The technosphere, our agency, our planet
What can we do, what should we do?
In previous posts I have argued against the flawed anthropocentrism of the ecosystem services concept. But what is the alternative? How can we practically achieve a geocentric turn? Literally, that would mean that we reverse the direction of functional analysis. In the ecosystem concept, we ask what ecosystems do for us. Now we might ask …
Continue reading "Anthropocentric ecosystem services versus geocentric technosystem services"
A decade ago, the German economist Carl Christian von Weizsäcker mused that the phenomenon of declining opportunities for profitable investments that is behind the trend towards declining interest rates might reflect the Second Law of thermodynamics, in the sense that the more capital we accumulate, the more we must struggle to keep it in order, …
Technology and science are deeply interwoven. Often, this is interpreted in terms of scientific progress driving the emergence of new technologies. But historians of science have always emphasized the fact that science is also enabled by technology that is generated outside the epistemic venture of science. For example, artisanal advances in watchmaking contributed to the …
Continue reading "The Evolutionary Epistemology of the Technosphere"
In these days, the ‘Dasgupta Review' receives much attention in policy circles and news reports. The Review pursues the laudable goal to include environmental concerns into economics and to show economic strategies for putting biodiversity at the centre of our efforts to cope with the challenge of climate change. The Review submits many important suggestions, …
Continue reading "Is Anthropocentrism Good Science? Why Sir Partha Got It Wrong"
In recent initiatives of coping with the challenge of climate change and designing sustainable economies and societies, ‘nature-based solutions’ NBS have become a buzzword. Broadly speaking, this term refers to all sorts of alternatives to techno-engineering (‘grey’) measures directed at adapting and mitigating the impact of climate change which intentionally activate and strengthen ecosystems or …
Continue reading "Nature-based Solutions: ‘Naturally’ Growing the Technosphere"
The interest rate is a crucial, if not the pivotal parameter in modelling challenges and strategies facing climate change. It reflects our stances towards the future. There are two basic, though conflicting principles how to determine it, as reflected in the seminal debate triggered by the Stern report in 2007, which opposed William Nordhaus’s position. …
Recently, the term ‘technosphere’ is increasingly used in a slightly different sense than in the Earth system context (see the new issue of ‘The Economist’ and the briefing that inspired and informed this post). The technosphere would be the world of the internet, roughly defined. This refers to the global and comprehensive connectivity and the …
Continue reading "The messiness of human life: the ultimate limit of technosphere expansion"
This post is the follow-up to the previous in presenting core ideas in my recent book chapter draft contributed to the volume edited by Martin Bohle “Geo-societal narratives - contextualising geosciences” (Palgrave). I present a solution to the dilemma in political epistemology that I pinpointed, namely that economists often argue that the market is beyond …
Recently I have been working on a chapter contribution to a volume on geoethics edited by Martin Bohle “Geo-societal narratives – contextualising geosciences” (Palgrave). Dealing with literature that I was largely unfamiliar with helped me a lot to focus my thinking about ideas that I have been working on for years. This has been condensed …
Continue reading "What is the purpose of the economy? The case for a geocentric turn in economics"
There is a black hole in climate research, ecological economics and Earth system models: The corporation. Of course, corporations are recognized as actors, but what happens inside the corporation is normally not included in the macro-scale perspective that most Earth sciences research in the broadest sense adopts. Even when critics claim that the ‘anthropocene’ should …
Continue reading "The modern corporation: centre of power in the technosphere"
