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LTT: Gillian Barker
March 24, 2020 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
Healing or Hacking the Earth?: Lessons from the Metaphors of Climate Intervention
Gillian Barker, University of Western Ontario
Abstract: Thinking about interventions in the climate system designed to have effects at the global scale takes us into new conceptual territory. Scientists and others have drawn on a wide array of metaphors to help navigate its novel challenges. An important divide separates organic from mechanistic metaphors for Earth’s processes and human interventions in them: the former talk about “healing” the Earth, the latter about “hacking” or “engineering” it. The metaphors we use in thinking about climate interventions reflect differing assumptions about the real world: the resilience or fragility of natural patterns at different scales; the dependence or independence of humans on natural ecosystems; the importance of organisms in stabilizing or disrupting climate processes. This paper has two main parts. The first part uses the metaphors as a means of illuminating these assumptions; the second assesses the accuracy and usefulness of the assumptions, exploring implications for how we should think about different types of climate intervention and choose among them.
Details
- Date:
- March 24, 2020
- Time:
-
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm EDT
- Event Category:
- Lunchtime Talks
Venue
- 1117 Cathedral of Learning
-
4200 Fifth Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 United States