Temporal orientation and transformation Christopher Lyon Geography & Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience University of Dundee
Email: clyon@dundee.ac.uk Tweet: @ChristophLyon
Some ecological context • “…the present/future rate of climate change and ocean acidification is too fast for many species to adapt, which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions…that will substantially exceed those at the [Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum]” 66 million years ago with +5 C temp rise (Zeebe et al. 2016) • Biodiversity losses likely exceeding the planetary boundary on 65 % of Earth’s land area (Newbold et al. 2016)
• Catastrophic losses of global wilderness areas with significant negative implications for carbon reduction/climate mitigation (Watson et al. 2016) • “…modern extinction rates are exceptionally high…increasing, and…suggest a mass extinction under way—the sixth of its kind in Earth’s 4.5 billion years of history” (Ceballos et al. 2015)
• Paris climate goals radically unrealistic, unlikely/impossible to be met (Agence France-Presse 2016, quoting scientists contributing to IPCC Special Report currently in progress) • September 2016, world permanently passes 400 ppm… (Climatecentral)
Measuring time • Time is a “powerful social tool for producing, managing, and/or undermining various understandings of who or what is in relation with other things or beings” (Bastian 2012: 25) • Measured differently depending on context • E.g. clocks, calendars, geological epoch, atomic decay, layers of sediment or soil, deposits, etc.
• Broadly organised into past, present and future • Prediction sciences try to measure the future • Future is maximal point of indeterminacy (Garcia 2014) • Past is intensity relative intensity of presences relative now (distant past)
Our darlings • Cultural, political, and economic are rooted in past and present orientations in that they seek to reproduce past norms in the present • Local and global decision-making bodies are deciding the future based on past-orientations • Past-oriented institutional system E.g. UN, national parliaments, or local councils are evolved from histories predating climate change and massive biodiversity loss
Future derangement • Velocity of climate change means window to avoid catastrophe is very narrow • Institutions, art and literature are unable to cope with scale and magnitude of climate change (Ghosh 2016) • Paris Agreement: “The very syntax is an expression of faith in the sovereignty of Man and his ability to shape the future.” (Ghosh 2016: 158) • “Climate change represents…an unresolvable problem for modern nations in terms of their biopolitical mission and the practices of governance associated with it.” (Ghosh 2016: 160)
“In writing, you must kill your darlings.” (Faulkner) • Transformation requires us to identify and move on from our temporal darlings • What past and present-oriented ideas, values, beliefs, and institutions leave us on a maladaptive pathway in the face of climate change? • How do we most adaptively relate to time in the face global environmental catastrophe?
• E.g. National geographies and identities do not hold face of ecological inhabitable planetary spaces?