Anthropocene Archives - Page 3 of 3

The White Rhino - one of many endangered large animals

Conserve/Resist

Warning from 40 top scientists: Tigers, elephants may go extinct by 2100

16th August 2016

40 scientists from across the world have recently announced that megafauna – large animals like elephants, lions, tigers, cheetahs, rhinoceroses – will not survive much longer if we don’t act fast. Examining population trends, the scientists said that human activities like deforestation and hunting can wipe out their populations by the end of this century….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Video: A stunning prediction of climate science may now be coming true

29th July 2016

Chris Mooney reports: A recent report showed Greenland lost 1 trillion tons of ice mass between 2011 and 2014. A new NASA study shows that key areas where glaciers have been melting have actually experienced a reduction in gravitational pull, which has in turn reduced sea levels, confirming an age old prediction of climate science….

Conserve/Resist

Vanishing act: Why insects are declining and why it matters

21st July 2016

Christian Schwägerl writes: According to data for 452 species, there has been a 45 percent decline in invertebrate populations over the past 40 years. So far, only the decline of honeybee populations has received attention, mostly because of their vital role in pollinating food crops. The rest of the insect world has been widely ignored….

Conserve/Resist

The diversity of life across much of Earth has plunged below ‘safe’ levels

15th July 2016

Chris Mooney reports: In an ambitious study representing the latest merger between big data approaches and the quest to conserve the planet, scientists have found that across a majority of the Earth’s land surface, the abundance or overall number of animals and plants of different species has fallen below a “safe” level identified by biologists….

Culture/Cognition

The problem with the European Enlightenment and its Industrial Revolution

25th May 2016

David Anderson writes: About eight thousand years ago with the beginning of the bronze, iron, agricultural age we decided to pursue a life of separation and alienation from the planet. This dualistic mindset, further strengthened in the seventeenth century during the European Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, is at the root of the present crises….

Culture/Cognition

Anthropocene, or the art of living on a damaged planet

19th May 2016

Donna Harraway: I’m going to propose that the Cthulucene might be a way to collect up the questions for naming the epoch, for naming what’s happening in the airs, waters, and places, in the rocks, oceans, and atmospheres. Perhaps needing both the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene, but offering something else, something just maybe more livable….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

Study: Human activity puts one in five plant species at risk of extinction

15th May 2016

The State of the World’s Plants report “provides, for the first time, a baseline assessment of our current knowledge on the diversity of plants on earth, the global threats these plants currently face, and the policies in place and their effectiveness in dealing with these threats,” according to scientists at the Royal Botanical Gardens, London….

The endangered Northern White Rhino

Culture/Cognition

Charles Eisenstein: In a Rhino, Everything

1st April 2016

A planet where caged wild animals go extinct is also one that warehouses its elderly in nursing homes. A world where the last white rhinos age in zoos is also a world of war, racism, poverty, and ecocide. It’s impossible for one to exist without the others. All are part of the same unholy matrix….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Human impact has pushed Earth into the Anthropocene, scientists say

8th March 2016

A new study provides one of the strongest cases yet that Earth has entered a new geological epoch. The question of whether humans’ environmental impact has tipped Earth into an “Anthropocene” – ending the current Holocene which began 12,000 years ago – will be put to the geological body that formally approves such time divisions….

Development/Growth

Breakthrough Institute: An Ecomodernist Manifesto

8th May 2015

The Breakthrough Institute From the Introduction: To say that the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Planetary Boundaries: A fourth danger line crossed

30th January 2015

The Planetary Boundaries framework was first introduced in 2009, when a group of 28 internationally renowned scientists identified and quantified the first set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come. A Jan 2015 update by the researchers say a fourth of these boundaries – forests – have…

CLIMATE CRISIS

Melbourne University research on Energy, Climate Change, Collapse, Resilience and Transition

15th September 2014

(Editor’s Note: Some of the most important academic research into mankind’s present and future is being conducted at the Melbourne Sustainability Society Institute at the University of Melbourne. Here are links to some of their most important papers) Is Global Collapse Imminent? by Graham Turner. Dr Turner gathered data from the UN (its department of economic and social…