At the end of natural future
“Humans are exterminating animal and plant species so quickly that nature’s built-in defence mechanism, evolution, cannot keep up. An Aarhus-led research team calculated that if current conservation efforts are not improved, so many mammal species will become extinct during the next five decades that nature will need 3 to 5 million years to recover.
“In tracking the effects of human activity upon the Earth, a number of socioeconomic and earth system parameters are utilized including population, economics, water usage, food production, transportation, technology, green house gases, surface temperature, and natural resource usage. The Anthropocene is typically depicted as following the Holocene, to emphasize the central role of humankind in geology and ecology. Since 1950, these trends are increasing significantly if not exponentially.”
Where water meets soil and digs deep furrows in the sandy rock, trees provide shade and contain the humidity, the ravine creates unique habitats at all scales.
“If humanism puts an end to all religion and spirituality, […] we should ask [of humanism]: human as opposed to what? If the answer is as opposed to non-human animals/ to nature, then we can unmask humanism; unmask it as simply an unwarranted attitude of superiority to the rest of creation.
“Less frenetic human activity would be better in itself, even regardless of the ecological consequences of excess human activity. Let’s have wiser human activity. That will include: there being less of it. But not just less of the same; less and different. We should not support dreams that point in the opposite direction to this wisdom.”1
“yes, we’re currently warping the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans violently, and in ways that have analogues in only a few terrifying chapters buried deep in Earth’s history. Each year we spew more than 100 times as much CO2 into the air as volcanoes do, and we’re currently overseeing the biggest disruption to the planet’s nitrogen cycle in 2.5 billion years. But despite this incredible effort, all is vanity. Very little of our handiwork will survive the obliteration of the ages. If 100 million years can easily wear the Himalayas flat, what chance will San Francisco or New York have?”1
“We know that CO2 concentrations have risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 410 ppm today, the highest recorded in at least three million years. Without major mitigation efforts, we are likely to reach 560 ppm by around 2060.
“Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover.”1
“Non-linear changes are of central importance to understanding climate change, as they suggest both that impacts will be far more rapid and severe than predictions based on linear projections and that the changes no longer correlate with the rate of anthropogenic carbon emissions. In other words – ‘runaway climate change.’
“Over the past few decades, the term “Anthropocene” has climbed out of academic discourse and into the popular imagination — a name given to the geologic era we live in now, and a way to signal that it is a new era, defined on the wall chart of deep history by human intervention. One problem with the term is that it implies a conquest of nature (and even echoes the biblical “dominion”).”1
“Der Dschungel wimmelt von Lebewesen, doch entziehen sie sich meistens den menschlichen Sinnen. Neunundneunzig Prozent der Tiere orientieren sich an chemischen Pfaden auf der Erdoberfläche, an Duftwölkchen in der Luft oder im Wasser und an Gerüchen, die kleinen, versteckten Drüsen entströmen und sich mit dem Wind ausbreiten. Tiere sind Meister dieses chemischen Sensoriums, das uns verschlossen ist. Wir hingegen sind Virtuosen des audiovisuellen Wahrnehmungsvermögens, und nur einige wenige Gruppen (Wale, Affen, Vögel) sind uns in dieser Modalität ebenbürtig. Deshalb warten wir auf den Tagesanbruch, während sie auf den Einbruch der Dunkelheit warten; und weil Seh- und Hörvermögen evolutionäre Voraussetzungen von Intelligenz sind, haben allein wir uns so weit entwickelt, daß wir über Dinge wie Amazonasnächte und Sinnesmodalitäten nachdenken.”1
“Aus vielen Begegnungen mit nachdenklichen Menschen bei öffentlichen Veranstaltungen weiß ich, dass in unserer Gesellschaft ein hartnäckig unausgesprochener Konsens gereift ist. Er besagt, dass es nicht immer weiter »aufwärts«-gehen kann, dass das Wohlstandsmodell der Nachweltkriegszeit — in Deutschland und erst recht anderswo — keine Zukunft hat.
“In Science-Fiction Geschichten wimmelt es von Phantasievorstellungen des Terraformings, der Schaffung einer Ersatzerde. Menschen reisen zu toten, unbewohnten Planeten und verwandeln sie in eine erdähnliche Lebenswelt. In den kanadischen Teersandgebieten geschieht das Gegenteil davon, nämlich ein Terra-Deforming.
“There is an abyss opening up before us. It challenges everything we thought we knew about our culture and about nature. We need to look into it and concentrate on what we can see.”1
