Environmentality (MP3)

This was a "masterclass." Nicholas Royle opened the discussion by asking what I thought of the notion of "mastery." Wow! There thus devolved an enormous excursus on this issue that blended strangely nicely into the discussion of weird environmental poetics...

Reflections on Creativity in the Anthropocene (MP3)

Sussex University is incredible and Lewes is incredible and Nicholas Royle is incredible. And the Q&A was incredible!

This Today

Gil Sans! And very good design.

How to Assess the Classical/Quantum Boundary

Does it even exist? Here is a thought about it.

Mark Payne

One of the great benefits of being in Chicago was to have hung out just now with Mark Payne, a classics scholar and old and rekindled friend. We used to live adjacent to one another in New Buildings 1 at Magdalen College. He is a very very smart guy. And a very very funny guy. It turns out we are both fans of Joe Wenderoth, the Ali G of agonized laughter. And we both think about ecology.

Symposium wrap up soon. It was incredible, is the headline.

Concentric Temporalities

Concentric Temporalities

The World Has Already Ended

Isao Hashimoto, visualization of every nuclear detonation since 1945.

Iterability and the Local

We haven't got a clue, have we?

Exploding Foam

Why agrilogistics might not be the best, part 53432.

History and Politics of the Anthropocene: Alison Bashford

“Malthus and the Anthropocene”


Author of Imperial Hygiene
Life on Earth (in press); on geopolitics and world population problem

I was taken with the interest in scale for historians. It’s not so prevalent in history. But if it’s common for historians to talk about past as a foreign country, the deep past is another planet! 
Why the anxiety? Consensus of 1800 or 1950--this past is not another planet, it’s homeland for modern historians. 
Ceding of the Anthropocene to other disciplines. Approaching it as if not part of their discipline. 
Rather the non-historians should be struggling with historical time. 
Doesn’t require “big history” or “deep history” or David Armitage “transtemporal history”
E.A. Wrigley, an economic historian of industrialization
Frederick Johnson: we are starting to see British historians recast the industrial revolution as an energy revolution
is climate the price to be paid for rising standards of living?
the most interesting thing to happen to history for generations

Malthus stradded Holocene and Anthropocene! even between first and second editions!

crude appropriations of Malthus
I don’t want to rehearse Malthus but rather change the conversation
World population <> total carbon emissions
planetary boundary
Malthus insistence on soil erosion
cosmopolitan federation <> species unity

Columbia Earth institute’s Jeffrey Sachs speaks as a contemporary Malthus
idea of singular planet (on which so much discussion relies)
Malthus likes to write about islands: humans are confined

tribes as islands; Britain as island
hypothesizing at a global scale; “the whole earth might be considered in this way”
the struggle for room and food

<< Franklin on population in America
“solitary, terraqueous globe”
humanity placing itself in universal space
globe as raft in ocean of space (1880)

erosion: object of catastrophic projection
world populations pressed on global soil
Aldous Huxley: more devastating than atomic war
soil erosion can end very possibility of any civilization

mid C20 soil crisis >> climate change
substantively as well as temporally
soil as biospheric--not just geopolitical but biopolitical

you can look at this without being an apologist for population control
humans as social beings of one world
not just catastrophe speak but a political response
<> Kant’s Perpetual Peace
citizens of the world; “a right to the Earth’s surface which belongs to the human race in common”
globally federated political structures

those holding uncultivated land had no right to hold it out of use when faced with others’ need to cultivate it
>> Critique: “Hungry People and Empty Lands”
yet far from neocolonial, Malthusianism cd be anticolonial

cosmopolitan thought zone
cosmopolitics of population problem
strange idea of one world
third world has origin in population thought
“Three Worlds, One Planet”

easy to critique as neocolonialism
but this idea of one planet can be taken up in third world Malthusianisms
species identity << Malthusian + anticolonial
Muckerjee 1965: The Oneness of Mankind
vision extends beyond Homo sapiens; Homo universalis (free not only from pathology of sovereignty but also from individual rights)
the rights of mankind as a whole vs the rights of man
ecological cosmopolitanism
“mankind and cosmos as a whole”
space age, Earthrise

modern population bomb idea

many generations old 
carried forward by economists, statisticians, demographers in a Malthusian tradition
Arendt: space as escape from man’s imprisonment to Earth
whole new living space on offer
but Malthusians were impatient with this idea of loosening constraints; need to look inwards not outwards to celestial bodies

there is now far less interest in colonization of space
Malthus’s island Earth endures as an actual limit

Q&A

Q: Have you seen Cosgrove’s Apollo’s Eye? Until atmospheric test ban there is this idea of one world or none << fallout not population bomb
globe as vulnerable space

A: Except Population Bomb was given by Kingsley Davis before there was nuclear fission. It first arrives with plain old dynamite. World Demographic Transition 1944. The real metaphorical work is done by the fuse: the long Great Acceleration. Moore’s use of the image doesn’t have a fuse. It would be better to return to Davis. The fuse is a European population growth problem. That whole story dropped away. The pre-space age discussions are very interesting. 

Q: A comment on Earthrise. One Earth, fragile reading. Another reading: planet as total object subject to human manipulation. Precursor to geoengineering. “It’s not new-ism.” A constant attempt to write the Anthropocene into something that came before. One can always find intellectual predecessors. But what matters are the germination conditions. Crutzen’s moment was an intervention at a crucial moment. 

A: The most boring thing a historian can do is that! I would distinguish between the search for similar concepts and the soil crisis <> population connection. This is a precursor of a different order. The post 1940 discussion of soil erosion is the most proximate precursor of the climate change discussion. Trying out different political responses: one world or none, spaceship Earth, humans as species. 

Q: Why are precursors a bad thing? We can see them as continuities of experience. Maybe we need to watch out for elite indications in our argument. 

Q: Malthus not quite the ogre he’s made out to be. We can see the authoritarian dangers, the temptation that lies within. Easier to see than if you have Muir and Carson as your pantheon. 

Q: I have a question about Wrigley. Britain using coal by beginning of C17? Wood prices more expensive than coal. Industrial revolution not << coal but << steam engine. 

Q: One strand I can take is that Malthus is still with us. When we think of a 9 billion world in 50 years’ time--we are barely feeding ourselves now. The one country that has taken Malthus to heart has been China. It has maintained its population at about 1 billion. The nitty gritty is ugly. Do people do alternative histories? What if China had not had the one child policy since 1978. There would likely be 2 billion people there by now. 

Q: Demographers have played with this. Look at adjacent East Asian societies eg Taiwan. Nose diving without a one child policy! 

A: It’s an irony given Marx. The rate of acceleration peaked in 1963, of global population. The trend is more interesting and important: why fertility is dropping elsewhere. 

Q: A talk by David King, scientific advisor to British government. Population is cracked according to him. The problem is the middle class: growth of people who can do lots of things. 

History and Politics of the Anthropocene: Anya Zilberstein

C17 and C18 North America
variations on themes in cultural history of climate
Samuel Williams, “Change of Climate in North America and Europe” (1790)
“The whole earth is less subject to extreme cold than it was formerly. Every climate has become more temperature, and uniform, and equal and this will continue to be the cse so long as diligence, industry, and agriculture shall mark the conduct of mankind”

1988: “Since greenhouse gases are chiefly the result of human industry and agriculture, it is not an exaggeration to say that civilization itself is the ultimate cause of global warming”

Colonial elites had a stake in talking about climate
1638: descriptions of New England include language about the climate
to produce feeling of security
Edward Long C18 response to Buffon, 1784: “phlogistic particles from myriads of reeking dunghills, from the fumes of furnaces from the fire s and smoke of ten thousand crowded cities...”
He can’t believe humans can change climate

Nova Scotia and New England thought too extreme for comfort; too cold
political decision to say it’s temperate
ideas << classics + empirical samples: Samuel Williams
center hot; poles very cold (extreme where no one wants to live, uncivilized, unable to engage in higher thought)
you want to inhabit the temperate zones

>> latitude a bad guide for guessing about climate on other side of Atlantic

1. acclimatization schemes: transportation of people, transplanting of seeds
Scots and North Britons, who don’t survive in tropical climates
arguments about bringing a certain type of person...

2. cold-climate denial
“it’s not that cold”

3. material climate change (Samuel Williams, Thomas Jefferson)

That’s the overview. Then how to link to the Anthropocene? From the proliferation of texts about the temperate zone there is a persistent ambiguity. 
C18 example: Rome, Constantinople, New England (!); Paris, Vienna, Nova-Scotia (!)
Humboldt, isotherms: New England in cold and wintry regions, not temperate at all
>> more and more global maps of climate
all models are anthropocentric: temperature, torrid, frigid defined in terms of human need
some maps depend on agricultural plants, seeds
emerging notion of nature as subject to change; unstable, uncertain
>> naturalizations of concept of temperate climate; these have become invisible to us

Q: The writers all seem in favor of climate change! Are there any antagonists? 

A: Daniel Webster. In the short term an instability might cause erosion they think. But overall, no. There has been a real reversal. Industry moderates and tempers. Wholly positive. It’s deliberate and done by human agents! vs our sense that there is an unintended, bad side effect. 

Q: climate and character? Temperate vs tropical for instance. 

A: I have looked at Samuel Johnson’s definition of “temperate.” Stereotypes about torrid people. Moderate behavior etc. I’m interested in settler colonies. Difference between settler and plantation colonies. 

Q: >> defense of liberal capitalism. Torrid zone: defense of environmentalism. 

Q: Were the French at St. Lawrence also denying cold? 

A: Yes. 

Q: Those voices who saw climate change--did they all see the same or have inconsistent notions? 

A: Yes mostly. 

Ecology and the Environmental Humanities CFP

We are extending the deadline for applications for this year's Symposium to July 1. Here's a copy of the CFP. Note that we have decided on our keynotes: Prof. Claire Colebrook from Penn State, and our own Prof. Tim Morton. We're very excited to have them keynote!

Ecology and the Environmental Humanities
Keynotes: Prof. Claire Colebrook, PennState University
                Prof. Timothy Morton, Rice University

Rice University English Symposium
September 13-14, 2013

The 2013 English Symposium at Rice University invites responses to the ecological and nonhuman turns in the humanities. These turns are undoubtedly responses to environmental crises, food shortages, global warming, factory farming, and species extinction, but this symposium is also interested in discussing the emergence of nonhumans, such as matter, objects, animals, systems, technology, and media, in our critical conversations surrounding these problems.

While the humanities have an opportunity to challenge the problems and solutions put forth by scientific discourses, the Anthropocene, the post-Natural, and the Posthuman come to challenge humanism. What are humanities scholars able to contribute to the conversations concerning ecology and nonhumans?
Papers can address these topics across a variety of periods, genres, disciplines, and theoretical frames, such as:

Affect Theory
Biopolitics
Capitalism and Political Economy
Critical Animal Studies
Critical Race Studies
Cybernetics and Technology
Disability Studies
Environmental Activism
Eugenics
Food studies
Gender and Sexuality Studies
Geopolitics
Green Capitalism
History of Science
Imperialisms
Medicine and Disease
New Materialism
New Media
Object Oriented Ontology
Population Studies
Postcolonialism
Posthumanism
Psychoanalysis
Reproduction
Settlement Studies
Social Movements
Sustainability
Systems Theory 


Proposals (max 250 words) are due on July 1. Papers should be readable in 20 minutes, but shorter pieces are encouraged to allow more time for discussion. Please email proposals to rice.symposium@gmail.com as a word document or pdf file.

Adam Nieman on Very Large Finitude

Imagine rolling all the water on Earth into a sphere. What would it look like? And the air?

History and Politics of the Anthropocene: John McNeill

I want to reflect on what we’ve just heard. It began with the proposition that this term isn’t useful for public policy. But I can also see the reverse. Cost benefit analysis as conventionally undertaken seems not all that useful for problems of the Anthropocene. Maybe we need to change the concept! 

People’s discount rates are even steeper than economists’: 50 years from now, who cares? 

My own topic here is going to be a bit disorganized. I haven’t spoken on this theme before. Stray thoughts on cases for the term. 

Agassiz, Vernadsky, Stoppani (the most crucial that Jan mentioned): the Anthropozoic (1873)
humans acquired power that they did in modern times
Word cropped up 1958 (first of all) according to Google. 
becomes part of vocab after Crutzen
Journal of the Anthropocene
Anthropocene Review
Elementa: J. of Anthropocene Science

Duetsches-Museum Munich/Haus der Kulturen der Welt
National Geographic

I’m going to begin with a very theoretical case
One should expect Anthropocene like events on any planet that has life. Dead planet >> dumb planet >> smart planet >> managed planet (Vernadsky, Grinspoon)
monkeying accidentally >> monkeying with intent

Now for some more conventional cases
atmospheric chemistry case
another bioregional case: nitrogen flows
biological case: bio-globalization since 1492 (Columbian Exchange)

Charlres Mann, Homogenocene since 1492 (Orion science journalist)

Geological case: humans in late C20 the most active geological agent than any other force in Earth system (moving rock around etc) (Roger Hooke)

Land use case: land cover >> human artifact (Ellis et al 2013)
agriculture has taken over planet; Ruth De Fries, Columbia

A general case: 24 indicators IGBP (globala.org); gigantic upsurge around 1950

Steffen, Crutzen, McNeill (2007), p. 617

If it exists when did it start? 
Rival versions: Late Pleistocene Extinctions (Erle Ellis); ecosystems reshuffled before agriculture; before Holocene

Ruddiman’s early Anthropocene: land use, GHGs, temperature 5-9kyr BP (onset of agriculture, rice, 5-800 years ago)

Certini and Scalenghe (2011): 2kyr BP because of anthropogenic soils that become pervasive then

Then we have the new Anthropocenes: 
Crutzen (Industrial revolution; GHGs, temperature)

Mid C20: fuzzy mix of criteria but least illogical of the bunch (emphasis on scale of impacts); nuclear age = Anthropocene; maybe you don’t need a marker; maybe it’s just the aggregation showing major disruptions that matter; I’m (McNeill that is) impressed with that as a disjuncture, more than with 1800

Paleo vs. modern Anthropocenes

Who gets to decide? 
Geologists: clear and rigorous standards
Historians: anarchic process of decision; French and Italian idea that “contemporary period” of 60s and 70s is now over (!), a conundrum; “post-contemporary” history
(literary scholars can make the same claime)
Philosophers and journalists: all using the term (can’t be stopped)

the illogical and undisciplined people will be sovereign over the term
We are going to use it whether the stratigraphers say yes or no
get used to it! it’s like what historians have to put up with from film makers

Is there a conscious versus unconscious moment in the Anthropocene? Not really. Consider the Stalin Plan. Spain 1911: nature not good enough. Can we say when intentional planet management begins? 

Multiple cases
struggle for authority
terms are uncontrollable
heart of the matter: energy and population (McNeill is a modernist); the curves are highly conspicuous

Q&A

Q: This goes back to Eric’s skepticism. I share the idea that no one can legislate powerful words. But when you bring the term back into the university, you can’t have a proper conversation unless you stabilize the word

A: That’s why you argue. 

Q: But if we have different criteria we can’t argue. We talk past one another. In Berlin we got precisely to this point. The term is powerful but not precise enough. The term will spread. But in cloistered spaces where we want to stabilize the word for a while...The Great Acceleration seems very persuasive with or without the Anthropocene concept. Then there is the question of interference by humans with Earth systems: when? What is at stake in letting a concept be undisciplined? 

[me: you can think it as fuzzy yet precise in another sense, as a series of concentric loops]

Q: Thanks so much. I had not realized Stoppani had been thinking of the future as well as the past. Geologists don’t have a say in the use of the term. But this is not their battle. It’s fine to have the word out there. But the caution is to do with a very restrictive concept. One good thing about any formalization is what Dipesh is saying: it’s best to have a word that is reasonably restricted and clear. So the term shouldn’t mean anything from 60 000 years ago to some time in the future. The Stratigraphers can help discussion. Looking for signals in the strata: the 1950-ish moment seems to be the least worst. The one that has the least problems. No stratigraphic boundaries are perfect. And human consciousness is irrevalent--it could have been caused by my cat ganging up on us! 

Q: What we are starting to see in early Anthropocene hypotheses are ways of reframing. Normalizing it. No radical break of industrialization. No big deal. It’s better to claim that criteria depend on belief. Ellis: the “good Anthropocene.” A good epic. No limits to human expansion. “We will be proud of the planet we create.” A higher stage of human destiny. Triumphalism >> determination of when it began. 

A: He does have some anxieties about it too. 

Q: The critical thing is that there needs to be something non-arbitrary. 

A: You can argue about it. Think how historians have wrestled with “modernity.” The collective argumentation does narrow the range of acceptable usage. We haven’t even taken that first stage. An explosive stage is necessary: concept subject to ever more and new definitions. Then there comes an implosive stage, narrowing it down. 

Q: Perhaps one way is to come back to ppm question. We could periodize that easily. The 1950 story expands; McDonalds (a factor in the McNeill chart) is a moment << cornucopianism, ideology of growth different from “making a second world” (Francis Bacon); unintended consequence of second-creation-thought

Q: But there is a difference between a geological stratum and an “age of humans” concept: “when do we begin to rule.” Jan is saying that if a geologist came from Mars and all humans were gone, would she develop roughly the same concept? 

A: One defense of McDonalds: if you pen a paper with a Nobel prize winner you don’t always get the last word!

Q: The unstated issue is accountability. It matters if we can trace it to the human. Some moments are also correlated with empire (the exchange of species). Expansion of Europe >> industrial revolution (empire); or  1950s, Americanization (atmospheric nuclear testing)

A: We can bring in issues of accountability. If the concept does successfully colonize social science and humanities, it’s going to happen. It could be a pandora’s box. We may make interdiscipinarity more difficult. Historians will want to talk about x, geologists about y and z. The concept invites people to talk in mutually comprehensible terms. But if the term succeeds there will be costs. [He seems less aware of speculative realist develoments in his worry here]

Q: But it’s necessary as well. But humans are currently driving the Anthropocene. So we have to know what drives humans. 

The History and Politics of the Anthropocene: Eric Posner and David Weisbach

“Public Policy over Massive Time Scales” 


David and I are law professors focused on public policy. How to make the world better through it. My first reaction was that the idea was not useful at all. But this is a topic we can discuss. There is a related issue of massive time scales. 

I’m not going to say the word Anthropocene again. But you’ll see why what we say might be relevant. 

Question: when the government implements a project, how far into the future should it calculate the costs and benefits? 
Amortization rate of benefits: economists assume this
Examples: bridge (ca 30 years)
Reform of judiciary (<100 font="" years="">
Radioactive waste (lasts 10 000 to 1 million years)
Power plants (climate change--indefinite time scale)

future benefits discounted by economists; build bridge, or you can set aside money in bank let it accumulate interest then 10 years from now people can use that to benefit themselves
3% growth >> .97 discount factor

Discounting: typical project has current cost and future benefits
Calculate social value by subtracting costs from discounted benefits
if you have a project that has effects 100 years out, you have to take into account that you might get a better outcome by simply investing money

Uncertainty: increases further into the future
suppose we are considering a project with payoff of $1bn in future, and are deciding how much today to spend
If you assume discount is very low, then the $1bn is worth a few hundred million; but high discount rate >> far lower payoff

social cost of carbon (SCC)
government uses a 300 year estimate
CAFE standards (fuel emissions in vehicles), fluorescent and incandescent lamp standards; small electronic motor standards; at least eleven others
every ton of carbon has a social cost to be factored in
EPA will issue major regs that include social cost of carbon

Government estimated range of uncertainty by varying discount rates; how much temperatures will go up for a given scenario; how big damages will be for any given temperature increase. Relatively tight range of estimates. 

Liz Moyer geophysicist, draft paper

how does uncertainty propagate over time? exponentially because there is an exponential function
same thing can happen in any economics model of climate change
base case: climate change reduces usable output but growth continues. Errors have no long term effects. 
Idea that not that much will change. Growing corn today, same as tomorrow. 

Alternative A: small fraction of damages from climate change reduces growth rate. Errors here >> exponential errors over time. 

Government model:
Base scenario: from 30 to 27 times richer in 300 years. Why would we sacrifice today to help people who will be that much richer no matter what? 

Alternative A: take a percentage of damages and apply to growth rate. At just 1% the damage is doubled. At 5% the damage is such that the economy starts collapsing by 2300. Then 10% >> subsistence economy by 2300. 
Anywhere from 25 times richer to dark ages! 

SCC with no change to growth is $16. At 50% it is $100 000. At 100% it is $130 million! 

>> the timescale for thinking about policy must be very project specific
how important is discounting?
how does today’s uncertainty affect estimates

efforts to calculate the impact are largely worthless (Posner)
efforts are highly sensitive to initial assumptions (Weisbach)

The concept of the Anthropocene is not helpful for making policy choices
Deep uncertainty but also because climate change problem is one of energy transition
source of our wealth is fossil fuels >> energy transition in about 100 years; that is an engineering problem

Q&A

Q: The term “uncertainty” needs to analyzed. There is something like exponential growth and there is also something like a tipping point. Because things haven’t panned out. How insert that into an equation? 

A: We didn’t even include tipping points. You can add a damage function that increases as temperature goes up.

A: Marvin Weitzman (Harvard). There can be tipping on both sides. You can have huge growth. Or war. 

Q: Then doesn’t Anthropocene become irrelevant? 

Q: I agree with the Posner logic but the Weisbach conclusion. The uncertainty is at least as great. US only 50% likely to exist 300 years from now! It’s absurd. But the conclusion is energy transition, and we need a reason to do it. The reason can’t be rational calculation of long term benefits of long-term policies to >> conclusion of Weisbach. I don’t know that we have it yet. They are moral rather than rational calculation; playing with fire is a bad idea. 

A: We do think we are using a moral argument--to enhance human well-being. Idea of sustainable development. But I don’t think that works conceptually. There seems to be no alternative to this way of thinking. [me: which is agrilogistical]

Q; Are we thinking of a no-growth economy? Creating junk we don’t need. 

A: A low growth economy would be horrible. You have 7 billion people living subsistence lives right now. Many are living on $1 a day. You would be condemning them to subsistence. To say we should stop growing condemns them to horrible lives. 

Q: But stuff we don’t need? 

A: One problem is distribution. Given how much the economy can produce now, if distributed fairly, that would be sufficient. Junk for one person is valuable for another. 

Q: oh come on. How many people need to eat steak every day? 

A: You can’t just tell people to stop consuming. The solution is to try to put in place policies that will redistribute wealth within the constraints we are willing to tolerate. 

A: If we stop growing you still have to find a way to replace the energy. If you don’t you shrink back to subsistence. 
[but ironically, though you wish to avoid it, “the bad level” is built into the default well-being utilitarianism used in this argument! loop!]

Q: You guys are both lawyers. The question of whether it’s human made climate change is a factor? For insurance purposes we have acts of God etc. 

A: That’s not correct. You can get insurance for natural disasters unrelated to human activity. It just depends what the probability of the outcome is. People cause climate change >> you can give incentives to reduce. But even if people had nothing to do with it, you would still want to take that into account for public policy purposes. 

Q: DoD predictions of future based on half life of radioactive materials. Does radioactive waste provide a model for thinking far into the future? 

A: benefit of nuclear: less greenhouse gases. cost: accidents, waste. Future warnings such as target that gets super hot in the sunlight. 

Q: The idea of tipping point. One can make guesses as to when alternative fuels will come online. Hansen and so on: what they can’t model for is exactly when the tipping point comes. Too many equations to solve. Uncertainty you can’t make into risk. Does policy have to be blind or neutral to that? 

A: not at all. This is why we want to start energy transition now. 

Q: But the problem is that we need 6 or 7 decades to get from lab to online energy. While India and China have all the policies for more food and car production. 

A: I don’t know what to say other than we need to start right away. Conservation can start right away. No fossil fuels by 2100. How do you get there at lowest cost? Precisely that we don’t know when the point will be is why to be urgent. We are trying to estimate the costs of energy transition at different moments. You have to replace $5 trillion worth of energy stuff. As fast as possible. That’s just the USA!

A: I take your question to mean that ignoring the tipping point will estimate SCC too low. Maybe it should be $100 or whatever. The question is what should the number be? I think you have to ignore it...