (Called “UKR-TAZ: A Ukrainian Temporary Autonomous Zone,” the blog is found here.) I recently began posting to that blog more regularly with […]

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The feeling of the world

Posted in Cultural politics, tagged , , , , , , on January 18, 2022 | Leave a Comment »

Here’s a working thesis on the present global moment: 1. For many people around the world, life has always been precarious. But for a certain class — the global middle class (and up) — the world had felt more or less secure and comfortable, as long as one knew how to navigate it: play by […]

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The Anthropocene Unconscious

Posted in Anthropocene, Climate change, Eco-culture, Eco-theory, tagged , , , , , on January 17, 2022 | Leave a Comment »

Mark Bould’s new book The Anthropocene Unconscious makes more or less the same argument as I made in my 2008 New Formations article “Stirring the Geopolitical Unconscious: Toward a Jamesonian Ecocriticism,” later expanded in the “Terra and Trauma” chapter of Ecologies of the Moving Image, but he applies it to literature rather than film. The […]

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Dreamlife of the Anthropocene

Posted in Spirit matter, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2021 | 4 Comments »

The work of environmental/climate humanists is premised on the assumption that the way we make sense of the world matters. This means that the dreams we have — Covid pandemic dreams, climate change dreams — also matter. The best artists, in turn, help shape our collective dreaming. The environmental arts and humanities aim to help […]

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Youth vs. Apocalypse: or, optimism of the will

Posted in Climate change, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 29, 2021 | Leave a Comment »

It seems the world is coming to realize what Environmental Studies folks have been saying since I first became a Master’s student in that field 34 years ago: that humanity risks careening off the rails into a species-wide, if not planet-wide, smash-up unless it profoundly reorients the way it functions on this planet. That three-decade […]

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Through an Anthropo(s)cenic Glass, Darkly

Posted in Anthropocene, Cinema, Climate change, Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2021 | 1 Comment »

My thinking about the Anthropocenic predicament continues to be informed, even haunted, by Andrei Tarkovsky’s films Solaris and Stalker, along with their literary predecessor novels by (Lviv-born) Stanisław Lem and the Strugatsky brothers, respectively. Two keynote talks I’ve been invited to give this October — one for Ukraine’s Congress of Culture, to take place in […]

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“Trust your (foamy) immune system”

Posted in Anthropocene, Eco-theory, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 2, 2021 | 7 Comments »

“Trust your immune system.” One often hears this slogan, or some version of it, from people who are against vaccination. But what does it mean, or what should it mean for an intensely social species like ours, living in a microbiologically fluid and creative environment like Earth’s biosphere? We can only trust something if we […]

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Some blog tweaks

Posted in Blog stuff, tagged , on June 14, 2021 | Leave a Comment »

In the interests of improving the archivability, searchability, and general user-friendliness of this blog, I’ve changed some of the “Categories” and added several more to the list. (If you’ve been a subscriber to any of them, you may need to resubscribe under the changed label.) Quick explanation: “Categories,” which are listed at the top of […]

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The [Real]: on Rothko, music, & the Global Trends 2040 report

Posted in Anthropocene, Manifestos & auguries, Music & soundscape, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 15, 2021 | Leave a Comment »

Fans of Mark Rothko’s color field paintings frequently comment on the spaciousness, immersiveness, and liminality of those works: the way you can stand in front of them and feel as if you are being bathed in some transcendent force that is irreducible to anything else. Great art is (supposed to be) like that: it simply […]

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Letter to a vaccine skeptic

Posted in Cultural politics, Science & society, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 12, 2021 | 1 Comment »

The following distills the essence of my responses to questions from a vaccine (and Covid) skeptical friend. I share it in case it’s useful for others (and because it updates a few things I’ve written before on the topic). I’m not an epidemiologist and the comments on the science of the pandemic are those of […]

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