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.
“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
“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
“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.
Observation of human redesign of natural soil and landscape.
„Zwei Jahrhunderte lang schlug man Jahrzehnt für Jahrzehnt unaufhörlich Alarm und in den Siebzigerjahren dachte man, dass sich endlich alles ändern werde — Wir wissen wie es weiterging…“1
