I read this twice and then took notes as I went through the work a third time. Extraordinary, as usual, and such a solid call to action. I will return to this one often. Thank you for your work. Thank you for the mention.🌱 kbw
Reading Macfarlane's Underland, some time ago, I took several notes. I keep returning to one of them:
(The Anthropocene)… It is, perhaps, best imagined as an epoch of loss – of species, places and people – for which we are seeking a language of grief and, even harder to find, a language of hope.
We need new language, we need new stories, we maybe even need new names. We need to change.
Thank you for this, Fotini. Any note from Macfarlane is worth contemplating, but this sentence of his is perfect. An epoch of loss, indeed. At least that's where we are now.
I wonder if rather than generating a new language we focus on a new culture, which to a certain degree is defined by better policy, and then the language would follow? Or perhaps the language really is necessary first. Or everything all at once...
Though when we say a "new" language, perhaps much of what we mean is an Anthropocene translation of very old language, right? We're not inventing a new relationship with the living world so much as trying to salvage the old one.
“ Let’s recognize that we are ancestors with a shallow sense of time, but all of our descendants live downstream in the deep time of the Anthropocene.”
Thank you for your well thought out post.
I too will be enjoying the total eclipse in Vt. I hope to be on a mountain top accessed by backcountry skiing . I will leave you with this little recommendation I read this morning;
( you probably already know this, but I thought it worth mentioning if you did not).
“John Perry, an astrophysics professor at the University of Vermont. “
“Perry suggested that the best viewing location might be looking westward and downward so that you can watch the shadow of the moon traveling toward you as totality approaches. “It’s a fairly dramatic thing to see, to look down for a moment instead of looking up and see that shadow coming at you,”
You travel safely too, Lor. I'd love to be on a mountaintop looking west at the moon shadow racing toward us at a few thousand miles per hour, but I don't think we'll have that opportunity. I had not heard, nor thought about, this perspective. It sounds marvelous. Let us know what you see.
Assuming that in some distant future, the functional equivalent of geologists look through the stratigraphy of the planet at widely separated locations. They will find evidence of a marked increase in atmospheric carbon around the time of our industrialization. But carbon increase can come from a variety of natural causes and so could not be definitive proof of human activity. To really get a fairly precise start date for the Anthropocene, our future geologists would note a thin layer of plastic microparticles in the strata worldwide, (rather like the Alvarez's iridium, marking the Chicxulub impact.) That layer, very thin, would be the indisputable marker for it is highly improbable for it to be formed by widely distributed natural processes.
Plastic in the strata would be an excellent marker. The ubiquity of chicken bones in the fossil record might be another. And then there's anthropogenic radioactivity, global urban signatures, and perhaps a distinct change in fossil diversity. Of course we can't know the future capacity for assessing the strata - I'm picturing humanoids with tricorders - so who knows what else will show up?
Humanoids? That's so Holocene-centric! 🙂 I'm picturing the archaeologists might be our distant descendents, so bio-engineering modified from us as to be unrecognizable! Ant-like Cataglyphus Sapiens inhabiting a hot desert Earth perhaps? 🙂🏜️
I think it was on the podcast Threshold (my favorite podcast, so excellenty produced) that I heard the phrase about the Arctic being the planet's "pit zips" -- the underarm zips in winter coats that you can unzip to release heat while keeping the coat on. It was the best description I've heard of why the ice matters, though I suppose it's only effective if you've experienced the effect of and need for pit zips!
That's a new one to me, and brilliant. But you've raised another question, about the future of pit zips in a hotter world. One more threatened species...
Might be a good name for a band, too: The Pit Zips.
I'll check out Threshold. Thanks for that, Antonia.
Threshold is truly excellent. Their first season was about bison, the second about the Arctic, and the third about what a 1.5-degree temperature increase means and how to avoid it.
Jason and friends,
I read this twice and then took notes as I went through the work a third time. Extraordinary, as usual, and such a solid call to action. I will return to this one often. Thank you for your work. Thank you for the mention.🌱 kbw
And thank you, Katharine, for being such a deep reader. I can't ask for anything more than that. Be well. J
Reading Macfarlane's Underland, some time ago, I took several notes. I keep returning to one of them:
(The Anthropocene)… It is, perhaps, best imagined as an epoch of loss – of species, places and people – for which we are seeking a language of grief and, even harder to find, a language of hope.
We need new language, we need new stories, we maybe even need new names. We need to change.
Thank you for this, Fotini. Any note from Macfarlane is worth contemplating, but this sentence of his is perfect. An epoch of loss, indeed. At least that's where we are now.
I wonder if rather than generating a new language we focus on a new culture, which to a certain degree is defined by better policy, and then the language would follow? Or perhaps the language really is necessary first. Or everything all at once...
Though when we say a "new" language, perhaps much of what we mean is an Anthropocene translation of very old language, right? We're not inventing a new relationship with the living world so much as trying to salvage the old one.
That last paragraph of yours sums it all just perfect. But, still, we need to find new ways to rekindle the old love for our world.
I copied that down from Underland, as well. Robin Wall Kimmerer has also said that we need a new language.🌱
Yeah, and both Robin Wall Kimmerer and Tyson Yunkaporta stress the importance of new stories as a way to restore our relationship with the world.
“ Let’s recognize that we are ancestors with a shallow sense of time, but all of our descendants live downstream in the deep time of the Anthropocene.”
Thank you for your well thought out post.
I too will be enjoying the total eclipse in Vt. I hope to be on a mountain top accessed by backcountry skiing . I will leave you with this little recommendation I read this morning;
( you probably already know this, but I thought it worth mentioning if you did not).
“John Perry, an astrophysics professor at the University of Vermont. “
“Perry suggested that the best viewing location might be looking westward and downward so that you can watch the shadow of the moon traveling toward you as totality approaches. “It’s a fairly dramatic thing to see, to look down for a moment instead of looking up and see that shadow coming at you,”
Safe travels to your destination.
You travel safely too, Lor. I'd love to be on a mountaintop looking west at the moon shadow racing toward us at a few thousand miles per hour, but I don't think we'll have that opportunity. I had not heard, nor thought about, this perspective. It sounds marvelous. Let us know what you see.
Thanks for the mention, Jason!
Of course, Kollibri. I really appreciated you speaking up about the invasives question.
Assuming that in some distant future, the functional equivalent of geologists look through the stratigraphy of the planet at widely separated locations. They will find evidence of a marked increase in atmospheric carbon around the time of our industrialization. But carbon increase can come from a variety of natural causes and so could not be definitive proof of human activity. To really get a fairly precise start date for the Anthropocene, our future geologists would note a thin layer of plastic microparticles in the strata worldwide, (rather like the Alvarez's iridium, marking the Chicxulub impact.) That layer, very thin, would be the indisputable marker for it is highly improbable for it to be formed by widely distributed natural processes.
Plastic in the strata would be an excellent marker. The ubiquity of chicken bones in the fossil record might be another. And then there's anthropogenic radioactivity, global urban signatures, and perhaps a distinct change in fossil diversity. Of course we can't know the future capacity for assessing the strata - I'm picturing humanoids with tricorders - so who knows what else will show up?
Humanoids? That's so Holocene-centric! 🙂 I'm picturing the archaeologists might be our distant descendents, so bio-engineering modified from us as to be unrecognizable! Ant-like Cataglyphus Sapiens inhabiting a hot desert Earth perhaps? 🙂🏜️
I think it was on the podcast Threshold (my favorite podcast, so excellenty produced) that I heard the phrase about the Arctic being the planet's "pit zips" -- the underarm zips in winter coats that you can unzip to release heat while keeping the coat on. It was the best description I've heard of why the ice matters, though I suppose it's only effective if you've experienced the effect of and need for pit zips!
That's a new one to me, and brilliant. But you've raised another question, about the future of pit zips in a hotter world. One more threatened species...
Might be a good name for a band, too: The Pit Zips.
I'll check out Threshold. Thanks for that, Antonia.
The Pit Zips: Release the Heat
Tickets will sell themselves!
Threshold is truly excellent. Their first season was about bison, the second about the Arctic, and the third about what a 1.5-degree temperature increase means and how to avoid it.
I think we just started a band.
Looking forward to Threshold.