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Studies into the Atrocity Exhibition
Jun. 2nd, 2023 02:12 pm"Well, should I try to be a straight-A student? If you are then you think too much"
-- Billy Joel, 1980
It's a quiet admission, as someone whose preference is gothic rock, punk, industrial, and electronic body music, that I don't actually mind listening to Billy Joel sometimes; "Glass Houses" and "The Nylon Curtain" especially. The above line has particular pertinence at the moment as I enjoy a few days leave from work and to finish off some final assignments etc for the first trimester of the Master in Climate Change Science and Policy degree. Based on current assessment in all four units ("papers" in the New Zealand parlance) I am currently a "straight-A student". I will be surprised if this will be retained as the inevitably more difficult final exams and essays are completed but my progress thus far has been pleasing, even if the content is often emotionally unsettling.
One such subject that has been emotionally unsettling is the final essay for political ecology on what I'm calling "The Atrocity Exhibition", the contemporary Anthropocene extinction event. This refers to the extraordinary and very rapid loss of biodiversity populations and species diversity over the last few hundred years which is entirely due to human activity, consumption, and resulting changes to biogeography (especially loss of "semi-natural" land). Even with recognition of imprecision and difficulties of calculation, current "extinction rates are a thousand times higher than the background rate of 0.1 E/MSY [extinctions per million species-years]" and rising logarithmically. Don't even pretend to tell me that you care about life on this planet, or that you think animals are adorable, unless you can tell me in the same breath what you're doing for conservation efforts.
Perhaps I do think too much; perhaps I am overly sensitive to the seriousness of the situation, the massive loss of life on the only place in the universe where we know that life exists (even if I do consider that extraterrestrial life is almost certain). I am not too sure which is a greater cause for pessimism; whether it is that so few people are interested, let alone active on these issues, or that we continue to have a political economy that does not recognise that human beings are part of, and depend on, the natural environment. A very recent paper that we're "in the danger zone" of in seven out of eight key indicators of planetary health and human welfare; another notes (following previous research) that deep sea ocean circulation continues to slow down which reduces the deep ocean of oxygen, reduces the return of nutrients to the surface ocean, and increases the probabilty of further coastal ice melt.
-- Billy Joel, 1980
It's a quiet admission, as someone whose preference is gothic rock, punk, industrial, and electronic body music, that I don't actually mind listening to Billy Joel sometimes; "Glass Houses" and "The Nylon Curtain" especially. The above line has particular pertinence at the moment as I enjoy a few days leave from work and to finish off some final assignments etc for the first trimester of the Master in Climate Change Science and Policy degree. Based on current assessment in all four units ("papers" in the New Zealand parlance) I am currently a "straight-A student". I will be surprised if this will be retained as the inevitably more difficult final exams and essays are completed but my progress thus far has been pleasing, even if the content is often emotionally unsettling.
One such subject that has been emotionally unsettling is the final essay for political ecology on what I'm calling "The Atrocity Exhibition", the contemporary Anthropocene extinction event. This refers to the extraordinary and very rapid loss of biodiversity populations and species diversity over the last few hundred years which is entirely due to human activity, consumption, and resulting changes to biogeography (especially loss of "semi-natural" land). Even with recognition of imprecision and difficulties of calculation, current "extinction rates are a thousand times higher than the background rate of 0.1 E/MSY [extinctions per million species-years]" and rising logarithmically. Don't even pretend to tell me that you care about life on this planet, or that you think animals are adorable, unless you can tell me in the same breath what you're doing for conservation efforts.
Perhaps I do think too much; perhaps I am overly sensitive to the seriousness of the situation, the massive loss of life on the only place in the universe where we know that life exists (even if I do consider that extraterrestrial life is almost certain). I am not too sure which is a greater cause for pessimism; whether it is that so few people are interested, let alone active on these issues, or that we continue to have a political economy that does not recognise that human beings are part of, and depend on, the natural environment. A very recent paper that we're "in the danger zone" of in seven out of eight key indicators of planetary health and human welfare; another notes (following previous research) that deep sea ocean circulation continues to slow down which reduces the deep ocean of oxygen, reduces the return of nutrients to the surface ocean, and increases the probabilty of further coastal ice melt.