{"id":9278,"date":"2017-05-18T14:45:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T19:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=9278"},"modified":"2017-05-18T14:45:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T19:45:59","slug":"the-sf-of-sustainability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/05\/18\/the-sf-of-sustainability\/","title":{"rendered":"The SF of sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Since it’s the Holocene\u00a0that has provided the conditions for the (human-led) biogeochemical experimentation that has now likely achieved a runaway<\/a> state, and since “Holocene<\/a>” was never anything other than a placeholder term — it only means “entirely new” — it seems inappopriate to replace it with the term “Anthropocene.”<\/p>\n

“Holocene” begins as a leap of faith — that this interglacial<\/a>\u00a0may somehow be\u00a0different from previous<\/a> Pleistocene interglacials. Until the evidence for that becomes conclusive — that is, until planetary systems settle into a new and different holding pattern — we should just call our era the “Late Holocene” and leave it at that (i.e., ambiguous). We have no idea how it will end or what will follow; we only know it’s likely to be short. The dream of human sustainability is still mostly science-fiction. (Even if indigenous cultures have shown it’s not entirely unimaginable.)<\/p>\n

All that said, “Anthropocene” is a good conversation starter. We’ll need a new one in a few years. (Perhaps something more apocalyptic.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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” begins as a leap of […]<\/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],"tags":[123667,455021,455018,455020,455019],"class_list":["post-9278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","tag-anthropocene","tag-geochronology","tag-holocene","tag-interglacial","tag-late-holocene"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2pE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/06\/20\/10-years-of-late-holocene-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":9278,"position":0},"title":"10 years (of Late Holocene life)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"(Or twice the video below.) Immanence passed its tenth anniversary last month and somehow failed to celebrate it. (The actual anniversary, May 11, marks the posting of\u00a0this two-line fragment.\u00a0Regular posts took another seven months to appear, or at least to take on a permanent form.) To celebrate, I recently re-did\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\/EkCc_qiI7UA\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/08\/12\/welcome-to-the-meghalayan\/","url_meta":{"origin":9278,"position":1},"title":"Welcome to the… Meghalayan?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Geology watchers were more than a little surprised last month to learn that we are living in a new age called the Meghalayan, which apparently began about 4200 years ago. After all the\u00a0excitement\u00a0over the\u00a0Anthropocene, it seems that a rival group of geological stratigraphers -- one tasked with naming the sub-parts\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":12144,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/09\/22\/thoughts-on-an-equinox\/","url_meta":{"origin":9278,"position":2},"title":"Thoughts on an equinox","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Marking the passage of the seasons from summer to winter and back again is something people have done for millennia. Seasons are reliable -- anyone living outside the equatorial band will continue to have colder and warmer seasons, probably for the rest of our lives. But many of us are\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\/2021\/09\/equinox.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/09\/equinox.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/09\/equinox.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/09\/equinox.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/09\/equinox.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2021\/09\/equinox.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10098,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/03\/17\/p-n-transition-or-toward-the-neocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":9278,"position":3},"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":7686,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/07\/07\/against-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":9278,"position":4},"title":"Against the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a guest post by Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the nonprofit\u00a0Center for Biological Diversity. It follows the discussion begun\u00a0here\u00a0and in some\u00a0AESS conference sessions, including Andy Revkin's keynote talk\u00a0(viewable here)\u00a0and responses to it (such as\u00a0Clive Hamilton's).\u00a0 I In considering why the name \u201cAnthropocene\u201d has been proposed, why it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"setting-sun-smokestacks","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/07\/setting-sun-smokestacks-275x179.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8719,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/04\/19\/living-in-a-bubble\/","url_meta":{"origin":9278,"position":5},"title":"Living in a bubble","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 19, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u00a0this, this, this, this, this, this, and this,\u00a0all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"images","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2016\/04\/images-275x171.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9278","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=9278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9279,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9278\/revisions\/9279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}