J. Baird Callicott
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199324880
- eISBN:
- 9780199347285
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199324880.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General, Moral Philosophy
Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is located in an evolutionary-ecological worldview: Homo sapiens is “kin” to all other “fellow voyagers in the odyssey of evolution” and is a “plain member and citizen” of a ...
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Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is located in an evolutionary-ecological worldview: Homo sapiens is “kin” to all other “fellow voyagers in the odyssey of evolution” and is a “plain member and citizen” of a “biotic community.” Part I traces the conceptual foundations of the land ethic to Darwin’s account of the origin and evolution of ethics in The Descent of Man and Hume’s moral philosophy in the second Enquiry. Evolutionary biology and ecology have undergone paradigm shifts since Leopold conceived the land ethic in 1949. Part I indicates how the land ethic can remain theoretically viable and practically applicable if revised to accommodate changes in its scientific foundations. The circumscribed spatial and temporal scales (ecosystems and their dynamics) of the land ethic are disproportionate to the planetary spatial and centennial temporal scales of global climate change, the overarching environmental concern of the 21st century. In 1923, Leopold faintly sketched an Earth ethic at biogeophysical scales. He envisioned the Earth as “a living thing” and each part thereof “as organs . . . with a definite function”—in effect anticipating the Gaia Hypothesis. Leopold hints at several theoretical foundations of an Earth ethic: non-anthropocentric “respect” for a living planet; personal, professional, and societal virtue; and anthropocentric responsibility to future generations, both “immediate posterity” and the “Unknown Future.” Part II enhances Leopold’s faint sketch of an Earth ethic, explores its scientific metaphysical foundations, critically elaborates the several theories on which Leopold suggests an Earth ethic might be grounded, and theoretically integrates the land and Earth ethics.Less
Aldo Leopold’s land ethic is located in an evolutionary-ecological worldview: Homo sapiens is “kin” to all other “fellow voyagers in the odyssey of evolution” and is a “plain member and citizen” of a “biotic community.” Part I traces the conceptual foundations of the land ethic to Darwin’s account of the origin and evolution of ethics in The Descent of Man and Hume’s moral philosophy in the second Enquiry. Evolutionary biology and ecology have undergone paradigm shifts since Leopold conceived the land ethic in 1949. Part I indicates how the land ethic can remain theoretically viable and practically applicable if revised to accommodate changes in its scientific foundations. The circumscribed spatial and temporal scales (ecosystems and their dynamics) of the land ethic are disproportionate to the planetary spatial and centennial temporal scales of global climate change, the overarching environmental concern of the 21st century. In 1923, Leopold faintly sketched an Earth ethic at biogeophysical scales. He envisioned the Earth as “a living thing” and each part thereof “as organs . . . with a definite function”—in effect anticipating the Gaia Hypothesis. Leopold hints at several theoretical foundations of an Earth ethic: non-anthropocentric “respect” for a living planet; personal, professional, and societal virtue; and anthropocentric responsibility to future generations, both “immediate posterity” and the “Unknown Future.” Part II enhances Leopold’s faint sketch of an Earth ethic, explores its scientific metaphysical foundations, critically elaborates the several theories on which Leopold suggests an Earth ethic might be grounded, and theoretically integrates the land and Earth ethics.
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Terraforming and its destructive ecological impact began to receive greater attention in the light of environmentalism in the 1960s-1970s. This chapter draws attention to the links between the ...
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Terraforming and its destructive ecological impact began to receive greater attention in the light of environmentalism in the 1960s-1970s. This chapter draws attention to the links between the utopian imagination, the pastoral, and the notion of the communard, a concept that was re-voiced in “New Age” environmentalist discourse. The first section compares and contrasts several significant proto-Gaian works while the second explores terraforming narratives that re-work the 1950s tradition. Citing Val Plumwood’s analysis of dualistic operations in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, the conflict between colonising forces and indigenous populations is considered. This section argues that the popular ecological image of connection and the theme of love is a symbolic attempt to bridge the hyperseparation between dualised concepts; between coloniser and colonised, nature and culture.Less
Terraforming and its destructive ecological impact began to receive greater attention in the light of environmentalism in the 1960s-1970s. This chapter draws attention to the links between the utopian imagination, the pastoral, and the notion of the communard, a concept that was re-voiced in “New Age” environmentalist discourse. The first section compares and contrasts several significant proto-Gaian works while the second explores terraforming narratives that re-work the 1950s tradition. Citing Val Plumwood’s analysis of dualistic operations in Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, the conflict between colonising forces and indigenous populations is considered. This section argues that the popular ecological image of connection and the theme of love is a symbolic attempt to bridge the hyperseparation between dualised concepts; between coloniser and colonised, nature and culture.
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers works influenced by the convergence of terraforming and the Gaia Hypothesis in the 1970s. It is during the period of the 1980s-1990s that narratives dealing with terraforming ...
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This chapter considers works influenced by the convergence of terraforming and the Gaia Hypothesis in the 1970s. It is during the period of the 1980s-1990s that narratives dealing with terraforming begin to consolidate their tropes and reflect consciously and complexly on the tradition of terraforming created by earlier texts. This period also sees the first overtly environmental philosophical concepts feeding into the terraforming tradition. Part of this transformation is a response to what Ursula K. Heise in Sense of Place, Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global describes as the urgency of developing an eco-cosmopolitanism that embraces both humankind and nature. Heise’s discussion of deterritorialisation is brought to bear to account for the estrangement and homesickness felt by colonisers who are faced with the struggle to make a new home of an alien planet.Less
This chapter considers works influenced by the convergence of terraforming and the Gaia Hypothesis in the 1970s. It is during the period of the 1980s-1990s that narratives dealing with terraforming begin to consolidate their tropes and reflect consciously and complexly on the tradition of terraforming created by earlier texts. This period also sees the first overtly environmental philosophical concepts feeding into the terraforming tradition. Part of this transformation is a response to what Ursula K. Heise in Sense of Place, Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global describes as the urgency of developing an eco-cosmopolitanism that embraces both humankind and nature. Heise’s discussion of deterritorialisation is brought to bear to account for the estrangement and homesickness felt by colonisers who are faced with the struggle to make a new home of an alien planet.
J. Baird Callicott
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199324880
- eISBN:
- 9780199347285
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199324880.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General, Moral Philosophy
Aldo Leopold studied the Bible not for devotional but for rhetorical purposes. At the beginning of “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest” (written in 1923) Leopold quotes Ezekiel’s ...
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Aldo Leopold studied the Bible not for devotional but for rhetorical purposes. At the beginning of “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest” (written in 1923) Leopold quotes Ezekiel’s criticism of land and water mismanagement and infers from it three moral rationales for conservation: (1) (a) personal, (b) professional, and (c) societal virtue; (2) responsibility to future generations, both to (a) “immediate posterity” and (b) the “Unknown Future”; and (3) respect for the earth as a living being. Leopold elaborates the idea of the Earth as a living being and speculates on the possibility of its “soul or consciousness” inspired by P. D. Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum. Leopold thus anticipates the Gaia Hypothesis. He ridicules metaphysical anthropocentrism and A. T. Hadley’s definition of truth as “that which prevails in the long run.” Bryan Norton argues that Leopold is endorsing Hadley’s definition, but fails to appreciate Leopold’s irony in mentioning itLess
Aldo Leopold studied the Bible not for devotional but for rhetorical purposes. At the beginning of “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest” (written in 1923) Leopold quotes Ezekiel’s criticism of land and water mismanagement and infers from it three moral rationales for conservation: (1) (a) personal, (b) professional, and (c) societal virtue; (2) responsibility to future generations, both to (a) “immediate posterity” and (b) the “Unknown Future”; and (3) respect for the earth as a living being. Leopold elaborates the idea of the Earth as a living being and speculates on the possibility of its “soul or consciousness” inspired by P. D. Ouspensky’s Tertium Organum. Leopold thus anticipates the Gaia Hypothesis. He ridicules metaphysical anthropocentrism and A. T. Hadley’s definition of truth as “that which prevails in the long run.” Bryan Norton argues that Leopold is endorsing Hadley’s definition, but fails to appreciate Leopold’s irony in mentioning it
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Beginning with the coining of “terraforming” by science fiction writer Jack Williamson, this chapter explores the boundaries of the term in scientific discourse and in fiction, focusing attention on ...
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Beginning with the coining of “terraforming” by science fiction writer Jack Williamson, this chapter explores the boundaries of the term in scientific discourse and in fiction, focusing attention on its significance for stories of interplanetary colonisation. It compares terraforming with its Earthbound counterpart, geoengineering, thus highlighting how science fiction explores modes of relating to Earth’s environment. It introduces James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and explains its significance for terraforming, and explores the nature of science fiction’s environmental engagement and its intersections with ecocritical concerns. It also introduces the concept of nature’s otherness and of landscaping, and connects the latter to Bakhtin’s chronotope, thus delineating an analytical framework for exploring how space and time is invested with human value and meaning in science fictional narratives.Less
Beginning with the coining of “terraforming” by science fiction writer Jack Williamson, this chapter explores the boundaries of the term in scientific discourse and in fiction, focusing attention on its significance for stories of interplanetary colonisation. It compares terraforming with its Earthbound counterpart, geoengineering, thus highlighting how science fiction explores modes of relating to Earth’s environment. It introduces James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and explains its significance for terraforming, and explores the nature of science fiction’s environmental engagement and its intersections with ecocritical concerns. It also introduces the concept of nature’s otherness and of landscaping, and connects the latter to Bakhtin’s chronotope, thus delineating an analytical framework for exploring how space and time is invested with human value and meaning in science fictional narratives.
Chris Pak
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781781382844
- eISBN:
- 9781786945426
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382844.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Paying special attention to the role of landscaping, Bakhtinian dialogism, the science fictional megatext, pastoral and utopian discourse, ecology and environmentalism, the conclusion to Terraforming ...
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Paying special attention to the role of landscaping, Bakhtinian dialogism, the science fictional megatext, pastoral and utopian discourse, ecology and environmentalism, the conclusion to Terraforming considers how the terraforming motif provides a point of convergence for all these dynamics and discourses. The main part of this section reflects on the terraforming narratives that have been published during and after the mid-1990s and suggests many fruitful avenues for further research into terraforming. Ultimately, this section argues that terraforming demonstrates the tendency for science fiction to operate as a literature of landscaping, an environmental literature that examines the importance of the world in the light of contemporary technological innovation and intervention into nature.Less
Paying special attention to the role of landscaping, Bakhtinian dialogism, the science fictional megatext, pastoral and utopian discourse, ecology and environmentalism, the conclusion to Terraforming considers how the terraforming motif provides a point of convergence for all these dynamics and discourses. The main part of this section reflects on the terraforming narratives that have been published during and after the mid-1990s and suggests many fruitful avenues for further research into terraforming. Ultimately, this section argues that terraforming demonstrates the tendency for science fiction to operate as a literature of landscaping, an environmental literature that examines the importance of the world in the light of contemporary technological innovation and intervention into nature.
Dale Jamieson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195399622
- eISBN:
- 9780197562840
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195399622.003.0011
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmentalist Thought and Ideology
There has been speculation about the possibility of anthropogenic global warming since at least the late nineteenth century (Arrhenius 1896, 1908). At times the prospect of such a warming has been ...
More
There has been speculation about the possibility of anthropogenic global warming since at least the late nineteenth century (Arrhenius 1896, 1908). At times the prospect of such a warming has been welcomed, for it has been thought that it would increase agricultural productivity and delay the onset of the next Ice Age (Callendar 1938). Other times, and more recently, the prospect of global warming has been the stuff of “doomsday narratives,” as various writers have focused on the possibility of widespread drought, flood, famine, and economic and political dislocations that might result from a “greenhouse warming”-induced climate change (Flavin 1989). Although high-level meetings have been convened to discuss the greenhouse effect since at least 1963 (see Conservation Foundation 1963), the emergence of a rough, international consensus about the likelihood and extent of anthropogenic global warming began with a National Academy Report in 1983 (National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council 1983) and meetings in Villach, Austria, and Bellagio, Italy, in 1985 (World Climate Program 1985) and in Toronto, Canada, in 1988 (Conference Statement 1988). The most recent influential statement of the consensus holds that although there are uncertainties, a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from its preindustrial baseline is likely to lead to a 2.5 °C increase in the earth’s mean surface temperature by the middle of the twenty-first century (IPCC 1990). (Interestingly, this estimate is within the range predicted by Arrhenius 1896.) This increase is expected to have a profound impact on climate and therefore on plants, animals, and human activities of all kinds. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that without policy interventions, atmospheric carbon dioxide will stabilize at twice preindustrial levels. According to the IPCC (1990), we would need immediate 60 percent reductions in net emissions in order to stabilize at a carbon dioxide doubling by the end of the twenty-first century. Since these reductions are very unlikely to occur, we may well see increases of 4 °C by the end of the twenty-first century.
Less
There has been speculation about the possibility of anthropogenic global warming since at least the late nineteenth century (Arrhenius 1896, 1908). At times the prospect of such a warming has been welcomed, for it has been thought that it would increase agricultural productivity and delay the onset of the next Ice Age (Callendar 1938). Other times, and more recently, the prospect of global warming has been the stuff of “doomsday narratives,” as various writers have focused on the possibility of widespread drought, flood, famine, and economic and political dislocations that might result from a “greenhouse warming”-induced climate change (Flavin 1989). Although high-level meetings have been convened to discuss the greenhouse effect since at least 1963 (see Conservation Foundation 1963), the emergence of a rough, international consensus about the likelihood and extent of anthropogenic global warming began with a National Academy Report in 1983 (National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council 1983) and meetings in Villach, Austria, and Bellagio, Italy, in 1985 (World Climate Program 1985) and in Toronto, Canada, in 1988 (Conference Statement 1988). The most recent influential statement of the consensus holds that although there are uncertainties, a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from its preindustrial baseline is likely to lead to a 2.5 °C increase in the earth’s mean surface temperature by the middle of the twenty-first century (IPCC 1990). (Interestingly, this estimate is within the range predicted by Arrhenius 1896.) This increase is expected to have a profound impact on climate and therefore on plants, animals, and human activities of all kinds. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that without policy interventions, atmospheric carbon dioxide will stabilize at twice preindustrial levels. According to the IPCC (1990), we would need immediate 60 percent reductions in net emissions in order to stabilize at a carbon dioxide doubling by the end of the twenty-first century. Since these reductions are very unlikely to occur, we may well see increases of 4 °C by the end of the twenty-first century.
