In a broken world: Towards an ethics of repair in the Anthropocene (original) (raw)
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adavancing global bioethics, 2024
This paper deals with the ecological interpretation of “care” within the Anthropocene framework, which I have called Techno-care My basic assumption is that the Anthropocene equates to more than an aspirant geological epoch: it is the best candidate for becoming the métarécit of our age. In its essence, the Anthropocene does not correspond to the “Age of Man”, but to the epoch in which technology becomes the “subject of history and of nature as well.” Hence the idea that its appro priate name is not Anthropo-cene, but Techno-cene. Concretely, the following pages sketch the Paradox of Omni-responsibility, an ethical paradox emerging within the Anthropocene framework and especially evident in the geoengineering solutions being proposed for ecological problems. I have characterized this oxymoron as techno-care, that is, something that transforms responsibility (and care) into a risk rather than a resource. On this basis, the most significant outcome of the Paradox of Omni-responsibility as techno-care is the undermining of Hans Jonas’ principle/imperative responsibility as a standard for the ecological thought of recent decades. In the conclusion, I suggest the possibility of a Care Imperative as a reply to this undermining.
Repair work as care: on maintaining the planet in the Capitalocene
Antipode, 2021
If the Anthropocene is the Capitalocene, then one of its signature attributes in the drive for profits is the abstraction of life itself and of the human/nonhuman relations that sustain it, creating a wake of waste in its path. Repairing the fraying human and ecological systems that underwrite life entails ongoing care work that is frequently invisible or devalued, and whose burdens fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations. We detail this through three connected instances: infrastructural labor that recuperates the detritus of city life; social reproductive labor that undergirds these systems and life itself; and hands-on repair work inherent to care. By understanding maintenance and repair work as care, our paper demonstrates the importance of this labor to our collective survival in a broken world, and the imperative of embracing a care ethics where we shoulder together the everyday burdens and benefits to live “as well as possible”.
Geoengineering the climate and ethical challenges: what we can learn from moral emotions and art
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2019
Climate change is an urgent problem, requiring ways and approaches to address it. Possible solutions are mitigation, adaptation and deployment of geoengineering. In this article we argue that geoengineering gives rise to ethical challenges of its own. Reflecting on these ethical challenges requires approaches that go beyond conventional, quantitative methods of risk assessment. Quantitative methods leave out important ethical considerations such as justice, fairness, autonomy and legitimacy. We argue that emotions and art can play an important role in ethical deliberation about geoengineering. Emotions can point out what morally matters. We also examine the role that works of art can play. Recently, artists have become involved with risky technologies. We argue that such artworks can contribute to emotional-moral reflection and public deliberation on geoengineering, by making abstract problems more concrete, letting us broaden narrow personal perspectives, exploring new scenarios, and challenging our imagination.
Responsibility and the Ethics of Ecological Restoration
This paper argues that the concept of responsibility can and should ground an ethics of ecological restoration. It starts with William Jordan's concept of restoration, namely the creation of mutually beneficial human-nature relationships. It builds a concept of responsibility using the works of Hans Jonas and Martin Drenthen, understood as a correlate of our technological capacity, as well as a relationship to the possibility of meaningfulness today and in the indefinite future. It is argued that we are responsible in a deep sense for engaging in projects of restoration in order to ensure the survival of embodied meaningfulness in the world. This is the draft of a paper forthcoming in Environmental Philosophy
The grant nomination derives ultimately from the First Nations of Americas 1992 United Nations' General Assembly Motion by His Honourable faith-keeper Thomas Banyacya of Hopi Nation which was introduced and seconded by His Honourable faith-keeper Professor Oren Lyons Jr. of Seneca Nation on 10-11th December 1992. This incorporates various nations' alternate ideas about the future climate changes based on their perceived ancient 'historical recollections' suggesting suitable responses to the rapid climate change occurring presently - varying from adaptation to geoengineering. [NOMINATION: Tuesday, 29th September 2015 by Professor Sir Ghillean Prance FRS, VMH]. Unfortunately, modern ‘New Age’ or ‘Mayanism’ movements, and several environmentalist groups working along with these groups, have conspired against the traditional Native American Indian weather modification and climate control communities like the rain dancers by recently conjuring up fake histories about the First Nations of Americas, including populist news reports that are extremely hostile about geoengineering which make false claims about the commonly shared ‘golden Native American Indian Age of non-interference with Mother Nature’ espousing a very strict ‘hands-off’ laissez-faire code against all types of climate interventions (forgetting that the Native American Indian communities themselves have attempted to control their weather and climate for several ‘thousands of years’ by many interventions like those of rain dancing, animal and human sacrifices, prayers, blood-letting and other types of 'embryonic geoengineering' with the aim to change the weather and climate to a more favourable regime to benefit the humankind. The extremely damaging effects from these campaign groups’ political propaganda to rain dancers and other indigenous climate modifiers is blatantly obvious as their false notion appeared even within the actual VU Grant Description's text – which attaches negative suggestions about the indigenous peoples' perceived "historical position" against all climate modification (geoengineering), plant manipulation, and de-extinction. In fact, the Native American Indians were very often rather keen to modify both the short-term weather and the longer term climates along other things natural. Take notice of this erraneous notion even in the VU Grant Guidelines (See APPENDIX, II Bullet Point, Page 36): “How do religious worldviews view novel (potential) PROBLEMS of the Anthropocene that are brought about by technological developments, SUCH AS ‘GEO-ENGINEERING’ [sic.] (that is, ‘MANAGING’ PLANETARY SYSTEMS [sic.] ‘Plan B’, climate modification, geoengineering, today is never meant to be an excuse to ignore our need to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases. Instead, we indigenous proponents of geoengineering view it as a 'positive continuation' of ancient rain dancing and other climate change engineering traditions of the world's indigenous peoples. We, thus, propose to argue the activity to be a positive development i.e. to prevent the current overheating of sea water over the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and make it cooled by regional geoengineering technique of cloud brightening to reduce the expulsion rates of algae from the reef’s heat-stressed corals (coral bleaching), or to reduce carbon from the air to enhance exoskeleton development in marine fauna. In March 2016, as much as 95% of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef may face death from the present heat-induced coral bleaching. We support many similar geoengineering proposals to address various environmental problems from the loss of Arctic sea ice from the North Pole to the current coral losses at the Equator and reduce climate stress in all the regions in between them, if it were possible. Both geoengineering and rain dancing are practised for their OWN sakes in order to provide SOLUTIONS to the world's existing problems, not to create problems (such as wars and famines like some distorted reporting claim). The biased campaigners making up these 'alternate histories' attempt to both replace and erase the ancient Native American Indian weather and climate modification traditions and practises by their campaign groups own, barely decade-old propaganda. More information on the indigenous peoples' multimillennial efforts especially on the climate and weather modification and the true historical positions of the Native American Indians are found here to refute all the fake academic and popular claims: http://tribaldirectory.com/information/rain-dance.html
Anthropocene Discourse: Geopolitics after Environment
Much more than has been the case with environmental politics for the last half century, the Anthropocene formulation focuses on the planetary scale transformations currently underway. Only most obviously these are phenomena under the label of climate change and the reduction of biodiversity in the sixth planetary extinction event. While environmental discourse has largely been about protecting a supposedly fairly stable external context from the depredations of ‘development’, the Anthropocene suggests much more clearly that the rich and powerful parts of humanity are reshaping the planetary system in processes that are about production much more than environmental protection. Holocene biomes have been so thoroughly changed that terrestrial biota and the human systems they support are being reconfigured in novel anthrome geographies in an increasingly artificial biosphere. This reassembling of living and artificial components is making the future Anthropocene one shaped by political decisions about investment, infrastructure and new forms of urban life and rural resource extraction. Whether this is a relatively benign future for most of humanity, or a violent one involving forcible control by the rich and powerful over the remains of a rapidly degrading biosphere and its peoples, is now the overarching question of geological politics.