Defiant Earth

Defiant Earth
Author: Clive Hamilton
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2017-06-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1509519785

Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'. The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself. What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment – even to the point of geoengineering – is now impossible because we have rendered the Earth more unpredictable and less controllable, a disobedient planet. At the same time, all attempts by progressives to cut humans down to size by attacking anthropocentrism come up against the insurmountable fact that human beings now possess enough power to change the Earth's course. It's too late to turn back the geological clock, and there is no going back to premodern ways of thinking. We must face the fact that humans are at the centre of the world, even if we must give the idea that we can control the planet. These truths call for a new kind of anthropocentrism, a philosophy by which we might use our power responsibly and find a way to live on a defiant Earth.

Theology on a Defiant Earth

Theology on a Defiant Earth
Author: Jonathan Cole
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2022-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 166690323X

Humanity operates like a force of nature capable of affecting the destiny of the Earth System. This epochal shift profoundly alters the relationship between humankind and the Earth, presenting the conscious, thinking human animal with an unprecedented dilemma: As human power has grown over the Earth, so has the power of nature to extinguish human life. The emergence of the Anthropocene has settled any question of the place of human beings in the world: we stand inescapably at its center. The outstanding question—which forms the impetus and focus for this book—remains: What kind of human being stands at the center of the world? And what is the nature of that world? Unlike the scientific fact of human-centeredness, this is a moral question, a question that brings theology within the scope of reflection on the critical failures of human irresponsibility. Much of Christian theology has so far flunked the test of engaging the reality of the Anthropocene. The authors of these original essays begin with the premise that it is time to push harder at the questions the Anthropocene poses for people of faith.

Reading with Earth

Reading with Earth
Author: Anne Elvey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2022-08-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 056769514X

Winner of the 2023 ANZATS Award for the Best Monograph by an Established Scholar Applying a re-envisioned, ecological, feminist hermeneutics, this book builds on two important responses to twentieth- and twenty-first-century situations of ecological trauma, especially the complex contexts of climate change and cross-species relations: first, ecological feminism; second, ecological hermeneutics in the Earth Bible tradition. By way of readings of selected biblical texts, this book suggests that an ecological feminist aesthetic, bringing present situation and biblical text into conversation through engagement with activism and literature, principally poetry, is helpful in decolonizing ethics. Such an approach is both informed by and speaks back to the new materialism in ecological criticism.

Abundant Earth

Abundant Earth
Author: Eileen Crist
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022659680X

In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.

Theological Ethics through a Multispecies Lens

Theological Ethics through a Multispecies Lens
Author: Celia E. Deane-Drummond
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0192581384

There are two driving questions informing this book. The first is where does our moral life come from? It presupposes that considering morality broadly is inadequate. Instead, different aspects need to be teased apart. It is not sufficient to assume that different virtues are bolted onto a vicious animality, red in tooth and claw. Nature and culture have interlaced histories. By weaving in evolutionary theories and debates on the evolution of compassion, justice and wisdom, it showa a richer account of who we are as moral agents. The second driving question concerns our relationships with animals. Deane-Drummond argues for a complex community-based multispecies approach. Hence, rather than extending rights, a more radical approach is a holistic multispecies framework for moral action. This need not weaken individual responsibility. She intends not to develop a manual of practice, but rather to build towards an alternative philosophically informed approach to theological ethics, including animal ethics. The theological thread weaving through this account is wisdom. Wisdom has many different levels, and in the broadest sense is connected with the flow of life understood in its interconnectedness and sociality. It is profoundly theological and practical. In naming the project the evolution of wisdom Deane-Drummond makes a statement about where wisdom may have come from and its future orientation. But justice, compassion and conscience are not far behind, especially in so far as they are relevant to both individual decision-making and institutions.

Imperium Defiant

Imperium Defiant
Author: Glynn Stewart
Publisher:
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781988035925

The enemy promises conflict and annihilation Their allies threaten betrayal and devastation A daughter of Earth raises the call of defiance And the Imperium has never knelt! When the Taljzi's genocidal invasion brought promises of aid from the oldest and greatest of the Core Powers, humanity and the Imperium looked to the Mesharom for salvation. But that salvation turns to ash as the Mesharom demand the surrender of the very weapons that saved the Imperium. Defiance leaves the Imperium facing the Taljzi without the aide of the galaxy's wisest race, but with their old enemies the Kanzi at their side, they have no choice but to end this war at any cost. But Mesharom and Taljzi alike have scattered fire and death across the stars. The Imperial forces under Fleet Lord Harriet Tanaka will need every scrap of firepower and cleverness not only to defeat their enemies...but to find them in the first place.

Altered Earth

Altered Earth
Author: Julia Adeney Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2022-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316517470

This landmark essay collection explains the Anthropocene as a scientific concept and as a human dilemma, showing how it limits our future but liberates our imaginations.

Defiant Joy

Defiant Joy
Author: Stasi Eldredge
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 140020870X

We all spend a lot of energy reaching for happiness, but we're never quite able to hang on to it. Real life happens, and our circumstances take us on an emotional rollercoaster. Oftentimes, the Bible's call to "be joyful always" seems out of reach--but it doesn't have to be. We are called to live. And, miraculously, to live with joy. Join bestselling author Stasi Eldredge as she shows us how to choose a joy that stands against the tides of life's real and often overwhelming pain. Defiant Joy reminds us that a joy that is defiant in the face of this broken world was meant to be ours. This joy isn't simply happiness on steroids, it's the unyielding belief that sorrow and loss do not have the final say. It's the stubborn determination to be present in whatever may come and interpret both goodness and grief by the light of heaven. Defiant Joy will give you the encouragement you need to: Finally experience daily joy Learn how to have a posture of holy defiance when circumstances threaten to weigh down your soul Find new perspectives on the painful circumstances you've faced In Defiant Joy, Stasi invites us with courage, candor, and tender vulnerability to a place beyond sadness or happiness, leading the way as we learn how to maintain a posture of holy defiance that neither denies nor diminishes our pain but dares to live with expectant, unwavering hope.

Defiant Gardens

Defiant Gardens
Author: Kenneth I. Helphand
Publisher:
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2006
Genre: Gardening
ISBN:

A history of wartime gardens documents how they humanize landscapes and experience, even under the direst conditions