The Anthropocene Project
http://www.hkw.de
In a two-year project, HKW will explore the hypothesis’ manifold implications for the sciences and arts.
Our notion of nature is now out of date. Humanity forms nature. This is the core premise of the Anthropocene thesis, announcing a paradigm shift in the natural sciences as well as providing new models for culture, politics, and everyday life.
If the opposition between humanity and nature is now suspended, how do we change our perspectives and perception? Is it still possible to think in concepts like “artificial” and “natural?” What does it mean for our anthropocentric understanding and our future if nature is man-made? What impact does the notion of global changes has on political decision-making? Which image of humanity appears if nature is shaped by mankind?
The Anthropocene: A man-made world
Erle Ellis, an ecologist at the University of MD Baltimore County, on the Antropocene. Courtesy of The Economist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ABZjlfhN0EQ
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The Earth system is our planet's
interacting physical, chemical, and biological processes.
It consists of the land, oceans, atmosphere and poles. It
includes the planet´s natural cycles — the carbon, water,
nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and other cycles. Every living thing
affects its surroundings. But humanity is now influencing every
aspect of the Earth as excessive as never before. We’re changing
the way water moves around the globe as never before. Almost all the
planet’s ecosystems bear the marks of our presence.
A growing number of
scientists think we’ve entered a new geological epoch that needs a
new name – the Anthropocene.
Probably the best-known aspect
of our newfound influence is what we’re doing to the climate.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide may be at its highest level in 15 million
years. But this is just one part of the story; we’re changing the
planet in countless ways. Nutrients from fertilizer wash off fields
and down rivers, creating stretches of sea where nothing grows except
vast algal blooms; deforestation means vast quantities of soil are
being eroded and swept away. Rich grasslands are turning to desert;
ancient ice formations are melting away; species everywhere are
vanishing.
These
developments are all connected, and there’s a risk of irreversible
dramatic changes leading us into a future that’s extremly different
from anything we knew from before. Slowly we are creating a hotter,
stormier and less diverse planet.
The first modern humans
appeared in African 200,000 years ago. Agriculture bound people to
the land, leading to permanent settlements. Settlements grew into
villages, and then into cities, countries and empires. People
domesticated plants and animals, breeding them to make them more
productive and inventing new tools to help plant and harvest crops.
Ever-increasing areas of wild land came under human control. Forests
were cut down, grasslands ploughed up and rivers diverted for
irrigation.
Over the past two centuries the
human population and the economic wealth of the world have grown
rapidly. These two factors increased the level of consuption. This we
can see in agriculture and food production, forestry, industrial
development, energy production and urbanisation. All of the
aproximately seven million people on earth share basic human needs:
water, food, shelter, good health and employment. The ways in which
these needs come together are critical factors of the environmental
consequences. In the developed world, wealth, and more importantly
the demand for a broad range of goods and services is placing
significant demands on global resources.
Between 1970 and 1997,
the global consumption of energy increased by 84%, and consumption of
materials also increased dramatically.
Over the past three centuries, the amount of land used for agriculture has increased dramatically. Furthermore, large areas of land area have been lost to degradation, due, for example, to soil erosion, chemical contamination and salinisation.
Arguments for a new epoch, the Anthropocene, by http://www.igbp.net include:
- In the last 150 years humankind has exhausted 40% of the known oil reserves that took several hundred million years to generate
- Nearly 50% of the land surface has been transformed by direct human action, with significant consequences for biodiversity, nutrient cycling, soil structure, soil biology, and climate
- More nitrogen is now fixed synthetically for fertilisers and through fossil fuel combustion than is fixed naturally in all terrestrial ecosystems
- More than half of all accessible freshwater is appropriated for human purposes, and underground water resources are being depleted rapidly in many areas
Photograph by
Henry Fair
Moving
Mountains
Kayford
Mountain, West Virginia
As oil
companies drill deeper for offshore oil, mining companies work 24/7
to level Appalachian peaks for coal, which supplies half of U.S.
electricity. This summit vanished in a day. Some 470 have been erased
since the 1980s; the waste often buries streams. Mountaintop removal
recovers just 6 percent of a coal deposit.
Photograph by
Edward Burtynsky
Industrial
Farming
Almería
Province, Spain
On the arid
plains of southern Spain, produce is grown under the world's largest
array of greenhouses and trucked north. Greenhouses use water and
nutrients efficiently and produce all year—tomatoes in winter, for
instance. But globally the challenge is grain and meat, not tomatoes.
It takes 38 percent of Earth's ice-free surface to feed seven billion
people today, and two billion more are expected by 2050.
Photograph by
Pablo Lopez Luz
Urban
Supersprawl
Mexico City,
Mexico
Some 20 million
people live in Mexico City, the world's fifth largest metropolitan
area. In 1800 the urban fraction of the global population was 3
percent. Today it is 50 percent and rising. In crowded shantytowns,
the need for clean water and sanitation is urgent. But urbanization
has an upside: Per capita, cities use less energy and pollute less
than rural areas.
Arcticfrontiers
www.arcticfrontiers.com
WATER
http://p2pfoundation.net/Water_Commons http://ourwatercommons.org/
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