{"id":8719,"date":"2016-04-19T08:32:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T13:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8719"},"modified":"2021-06-13T21:53:52","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T02:53:52","slug":"living-in-a-bubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/04\/19\/living-in-a-bubble\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in a bubble"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"images\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve been using the metaphor of the Sustainability Bottleneck<\/a> in my teaching, but another one that is more immediately graspable is The Bubble.<\/p>\n

Two things landed in my in-box this morning that testify to this (but that’s a pretty daily occurrence, e.g., see this<\/a>, this<\/a>, this<\/a>, this<\/a>, this<\/a>, this<\/a>, and this<\/a>, all from the past week). One of these is a New York Times op-ed by a meteoreological business guy, called “A New Dark Age Looms<\/a>.” The second is an interesting piece by Australian eco-anarchist farmer Glenn Albrecht called “Exiting the Anthropocene and Entering the Symbiocene” (which originally appeared on his blog<\/a> in December).<\/p>\n

Where they concur is that, as scientists have been increasingly predicting, we can expect a Coming Unraveling — an unraveling of the “established patterns and regularity of Holocene phenology” of the past 12,000 years, followed by a “new abnormal<\/a>” in which<\/p>\n

“life will be characterised by uncertainty, unpredictability, genuine chaos and relentless change. Earth distress, as manifest in global warming, changing climates, erratic weather, acidifying oceans, disease pandemics, species endangerment and extinction, bioaccumulation of toxins and the overwhelming physical impact of exponentially-expanding human development will have its correlates in human physical and mental distress.”<\/p>\n

There are, in this sense, two bubbles: there is that 12,000 year Holocene Bubble that we all (humans and our companions) have benefited from; and there is the bubble of middle-class life that my students and I and others in developed countries benefit from today.<\/p>\n

As every child knows, bubbles are wondrous and beautiful things, to be admired and cherished while they last. But then they burst.<\/p>\n

I tell my students we should admire and enjoy our bubble while we can. And that we should make the most of it, to prepare for what follows.<\/p>\n

What are the collective capacities we have, or will need to develop, for post-Bubble life? (Albrecht<\/a> has the temerity to envision a positive version of post-Bubble life, which he calls the Symbiocene. We need positive visions, to be sure; I’m with him.) If we can figure that question out and play our part in the development of those capacities, then we’re doing okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been using the metaphor of the Sustainability Bottleneck in my teaching, but another one that is more immediately graspable is The Bubble. Two things landed in my in-box this morning that testify to this (but that’s a pretty daily occurrence, e.g., see this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, all from the past week). One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,660440],"tags":[123667,350230,350227,350226,350228,123572,350225],"class_list":["post-8719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-manifestos-and-auguries","tag-anthropocene","tag-bubbleology","tag-climate-science","tag-dark-age","tag-metaphors","tag-sustainability-bottleneck","tag-symbiocene"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2gD","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8001,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/01\/22\/sustainability-bottleneck-or-no-one-here-gets-out-alive\/","url_meta":{"origin":8719,"position":0},"title":"Sustainability bottleneck (or, No one here gets out alive?)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Astrophysicist\u00a0and NPR blogger\u00a0Adam Frank\u00a0writes about the \"sustainability bottleneck\" as the state faced by technological civilizations like ours, which have learned how to\u00a0\"intensively harvest\" energy, but not how to sustain themselves through the crisis this harvesting sets off. It turns out there may be millions\u00a0of planets that give rise to life\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"broken-bottles","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/01\/broken-bottles-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8731,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/04\/20\/artistic-bubbleology-101\/","url_meta":{"origin":8719,"position":1},"title":"Artistic bubbleology 101","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the best ways to respond to the\u00a0Bubble\u00a0I mentioned in the last post is through the arts. Here's\u00a0the poster for my summer course examining artistic responses to the global crisis.","rel":"","context":"In "Academe"","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10098,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/03\/17\/p-n-transition-or-toward-the-neocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":8719,"position":2},"title":"P-N transition, or, toward the Neocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"It's nice to see archdruid John Michael Greer's proposal for a \"Pleistocene-Neocene transition\" get a little traction in the science press -- specifically, in a Science Alert article by psychologist Matthew Adams. Greer, whose writings on religion and ecology are respectably out-of-the-box, advocates against the Anthropocene label on the basis\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/03\/Titanicentersicefields-2.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/05\/18\/the-sf-of-sustainability\/","url_meta":{"origin":8719,"position":3},"title":"The SF of sustainability","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 18, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Since it's the Holocene\u00a0that has provided the conditions for the (human-led) biogeochemical experimentation that has now likely achieved a runaway state, and since \"Holocene\" was never anything other than a placeholder term -- it only means \"entirely new\" -- it seems inappopriate to replace it with the term \"Anthropocene.\" \"Holocene\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8385,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/09\/11\/not-just-waiting-for-godot\/","url_meta":{"origin":8719,"position":4},"title":"Not just waiting for Godot","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 11, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"You may take this as more optimistic blathering from within the pessimistic morass, but here goes. Those of us who teach environmental studies -- who teach impressionable young adults about the colossal challenges facing humanity in the coming decades, with the looming climate crisis, resource wars and (human and nonhuman)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/UmDrLaebUa4\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7645,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/12\/on-naming-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":8719,"position":5},"title":"On naming the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u00a0gatherings like the Anthropocene Project (see here, here, and here, and some of the posts\u00a0at A(S)CENE) and journals like Environmental\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/06\/HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8719"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11962,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8719\/revisions\/11962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}