Transcript Globalization: Integration and Fragmentation

Gaian Politics
A time whose idea has come
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Gaian Politics: Self to World
 Gaia
theory (James Lovelock, 1970)
 The presence of life on a planet alters the planet's
geochemistry to favor the continuation of life.
 Falsifiable scientific theory
 More radically, Earth can be seen as a complex,
bounded, self-organizing, adaptive organism.
 Revival of ancient mythic image of Earth Mother
 Gaia theory comes just as globalization and
environmental destruction call us to a planetary
perspective.
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Gaia and Systems Theory
 Holism,
self-generativity, & networks
 Living systems: self-generative entities composed of
dynamic symbiotic networks
 Human systems, like other living systems, are
embedded in the Earth system.
 Contrary to liberal notions of independence
 Global climate change as the great teacher of
interdependence
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Human systems & Gaia
 For
the first time in history, humanity is a geophysical
force operating on a planetary scale.
 Global climate change
 Mass extinction of species
 Unsustainable resource depletion
 Exponential population growth
 Human time vs. Gaian time scales
 The big Q:
 Can we harmonize our human systems with Gaia?
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Human systems & Gaia
 Human
purpose in the Gaian system
 What is the purpose of current global human
systems?
 Growth (?)
 Cyclical
processes in Gaia
 Gaia knows nothing of waste
 Industrial society & the “toilet assumption”
 Environmentalism & the rise of “virtuous cycles”
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Learning from Gaia: The Gift of Photosynthesis

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Earth's first 'environmental crisis' 3.8 billion years ago
 Bacteria consumed CO2, the greenhouse blanket
Photosynthesis: production of oxygen opened way for more
complex organisms
 … which replenished the most important GHGs
 … and led to creation of ozone layer
People inducing a new kind of planetary crisis
 Can we trust the intelligence of the system?
 Can we find it within ourselves?
 Climate change as the greatest of teachers
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Gaian Ethics & Politics
 Precautionary
principle
 End of anthropocentrism
 Sidestepping global justice?
 No: North-South equity as “geo-ecological realism”
 Beyond sovereignty to symbiotic networks
 Gaia & political imagination
 Humans not a blight upon the planet, but the means
by which Gaia is growing into self-awareness.
 What might be the purpose of human systems if they
were to be compatible with Gaia?
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Person/Planet Politics: Global Ecology and
the Widening Circle of Care
 Does
consumption entail responsibility?
 Does distance mitigate responsibility
 Ex: drowning child
 Do global ecological problems call us to a greater
maturity?
 Self-realization as capacity to seek wider wholes
 Global ecology expresses human desire/need for
expanded conception of self
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Culture as Story
 Global
ecological crisis as a crisis of meaning
 As we see, so shall we act
 Foregrounding consciousness
 Every culture has a cosmology
 What is ours?
 Secularism, the story of modernity
 Results: anthropocentric world, consumerism,
North/South divide, divorce of science & religion
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Addressing the Crisis of Meaning:
Towards a Sustainable Story

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Cosmology of interdependence
 Embedding ourselves in a participatory universe
 Revisioning our material relations
 … with distant peoples
 … with future generations
 … with the other-than-human
Embracing “nature” as gift, not resource
 Solar generosity
Redefining progress, success, ourselves…
 Ecological self
 Ecological citizenship
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