Ivan Illich’s Radical Thought and the Convivial Solution to the Ecological Crisis (original) (raw)
Related papers
THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS – A HUGE CHALLENGE
International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on the Dialogue between Sciences & Arts, Religion & Education, 2019
The survival of the planet Earth in its entire reality is the major problem we face today. Both scientists and all Christians are concerned about the evolution of the ecological crisis. That is why, both at the level of the whole of human society and at the level of the Church, the evolution of life, the slippage of the present ecosystem has become a main point on the agenda. The joint efforts of the competent institutions of the world’s states, Christian Churches, environmental organizations have succeeded, at some points, in the adjustment of pollution and the implementation of policies to protect the environment. In this context, we can say that in some points the human desire and the survival of the earth are similar. In any case, no human desires or desires can be realized as long as the earth no longer exists. On this paper I will try to emphasis some aspects of ecological crisis and how they affect us. Also, I will try to underline the Christian points of view, as the solutions proposed for that.
'Anthropocene' a new Tool for Understanding of human generate backlash of Nature.
The most recent epoch, the Holocene, has been a period of relative environmental stability, allowing humans to develop agriculture and establish settlements, culminating in modern civilization. Human activities have now reached such a scale that we are having significant impacts on planetary systems, and these effects are of sufficient magnitude to Within a human lifetime, the face of Earth has been transformed. Cities now dominate the landscape, and even if people disappeared tomorrow, cities would remain one of the Anthropocene’s most visible and enduring legacies.In 1950, only 29% of people lived in cities. Today more than half do, and that proportion is expected to reach 70% by 2050. Recently, urban growth has shifted from Europe and South America to Asia and Africa. Asia’s urban population is growing faster than that anywhere else. It passed the billion mark in 1990, and is expected to reach 3.4 billion by 2025. In the next couple of decades, more than 275 million people are projected to move into India’s enormous city centres. In Africa, meanwhile, only 40% live in cities, but this is changing fast.This frenetic urban growth is a big cause of environmental change. It drives loss of agricultural land, changes in temperature and the loss of biodiversity. Cities consume two-thirds of the world’s total energy and account for more than 70% of all energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. But people living in cities often have low carbon emissions because of efficient public transport systems and the fact that people often live closer to their work. Neither climatic nor biogeochemical stability is likely to continue in the Anthropocene, and the Earth systems we rely on to provide a liveable environment for human society are likely to become much less predictable. The stability of our infrastructure, the reliability of our production systems and the liveability of our cities will all be much less certain in the future. More research on the diverse aspects of global change will certainly help to improve predictions on the timing and extent of changes, but will not alter the basic conclusion that global change is upon us.
In Arias-Maldonado, M., & Trachtenberg, Z. (Eds.). (2019). Rethinking the Environment for the Anthropocene: Political Theory and Socionatural Relations in the New Geological Epoch. Routledge., 2019
The concept of Anthropocene seems to represent a new opportunity for Earth scientists and social (de)constructivists to definitely abolish the distinction between nature and society, to affirm human power on the planet and to allege the definitive ‘end of nature’. Indeed, the fact that humanity is about to be acknowledged as a new geological force represents the last chance for the Promethean triumphalism, embodied by geo and eco-constructivists (Neyrat, 2015), to prosper upon the wreckage of its own ecological collapse. This position can be summarised in McKibben terms: ‘we now live in a world of our own making’. I will argue, against this view, that to acknowledge that nature and society are more and more intertwined around us - and inside us - is not enough to abandon the analytic distinction between aspects deriving from human societies and those deriving from nature’s ‘non-identity’ (otherness). In other words, natural objects have still agency and human societies themselves are materially anchored in biophysical conditions that transcend them. The contradiction between the claim that humans are new “planetary managers” or “Earth engineers” and our obvious inability to control our environmental impacts on the planet constitutes one major sign of natural agency, or what I call ‘the return of nature’. Moreover, I will show that the concept of Anthropocene aims at pursuing an unapologetically anthropocentric world picture in order to justify further capitalist exploitation of the Earth (Crist, 2013). The Anthropocene promoters, driven by a complex mix of economic, scientific and political motives, tend to encourage the hubristic modern faith in technology to fix problems created by technology itself. Against the arrogance contained in this concept, I argue that the repeated failures of ecological modernisation and environmental managerialism should be an opportunity to re-think our place on the planet and to accept the fragility and vulnerability of the human species in the face of complex and unpredictable natural phenomena. In short, what needs to be developed is not a new form of human hubris but our capacities for gratitude, humility, respect and restraint.
Environments
A convincing case has been made that the scale of human activity has reached such pervasiveness that humans are akin to a force of nature. How environmental science responds to the many new challenges of the Anthropocene is at the forefront of the field. The aim of this perspective is to describe Anthropocene as a concept and a time period and discuss its relevance to the contemporary study of environmental science. Specifically, we consider areas in environmental science which may need to be revisited to adjust to complexity of the new era: (a) recalibrate the idea of environmental baselines as Anthropogenic baselines; (b) rethink multiple stressor approaches to recognize a system under flux; (c) re-evaluate the relationship of environmental science with other disciplines, particularly Earth Systems Science, but also social sciences and humanities. The all-encompassing nature of the Anthropocene necessitates the need to revise and reorganize to meet the challenge of complexity.