Discussion Form Question

HOUSEWORK: REMINDER • We are moving to trial online discussion forums each

module: (no online tutorials) choose one of 3 questions to respond to - find link to Forum under each Module banner.

• No online lecture or discussion forum next week (Module 5)

• Online quiz opens next week Tuesday 7th April at 8.00am, closes Thursday 9th at 11.55pm.

• 12 multiple choice/true-false questions • 45 min. to complete • All drawn from subject material. • The quiz cannot be rerun; if you miss it you miss it.

Culture & Environment: Anthropological Approaches to Environmental Issues ANT3CAE

MODULE 4.1: Climate Change and the Anthropocene

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=17331

Image: Nick Smith 2003

What is the anthropocene?

The Anthropocene: a problematic concept?

• Eurocentric • anthropocentric • allied to development of capitalism;

modernization, & accompanying dispossession and destruction of Indigenous societies

Kogi cosmology

http://tairona.myzen.co.uk/index.php/culture/kogi_religion_and_cosmology

Planetary Limits

Fig: Rockstrom et al 2009 Planetary Boundaries; exploring the safe Operating space for humanity

Carbon Footprint

http://www.english-online.at/environment/copenhagen-climate-summit/copenhagen-climate-summit-and-global- warming.htm

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Population, consumption and climate change (Wilk 2009)

• Consumer economy in ‘developed’ countries a way of life based on moving and transforming huge amounts of materials and energy

• At current rate of consumption we need 18 billion global hectares of productive land to support lifestyle and absorb waste.

• Only 11.9 billion hectares available on earth • We Australians are consuming more than 3 times our fair

share of the planet’s natural resources. (if everyone consumed like us, we would need 3 earths to support)

• China and India even while consuming less on per capita basis now rival national levels of consumption and carbon emissions of ‘developed’ countries

Anthropology and Climate Change

CC is about people and power, ethics and morals, environmental costs and justice, and cultural and spiritual survival

CC is environmental colonialism: global processes were neither caused by inhabitants of the majority of climate-sensitive world regions. Yet their inhabitants experience far-reaching effects.

Episode 1: Summary

• Caution in use of term “the Anthropocene”

• Treading carefully between “alarm” and “action”

• A new form of ecological imperialism (or environmental colonialism)

• climate change ”a threat multiplier”; magnifies and exacerbates existing social, political, environmental and economic problems