climate change

Adrian Ivakhiv proposes an ecological realism based on humanity’s eventual demise, asking what we can do now and what quality of compost we should leave behind.

Through a collection of 445 photographs taken from precisely the same places at intervals of months, years and decades,Die Zeit des Waldes [The forest over time] offers a stop-action look at the diversity of transformations within Germany’s forests.

Micheal Richardson investigates the impact of envisioning climate catastrophe in three works, namely George Miller’s film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Marina Zurkow’s animation Slurb (2009), and Briohny Doyle’s novel The Island Will Sink (2016).

This presentation by Manfred Stähli and Marcel Hürlimann for the 2016 CCES Competence Center Environment and Sustainability conference entitled “Natural Hazards and Risks in Alpine Environments - From Science to Early Warning Systems” highlights the challenges and goals of weather forecasting related to climate-related disasters and emergency responses.

In Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism warns the reader about the possibility that we have already entered a catastrophic time, determined by the apparently uncontrollable impact of anthropogenic activities and the incapability of governments and authorities to respond effectively.

This film presents the interdisciplinary and international project BASYS (Baltic Sea System Studies), financed by the European Union in the years 1996 to 1999, which investigated many aspects and influences of mankind activities on the ecosystem Baltic Sea as well as the natural influences such as climate and weather. A large database accessible to all scientists was collected during the project and should help in the future to distinguish between the natural and human effects upon the ecosystem of the Baltic Sea.

Katharine Suding, plant ecologist and professor at the University of Michigan, outlines the scaling of ecosystem restoration and how scaling is affecting the very notion of restoration in this presentation at the Latsis Symposium 2018.

In Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene, Joanna Zylinska outlies an ethical framework that could help humans assume responsibility for various occurrences in the universe across different scales. Her goal is not so much to tell us how to live but rather to allow us to rethink “life” and what we can do with it, in whatever time we have left. The book embraces a speculative mode of thinking that is more akin to the artist’s method; it also includes a photographic project by the author.

This presentation by Guy Brasseur for the 2016 CCES Competence Center Environment and Sustainability conference “Grand Challenges in Environmental and Sustainability Science and Technology” highlights the existing and upcoming challenges for climate science and climate services.

In Stolen Future, Broken Present, David A. Collings investigates the relationship between our present impact on the Earth and our perception of the future. He argues that an understanding of our infinite responsibility for ecological disaster could avoid the strange incoherence felt by many in everyday life.