Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Search Results for 'climate change'

To bother (with protest), or not?

Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Politics, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2015 | 2 Comments »

Writing in The Independent, “Left accelerationists” Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek make the case that we need not bother protesting the Paris climate summit. There are better things to do than that. They argue, first, that the negotiators won’t change anything under pressure, and probably won’t even notice that pressure coming from the streets. (Especially […]

Read Full Post »

What’s happening?

Posted in Climate change, Eco-culture, Politics, tagged , , , , , on November 9, 2015 | 2 Comments »

The beginning of COP 21, the UN Conference on Climate Change, is three weeks away. So what else is happening, you ask? 1) The Campaign Against Climate Change‘s Time to Act! campaign, 350.org, Reclaim Power, and various other formations are preparing actions around the world on the eve of the summit (November 28-29) and a huge demonstration in Paris […]

Read Full Post »

Eco-humanities glossolalia

Posted in Academe, Eco-theory, tagged , on September 18, 2015 | 3 Comments »

I’ve just come across the earliest outline I wrote for the course I’m currently teaching (in its third incarnation), “Environmental Literature, Arts, and Media.” The course has also turned into a book project I’m working on, which will be a thematic primer to the environmental arts and humanities. Both course and book have changed shape so […]

Read Full Post »

Bandwagocene

Posted in Anthropocene, tagged , , on July 21, 2015 | 3 Comments »

These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books being published with titles that feature the word “Anthropocene.” To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a “slow read” would require, well, retirement. But that’s no reason not to try. Here’s just a quick sample […]

Read Full Post »

The many ecologies of Laudato Si

Posted in Climate change, Politics, Spirit matter, tagged , , , on June 18, 2015 | 9 Comments »

Now that Laudato Si, the Papal Encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home,” is available for all to read, the punditocracy can debate it to their hearts’ content. As the most far-reaching statement by the single largest (relatively united) religious denomination on the planet, it is likely to have an immense impact on global conversations around […]

Read Full Post »

4 Noble Truths of Socio-Ecological Suffering

Posted in Anthropocene, Eco-culture, Manifestos & auguries, tagged , , , , , , on May 1, 2015 | 8 Comments »

Some 2500 years ago, a man named Siddhartha Gotama articulated what have come to be known as the “4 Noble Truths”: the truth of dukkha, or fundamental suffering (that there is a basic unsatisfactoriness to life), the truth of its causes (that it arises from an ignorance and misperception of the nature of things, which are […]

Read Full Post »

More transgressions

Posted in Anthropocene, Science & society, tagged , , on January 16, 2015 | 1 Comment »

The journal Science has just released more news of planetary boundary transgression. (This is related to my post from a few days ago.) Specifically, of nine such boundaries connected to “processes and systems [that] regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth System,” four have been crossed. Two of these, climate change and biosphere integrity, are […]

Read Full Post »

Notes from Underground (ASLE) CFP

Posted in Academe, tagged , , on November 12, 2014 | Leave a Comment »

The deadline for proposals to next year’s Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) conference — arguably the largest and leading ecocritical conference in the world — is coming up in a few weeks. The conference theme is “Notes from Underground: The Depths of Environmental Arts, Culture and Justice.” Keynotes will include Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, […]

Read Full Post »

The semio-ethics of Coke’s polar bear mascots

Posted in Eco-culture, Media ecology, Visual culture, tagged , , , , , , , on October 16, 2014 | 2 Comments »

A journalist asked me to say something about the use of animal mascots for commercial purposes. In an email, she wrote: “What does a brand owe an animal mascot, especially one at risk? For instance, polar bears face rapid habitat loss, yet Coke has only donated $2 million to the WWF for conservation efforts. There’s also Kellogg’s […]

Read Full Post »

The challenge

Posted in Politics, tagged , , , on September 13, 2014 | 1 Comment »

The closing panel of this conference featured Winona LaDuke, Tim Ingold, Bron Taylor, environmental epidemiologist Colin Soskolne (who convened the preceding panel on public and environmental health regimes), and myself. We were each asked to provide five minutes of summary comments on the big issues of our concern (related to the conference). The following were […]

Read Full Post »

Under Western Skies 3

Posted in Academe, Eco-culture, tagged , , , on August 27, 2014 | 2 Comments »

The preliminary program is up for the third Under Western Skies conference, “Intersections of Environments, Technologies, Communities,” which will be held in a couple of weeks at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. And it looks fantastic. I think the biennial UWS gatherings are becoming one of the leading interdisciplinary forums for environmental thinking, critique, and […]

Read Full Post »

On naming the Anthropocene

Posted in Anthropocene, Philosophy, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2014 | 14 Comments »

The following are the comments I prepared for the roundtable “The Arts and Humanities Respond to the Anthropocene.” They follow in the line of critical thinking on the Anthropocene initiated by gatherings like the Anthropocene Project (see here, here, and here, and some of the posts at A(S)CENE) and journals like Environmental Humanities. As a cultural theorist, […]

Read Full Post »

« Prev - Next »

Skip to toolbar