Dune implies that our thinking must be multidimensional: it must include not only the Arrakeen plants, people, sands, and skies, but also their interconnections across space and time. Philosophical ecology, put most simply, is the holistic comprehension of a world and its complexity. Aldo Leopold was among the first American conservationists, and he founded the field of wildlife ecology. The standpoint of an Arrakeen planetary ecologist, like any wildlife ecologist of earth, embraces not individuals but (...) relations. Climate change is a problem that exceeds the scope of mere individual action and requires thinking collectively across space and time. Deep Ecologists mobilize ecological self understanding as the pre condition for practical political change. By inviting us to think like a desert – to reflect on the nature of the self, the dangers of excess, and the virtues of humility – Dune teaches us to be a little more like the Fremen with environmental resources. (shrink)

The need for ecological sustainability has been translated into different indicators such as the ‘ecological footprint’ and the ‘planetary boundaries’. Analysis of both concepts concludes that the planet is currently undergoing a period of ecological unsustainability. For this reason, ecologists argue that various limits are required in order to move to a path of sustainability. The implementation of such limits has mostly been analysed from the perspectives of environmental rights and environmental justice, however research in terms of freedom is (...) (surprisingly) still lacking. In what way do such limits have an impact on freedom? I will argue that there are two different ways to analyse the relation between freedom and ecological limits: on the one hand, freedom is often referred to as being in competition with ecological sustainability and the limits it is required to impose, and, on the other hand, the impact on an individual’s freedom due to ecological catastrophe if strict limits are not implemented. Accepting that freedom is an important topic regarding ecological challenges, I ask which conception of freedom is better suited to answer this challenge as well as the required implementation of ecological limits. I compare and confront the closely linked conceptions of freedom as non-frustration and the closely linked conception of non-limitation, as well as non-interference and the conception of freedom as non-domination. After presenting these conceptions I examine their relationship with ecological limits. The conclusion is that the conception of freedom as non-domination is better placed to justify ecological limits necessary to promote an ecologically sustainable future. (shrink)

The author engages the enigmatic Green Man, a mythical figure of uncertain and even independent global arisings, to connect postindustrial people with their evolutionary origin and their kinship with all life. He traces the stream of ecologically oriented cultural critiques from Lynn White, Thomas Berry, Paul Shepard, and on through the school of Deep Ecologists, as they explore how modern humanity has alienated itself from the Earth. Green Man's spiritual path of sensory integration with our earthly habitat can help disenfranchised (...) earthlings return to their planetary home, relate to their biodiverse kin, and discover their own true nature. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from the contentThe European Social Simulation Association was founded in 2002 by a scientific coalition, the SimSoc consortium, active ever since the first years of social simulation . Ten years before, the first of a series of SimSoc symposia held in Surrey in 1992, marked the birth of a new scientific field, the computer simulation of social life. The volume from the 2nd SimSoc symposium, published in 1995, was titled Artificial Societies . The next year, in (...) 1996, came out the best-seller by Epstein and Axtell Growing Artificial Societies.The planetary dimension of social simulation became apparent through the number of scientific events spreading throughout the world, favoured by increasing synergies both within the social scientific disciplines and across major scientific areas. To computer simulation turned anthropologists, ethologists, geographers, but also computer scientists and ICT designers, ecologists. (shrink)

The distinction between taxonomic plant geography and ecological plant geography was never absolute: it would be historically inaccurate to portray them as totally divergent. Taxonomists occasionally borrowed ecological concepts, and ecologists never completely repudiated taxonomy. Indeed, some botanists pursued the two types of geographic study. The American taxonomist Henry Allan Gleason (1882–1975), for one, made noteworthy contributions to both. Most of Gleason's research appeared in short articles, however. He never published a major synthetic work comparable in scope or influence to (...) the ecological texts of Clements, Schimper, and Warming.Despite exceptions such as Gleason, most plant geographers throughout the twentieth century have emphasized the distinction between ecological and taxonomic plant geographies. Why have these distinct traditions developed? In his book Geographical Ecology, Robert MacArthur has suggested a psychological explanation for the dichotomy: “Unraveling the history of a phenemenon has always appealed to some people and describing the machinery of the phenomenon to others... The ecologist and physical scientist tend to be machinery oriented, whereas paleontologists and most biogeographers tend to be history oriented.”46Without necessarily rejecting MacArthur's explanation, my study suggests a more complex relationship between taxonomic and ecological plant geographies. At the turn of the century a group of botanists self-consciously defined a new area of botanical research. These ecologists defined their new discipline in opposition to what they believed was a moribund, nineteenth-century, natural-history tradition. They turned from historically oriented, descriptive, taxonomic plant geography to experimental physiology. The new ecological plant geography was to focus on communities rather than on species, on proximate environmental causes rather than on historical explanations, and on physiological experiments rather than on morphological descriptions.As we look back, much of the “revolt from morphology” was rhetorical. Ecologists never completely replaced species as units of distribution, nor did they set geography on an explicitly physiological basis. Indeed, much of early ecological research was, quite simply, descriptive. Plant communities were defined in terms of dominant species, representative life forms, or general physiognomy. The underlying physiological basis for community characteristics was more often assumed than demonstrated by experiments.Despite the fact that ecological plant geography was not a truly physiological specialty, it was significantly different from more traditional taxonomic plant geography. First, ecologists were less explicitly evolutionary in their approach than were taxonomists. Following Darwin, most taxonomic plant geographers viewed distribution in historical terms. In contrast, early ecologists tended to ignore the traditional geographic problems. Most ecologists were skeptical of historical explanations, emphasizing instead the proximate, environmental causes of distribution. While some nineteenth-century biogeographers had studied the correlation between climate and vegetation, twentieth-century ecologists focused much more sharply on the interactions between plant and environment. Plant ecologists did not place biogeography on a physiological basis, but by emphasizing physiology they laid the foundation for a more detailed understanding of adaption. This emphasis on physiology and environmental causation was a second distinguishing characteristic of ecological plant geography. Finally, the idea of the plant community, articulated by Eugenius Warming in 1895, provided ecologists with a unique perspective on the distribution of plants. For early ecologists, the community was more than an assemblage of species; it was an integrated unit. The distribution of these units became the major focus of ecological plant geography. Communities never completely replaced species as geographic units, and the distinction between flora and vegetation was often blurred. Nonetheless, ecologists were innovative in studying the distribution of structurally and functionally integrated groups of plants.In the twentieth century plant geography has occupied an anomalous position in biology. It has not developed into an autonomous discipline, nor has it been incorporated into the developing discipline of ecology. Ecologists and taxonomists have pursued fairly distinct styles of geographic research, with the result that two relatively independent approaches to the study of plant distribution have persisted. (shrink)

The text provides a survey of the main components of ecologism and examines elements that have been neglected in existing literature. It contains debates surrounding this aspect of political philosophy, and the author's own development of them.

Ecologists grapple with complex, changing situations. Historians, sociologists and philosophers studying the construction of science likewise attempt to account for (or discount) a wide variety of influences making up the scientists' "ecologies of knowledge." This paper introduces a graphic methodology, mapping, designed to assist researchers at both levels-in science and in science studies-to work with the complexity of their material. By analyzing the implications and limitations of mapping, I aim to contribute to an ecological approach to the philosophy of science.

Ecologists, particularly those who consider socially generated effects in the environment, grapple with complex, changing situations. Historians, sociologists and philosophers studying the construction of science likewise attempt to account for (or discount) a wide variety of influences, which make up what historian Charles Rosenberg has called “ecologies of knowledge” (Rosenberg 1988). This paper introduces a graphic methodology, mapping, designed to assist researchers at both levels—in science and in science studies—to work with the complexity of their material. By analyzing the implications (...) and limitations of mapping, I aim to contribute to an ecological approach to the philosophy of science. Let me start with two diagrams to open up the territory I will be exploring.Dansereau’s diagram (Fig. 1) conveys a dynamic equilibrium of energy and resource import, export, flows up a trophic hierarchy, and down again to exert control over lower levels in an ecosystem (Dansereau 1973). (shrink)

The enduring and consistent rise of the far right has enabled its representatives to affect environmental debates on a larger scale. Although such incursions are often labeled 'eco-fascist', the term itself term may be insufficient to account for the complexity of this intersection. Building upon existing attempts to organise such discourses in a coherent sub-ideological set, 'far-right ecologism' (FRE) is suggested as an overarching term, deriving its morphology from fascism, conservatism, as well as national-populism. Therefore, values emanating from these strands, (...) such as naturalism, spirituality, mysticism, authority, organicism, autarky, nostalgia and Manicheanism, constitute FRE as a heuristic device. (shrink)

Some variants in the materials related to the planetary latitudes, including computational procedures, underlying parameters, numerical tables, and so on, may be addressed in the corpus of the astronomical tables preserved from the medieval Islamic period, which have already been classified comprehensively by Van Dalen. Of these, the new values obtained for the planetary inclinations and the longitude of their ascending nodes might have something to do with actual observations in the period in question, which are the main (...) concern of this paper. The paper is in the following sections. In the first section, Ptolemy’s latitude models and their reception in Islamic astronomy are briefly reviewed. In the next section, the medieval non-Ptolemaic values for the inclinations and the longitudes of the nodal lines are introduced. The paper ends with the discussion and some concluding remarks. The derivation of the underlying inclination values from the medieval planetary latitude tables and determining the accuracy of the tables are postponed to “Appendix” in the end of the paper. (shrink)

Whereas recent framings of planetary urbanization stress the planet-scaled impacts of contemporary urban processes, we might also conceive of cities as being constitutively ‘planetary’ from their very outset. This article looks at two ways in which the earliest urban centres or ‘civilizations’ on the floodplains of the Fertile Crescent harnessed the deep, geological forces of the Earth. The first is the tapping and channelling of sedimentary processes, central to what Wittfogel referred to as hydraulic civilizations (1963). The second (...) is the use of high-heat technologies to smelt and forge metals, which can be construed as a capture of igneous processes. What both sets of practices have in common is that they involve skilled intervention in fluid-solid phase transitions between solid rock and flowing particulate matter. Viewing cities as constitutively geological or planetary in this way can help us reimagine the challenges posed to urban spaces by looming transformations in Earth systems. (shrink)

Current planetary defense policy prioritizes a probability assessment of risk of Earth impact by an asteroid or a comet in the planning of detection and mitigation strategies and in setting the levels of urgency and budgeting to operationalize them. The result has been a focus on asteroids of Tunguska size, which could destroy a city or a region, since this is the most likely sort of object we would need to defend against. However a complete risk assessment would consider (...) not only the probability of an impact but also the magnitude of its consequences, which in the case of an object of Chicxulub size could be the end of civilization or even human extinction. This paper argues that a planetary defense policy based on a complete (or one could say genuine) risk assessment would justify expenditures much higher than at present. (shrink)

(1999). Planetary culture and the crisis of the future. World Futures: Vol. 54, Challenges of Evolution at Pat I: The Human Factor in Evolution, pp. 297-311.

In 1943, in the midst of the Second World War, the famous architect Richard Neutra was commissioned by the government of Puerto Rico to build hospitals and schools. In response, he produced a number of prototypes and processes investigating different ways to ventilate and climate control buildings in the sub-tropical environment of the island through technology. Neutra famously labeled his work in Puerto Rico a Planetary Test. This article examines this history of making climate a medium for design and (...) the implications of these practices for our present. (shrink)

The Anthropocene is built on complex technological systems that span the globe. Historians of science have done much to document the emergence of this “technosphere.” Yet more interdisciplinary and regionally diverse approaches are needed to understand the complexity and unpredictability of the technosphere in our Anthropocene times. Rather than assuming a single planetary phenomenon, this essay emphasizes the widely varied lived experiences of the Anthropocene. Taking industrialized mining and oil drilling as examples of the technosphere, it examines three African (...) localities of resource extraction—the Congolese Copperbelt, the South African Witwatersrand, and the Niger Delta in Nigeria—to ask why the environmental transformations of large-scale industry have caused violent protest in one locality but apparent acquiescence in others. The concept of the Anthropocene urges historians of science to connect questions about scientific knowledge and technology to issues of environmental change, economic organization, political power, social differentiation, and cultural imagination. This broad approach, the essay suggests, can prove extremely fruitful in explaining historical variations and contemporary responses to the Anthropocene. (shrink)

In this article, we aim at presenting a thorough and comprehensive explanation of the mathematical and theoretical relation between all the aspects of Ptolemaic planetary models and their counterparts which are built according to Kepler’s first two laws. Our article also analyzes the predictive differences which arise from comparing Ptolemaic and these ideal Keplerian models, making clear distinctions between those differences which must be attributed to the structural variations between the models, and those which are due to the specific (...) parameters Ptolemy determined in the Almagest. We expect that our work will be a contribution for a better understanding not only of the Ptolemaic theories for planetary longitudes through a clearer perception of the way in which Keplerian features are present—or absent—in Ptolemy’s models, but also for a more balanced judgement of different aspects of the contribution of the first two laws of Kepler to the modern astronomical revolution. (shrink)

(1999). Planetary consciousness: From vision to practice. World Futures: Vol. 54, Challenges of Evolution at Pat I: The Human Factor in Evolution, pp. 287-296.

Smith outlines the distinctive features of ecological thought and examines two contentious areas of environmental ethics, the obligations for present generations and the relationship of humans to non-human animals.

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. The article starts by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. It is argued that the growth imperative of capitalist economies, as well as other particular characteristics detailed below, are the main drivers of the ecological crisis and exacerbated trends already underway. Further, the planetary boundaries framework can support interpretations that do not solely emphasize technocratic operational (...) approaches and costs, but also assume that these alone can be the solution. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic has shattered our world with increased morbidity, mortality, and personal/social sufferings. At the time of this writing, we are in a biomedical race for protective equipment, viral testing, and vaccine creation in an effort to respond to COVID threats. But what is the role of health humanities in these viral times? This article works though interdisciplinary connections between health humanities, the planetary health movement, and environmental humanities to conceptualize the emergence of “planetary health humanities.” The (...) goal of this affinity linkage is to re-story health humanities toward promotion of planetary health and community well-being. Wellbeing is critical because the main driver of environmental destruction and decreasing planetary health is coming from non-sustainable definitions of wellbeing. We need the arts and humanities to help reimagine the possibility of a sustainable community wellbeing. For health humanities, a basic role and narrative identity starts to emerge—we should become a planetary health humanities. (shrink)

Planetary protection is not just a matter of science. It is also a matter of value. This is so independently of whether we only include the protection of science or if we also include other goals. Excluding other values than the protection of science is thus a value statement, not a scientific statement and it does not make planetary protection value neutral. It just makes the axiological basis (that is, the value basis) for planetary protection more limited (...) in a way that is inconsistent with the axiological grounds for back contamination, ethically questionable and strategically unwise. However we look at it, we cannot get away from the conclusion that the axiological dimension of planetary protection is a task that needs to involve experts on value theory as well as experts from a range of different sciences and also include opinions from outside the academic community. (shrink)

Earth system science (ESS) and modelling have given rise to a new conceptual framework in the recent decades, which goes much beyond climate science. Indeed, Earth system science and modelling have the ambition “to build a unified understanding of the Earth”, involving not only the physical Earth system components (atmosphere, cryosphere, land, ocean, lithosphere) but also all the relevant human and social processes interacting with them. This unified understanding that ESS aims to achieve raises a number of epistemological issues about (...) interdisciplinarity. We argue that the interdisciplinary relations in ESS between natural and social / human sciences are best characterized in terms of what is called ‘scientific imperialism’ in the literature and we show that this imperialistic feature has some detrimental epistemic and non-epistemic effects, notably when addressing the issue of values in ESS. This paper considers in particular the core ESS concepts of Anthropocene, planetary boundaries and tipping points in the light of the philosophy of science discussions on interdisciplinarity and values. We show that acknowledging the interconnections between interdisciplinarity and values suggests ways for ESS to move forward in view of addressing the climate and environmental challenges. (shrink)

This essay charts a conceptual history of “planetary health,” which holds that population health and the continuity of human civilization depend on the integrity—the health—of the Earth’s life-support systems. It seeks to identify settler colonial and imperial genealogies of this distinctly ecological approach to human population health and flourishing, an assemblage of systems theory and planetary thinking as well as developments in environmental sciences and theories of sustainable development. Planetary health may be seen as a “third wave” (...) of disease ecology, an emergent resource for more complex, naturalistic, and scaled-up modeling in epidemiology—the latest installment in the search for multifactorial, relational, and integrated explanations of patterns of disease. The approach required a new planetary imaginary—emerging from a series of Earth-encompassing crises, such as global heating—which enlarged and systematized ecological configurations of human health and illness. In tracing and critically situating this conceptual history, the authors offer a partial perspective on what may yet become planetary health, drawing attention to some other conceptual routes that may be taken. (shrink)

This article draws on three ecofeminist theorists (Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Val Plumwood, and Donna Haraway) in order to criticize the dominant model of globalization, which oppresses humans and the natural environment, and propose an alternative globalization grounded in planetary love. Rather than affirming or opposing the globalization, planetary love acknowledges its complicity with the neocolonial tendencies of globalization while aiming toward another globalization, a more just, peaceful, and sustainable globalization. In this context, love is characterized by non-coercive, mutually (...) transformative contact, which opens spaces of respect and responsibility for the unique differences and otherness of planetary subjects (humans and nonhumans). (shrink)

Far-Right Ecologism explains how the ongoing mainstreaming of the far right has prompted greater engagement with a range of topics, including the environment. Behind the façade of vote-winning strategies, the far right has provided a substantive ideological engagement with the natural environment. Building on the nationalist bent of early green thought and the perceived nexus of pristine nature and cultural purity, Far-Right Ecologism has ideologically adopted the green elements of other ideologies, such as conservatism and fascism, but also of those (...) considered to be 'thin-centred', such as nationalism and populism. Through an authentic experience of learning from the Eastern European, post-socialist realms, this book explores the ideology, ecological discourse, and policy proposals behind the increasing impact of far-right actors on environmental politics in Hungary and Poland. Each chapter begins with stories from the interviewees to illustrate how the far right in Hungary and Poland attempts to permeate environmental politics and even forge partnerships with green actors through specific, local-based policy contributions. Drawing on the findings from a range of sources, such as electoral programs, ideological texts and manifestos, social media and public speeches, policy proposals, and more than forty in-depth interviews with far-right representatives, this book also assesses epistemological and methodological challenges in examining the environmental dimension of far-right, post-socialist politics. The book will be valuable reading for researchers with an interest in the far right, environmental politics and Central Eastern Europe. (shrink)

This book explores the implications of knowing our place in the universe and recognising our hybridity. It is a series of self-reflections and essays drawing on many diverse ways of knowing. The book examines the complex ethical challenges of closing the wide gap in living standards between rich and poor people/communities. The notion of an ecological citizen is presented with a focus on protecting current and future generations. The idea is to track the distribution and redistribution of resources in the (...) interests of social and environmental justice. The central argument looks for ways to hold the powerful to account so as to enable virtuous living by the majority to be demonstrated in what the author calls a "planetary passport" - a careful use of resources and a way to provide safe passage to those in need of safe habitat. The book argues that nation states need to find ways to control the super-rich through the governance process and to enhance a sense of shared ecological citizenship and responsibility for biodiversity. The fundamental approach is collaborative research. Planetary Passport: Representation, Accountability and Re-Generation is comprised of six chapters. Chapter 1 begins by making a case for a paradigm shift away from business as usual and the pursuit of profit at the expense of the social and environmental fabric of life. The aim is to explore alternatives and to discuss some ways of achieving wellbeing whilst the focus is on human rights, discrimination and outlining the notion of a planetary passport. Chapter 2 makes a specific link between people and the planet as a basis for understanding the nature of hybridity and interconnectedness and the implications for ethics. Chapter 3 focuses on building this planetary passport for social and environmental justice in order to enable people with complex needs to consider the consequences of either continuing to live the same way as before or making changes to the way that they live. Meanwhile Chapter 4 does the same as the previous chapter, but explores the political context of consumption and short term profit Chapter 5 examines the challenges and opportunities that come from explorations within a cross-cultural learning community. This includes a look at co-creation and co-determination. Finally Chapter 6 ends with a look to the future and a potential new framework for people and the planet through a planetary passport.. (shrink)

In the Anthropocene, humans are drastically impacting the Earth system. Though the numbers are disputed, millions of climate refugees might soon appear worldwide due to, for example, rising sea levels. To better tackle these intertwined ecological and migrational crises, I expand on Seyla Benhabib’s theoretical legacy by discerning within it a multidimensional framework containing mutually intersecting moral, legal, and political dimensions. Within this framework, I argue, Benhabib approaches the issue of climate refugees from three different yet supplementary discourses. From her (...) engagement with discourses on cosmopolitanism and global justice, she endorses reforming the Refugee Convention to include climate refugees. From her contribution to discourses on human rights and human dignity, Benhabib opens the door for a human right to the environment to better protect climate refugees. Against the backdrop of her longstanding work to reformulate a feminist and critical-theoretical discourse ethics, I argue, Benhabib puts forward an ecocentric planetary ethics that embraces climate refugees and the rest of nature. In all, I conclude that Benhabib’s legacy demonstrates the need for a multidimensional approach to climate refugees in times of ecocrisis. (shrink)

In _Facing the Planetary_ William E. Connolly expands his influential work on the politics of pluralization, capitalism, fragility, and secularism to address the complexities of climate change and to complicate notions of the Anthropocene. Focusing on planetary processes—including the ocean conveyor, glacier flows, tectonic plates, and species evolution—he combines a critical understanding of capitalism with an appreciation of how such nonhuman systems periodically change on their own. Drawing upon scientists and intellectuals such as Lynn Margulis, Michael Benton, Alfred North (...) Whitehead, Anna Tsing, Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Pope Francis, Bruno Latour, and Naomi Klein, Connolly focuses on the gap between those regions creating the most climate change and those suffering most from it. He addresses the creative potential of a "politics of swarming" by which people in different regions and social positions coalesce to reshape dominant priorities. He also explores how those displaying spiritual affinities across differences in creed can energize a militant assemblage that is already underway. (shrink)

The theme of The Planetary Clock is the representation of time in postmodern culture and the way temporality as a global phenomenon manifests itself differently across an antipodean axis. To trace postmodernism in an expansive spatial and temporal arc, from its formal experimentation in the 1960s to environmental concerns in the twenty-first century, is to describe a richer and more complex version of this cultural phenomenon. Exploring different scales of time from a Southern Hemisphere perspective, with a special emphasis (...) on issues of Indigeneity and the Anthropocene, The Planetary Clock offers a wide-ranging, revisionist account of postmodernism, reinterpreting literature, film, music, and visual art of the post-1960 period within a planetary framework. By bringing the culture of Australia and New Zealand into dialogue with other Western narratives, it suggests how an antipodean impulse, involving the transposition of the world into different spatial and temporal dimensions, has long been an integral (if generally occluded) aspect of postmodernism. Taking its title from a Florentine clock designed in 1510 to measure worldly time alongside the rotation of the planets, The Planetary Clock ranges across well-known American postmodernists (John Barth, Toni Morrison) to more recent science fiction writers (Octavia Butler, Richard Powers), while bringing the US tradition into juxtaposition with both its English (Philip Larkin, Ian McEwan) and Australian (Les Murray, Alexis Wright) counterparts. By aligning cultural postmodernism with music (Messiaen, Ligeti, Birtwistle), the visual arts (Hockney, Blackman, Fiona Hall), and cinema (Rohmer, Haneke, Tarantino), this volume enlarges our understanding of global postmodernism for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The escalating planetary crises of human-induced climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and declining biodiversity call for urgent actions to be taken at all levels of society and by the global community. The current political strategy for a sustainable future that emphasizes economic and technological progress is insufficient to bring about the change required; an educational approach based on identities, values, ethics, and new worldviews is also needed. In this article Arto O. Salonen and his coauthors consider the (...) kind of pedagogy that could support a transformation of the human conception of reality into a form that both recognizes the connections and interactions between people, society, and the planet, and imparts an ethical orientation to action that strengthens the health and integrity of all entities. A theory of planetary social pedagogy (PSP) is based on traditional social pedagogy, which provides a theoretical framework for formal, nonformal, and informal education. PSP aims at building a deep holistic understanding of the relationship between the individual, society, and Earth by integrating the fragmented human conception and experience of reality by uniting the three dimensions of a social-ecological worldview: spatial, temporal, and ethical. Moreover, PSP is a cyclical learning process that alternates between cognitive, metacognitive, and epistemic levels of learning. The ultimate goal of using PSP is to lay the foundation for a fundamental transformation of the ideals, values, and culture that shape human behavior in ways necessary for securing a sustainable future. (shrink)

This essay interprets Dipesh Chakrabarty’s The Climate of History in a Planetary Age in light of the European tradition of thought about the sublime. The first half of the essay stages Chakrabarty’s historiography within that tradition focusing on a critical understanding of Kant. Then, the essay considers how the trace of the sublime in Chakrabarty’s approach to planetary history is interpretable as a form of social alienation. That argument draws on the critical theory of Steven Vogel and decolonial (...) critique. Finally, the essay considers the moods of protest as non-alienated responses to the planetary bypassing the coloniality of the sublime. (shrink)

We are currently experiencing a planetary crisis that will lead, if worst comes to worst, to the end of the entire world as we know it. Several feminist scholars have suggested that if the Earth is to stay livable for humans and nonhumans alike, the ways in which many human beings – particularly in the wealthy parts of the world, infested with Eurocentrism, colonialism, neoliberalism, and capitalism – inhabit this planet requires radical, ethical, and political transformation. In this article, (...) we propose that feminist theory, particularly feminist posthumanities, and Black feminist and decolonial thought, together with creative practices such as writing, have much to contribute to transformative planetary activism that imagines different and other kinds of worlds and futures based on an ethical consideration of nonhuman others and collective caring for the planet. (shrink)

In responding to perceived crises—such as the COVID-19 pandemic—in routinized ways, contemporary bioethics can make us prisoners of the proximate. Rather, we need bioethics to recognize and engage with complex configurations of global ecosystem degradation and collapse, thereby showing us paths toward co-inhabiting the planet securely and sustainably. Such a planetary health ethics might draw rewardingly on Indigenous knowledge practices or Indigenous philosophical ecologies. It will require ethicists, with other health professionals, to step up and become public advocates for (...) environmental sustainability. The COVID-19 pandemic should be seen as opening a portal to planetary health ethics or ecologized bioethics. (shrink)

Earthbodies describes how our bodies are open circuits to a sensual magic and planetary care that when closed off leads to disastrous detours, such as illness, ...

This article is constructed through a series of linked aphorisms that articulate the relations between autonomy, sense, the world, different people’s worlds, disagreement, and wonder. It advances anthroponomy—the organization of humankind to support autonomous life. In the context of the planetary, sociallycaused environmental changes of today such as global warming or the risk of a mass extinction cascade, a part of autonomous engagement with our planetary situation is developing an autonomous conception of it—a conception of our situation that (...) makes sense to us. This pluralistic idea has consequences for environmentalism, notably around coloniality, and the reduction of different autonomous worlds to a dominant world, which is currently part of the discourse of the Anthropocene. The aphorisms in this article develop a reflective path toward autonomous conceptions of our planetary situation given the reality of coloniality in how that situation is understood. One result of this path is to open up a way for people to become more autonomously engaged with our environmental situation, an engagement grounded in wonder and critical of the discourse of the “Anthropocene”. (shrink)

‘Planetary sustainability’, as developed in this article, is a transitory term, marking the conceptional change from perceiving the Earth as a globe to recognising it rather as a planet. Although the traditional Brundtland sustainability definition comprises ecological, economic and social dimensions to perpetuate the fulfilment of humankind’s needs for the next generations, the planetary aspect of sustainability leads to the acknowledgement that there will be an end to human civilisation if humankind does not move into space sooner or (...) later. Concerning space mining, this move might happen in our age. Given this fact, and the contemporary situation concerning space debris, ‘ethics of planetary sustainability’ as well as space environment ethics are needed. It would also make sense to add an 18th Sustainable Development Goal called ‘Space Environment’ to the current 17 Global Goals, as a sort of a political demand to complete what then could better be called the ‘Planetary Plan’.Contribution: The increasing economic use of outer space makes it necessary to include this domain in the sustainability discussion. The article calls for an 18th United Nations Sustainable Development Goal “Space Environment”, providing theological and philosophical reasoning for the need of an ethics of planetary sustainability. (shrink)

v. 1. A noetic prelude to a united world.--v. 2. An ethical prelude to a united world.

This essay presents central themes from my forthcoming book, The Awakening of the Global Mind. This book seeks to open a new frontier of Global Consciousness that has been long emerging in human evolution through the ages. When we step back from our more localized perspectives and expand into a more integral, holistic, and global space through the awakening of the global mind we are able to discern striking mega-trends in cultural evolution across diverse cultural and religious worldviews and perspectives (...) through time. One striking finding through this global lens is that the collective wisdom of humanity is quite clear that we make our living realities through the conduct of our consciousness: our technology of minding. And when we make ourselves and worlds through egocentric patterns of thinking we get polarized and fragmented worlds that are not sustainable. This essay joins a growing chorus of visionary thinkers and futurists which recognizes that in the 21st Century we face grave planetary crises and that our ego-based cultures are at a tipping point and not sustainable. The primary crisis on the planet now is a crisis of consciousness, and our global wisdom suggests that humanity is in a painful transformation toward a more healthful integral technology of mind that ushers in a new sustainable global civilization wherein the whole human family may flourish together on our sacred planet. (shrink)

An analysis is made of Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si from a general systems approach. A call is made for a dialogue between theologians and environmental scientist. A parallel is found between the Pope’s identification of rapidification as a root cause of global warming and McLuhan’s notion of the speedup of modern life due to the emergence of electric technology. An analysis of Hebrew Scriptures is made, suggesting that rather than subduing the earth, the translation of Gen 1:28 seems to (...) indicate that the intention was to occupy and tend the land. The Jewish notion of Bal Tashchit one of the 613 mitzvos or commandments from Scripture, supports this interpretation as it calls for stewardship of G-d’s gifts. (shrink)

This essay proposes ways to extend the concept of _planetary health_, in the framework of major evolutionary transition applied to the planet as a whole. I argue that planetary health can be naturally extended to a fully planetary scale, including issues related to geo- bio- techno- and noo- spheres. I show the need and importance for ethics and governance to become global and I give some examples of physiological and psychological health issues from a planetary perspective.

Timely and much-needed theory of humanity's relation to the planet.