{"id":360625,"date":"2025-01-05T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=360625"},"modified":"2025-01-05T18:00:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T17:00:02","slug":"aussie-govt-abc-if-we-want-to-learn-to-live-in-the-anthropocene-we-must-first-learn-how-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=360625","title":{"rendered":"Aussie Govt ABC: \u201cIf we want to learn to live in the Anthropocene, we must first learn how to die\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Global warming and apocalypse concept 3D illustration. \rElements of this image furnished by NASA.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essay by<\/strong> Eric Worrall<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author and Teacher Oliver Gough<\/a> is a PhD candidate and playwright researching climate change theatre at the University of Queensland, where he also teaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The only way out is through: Embracing the existential weirdness of the era of climate change<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oliver Gough<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to die?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roy Scranton<\/a> is another writer who advocates for a deep and scary thought experiment to move past terminal inaction and sluggishness on climate change. He boldly suggests: \u201cIf we want to learn to live in the Anthropocene, we must first learn how to die.\u201d<\/strong> The practice of coming to terms with an extinction of human beings<\/strong> and the existence of a planet without us can lead to a humbling, realistic and truly ecological way of thinking.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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This extension of Morton\u2019s \u201cdark ecology\u201d<\/a> further does away with assumptions of human triumph over the elements, and accepts that: \u201cCarbon-fuelled capitalism and its techno-utopian ideologues<\/strong> have promised infinite growth and infinite innovation, yet they have proven incapable of saving us from the disaster they have made.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer? Imagining and learning the practice of death, preparing for it as you would a terminal diagnosis.<\/strong> This isn\u2019t to lay down and welcome it, but to gain perspective and expand the range of responses. Economics and mathematics can\u2019t quite imagine or express this experiment. Something like climate change, or the death of a species, is felt on levels beyond that realm.

\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Admittedly, ocean acidification, social upheaval, and species extinction are problems that humanities scholars, with their taste for fine-grained philological analysis, esoteric debates, and archival marginalia, might seem remarkably ill-suited to address \u2026 But the conceptual and existential problems that the Anthropocene poses are precisely those that have always been at the heart of humanistic inquiry: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to live? What is truth? What is good? In the world of the Anthropocene, the question of individual mortality<\/strong> \u2014 What does my life mean in the face of death? \u2014 is universalized and framed in scales that boggle the imagination.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Read more:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/religion\/dark-ecology-existential-weirdness-of-climate-change-era\/104781622<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Will students be cheered and encouraged if they decide to die early to avoid the rush?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess the takeaway is, if you want your kids to learn theatre and performance arts without also learning we all need to prepare for imminent death, probably best to choose somewhere other than the University of Queensland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is zero chance anthropogenic climate change in the foreseeable future will make the world uninhabitable for humans.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proof is that our monkey ancestors thrived in a much hotter world. The\u00a0Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum<\/a>, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys.\u00a0Our monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world<\/a>, only retreating when the cold returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a bunch of monkeys with brains the size of matchboxes could figure out how to survive in a much warmer world, I\u2019m certain we could figure it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oliver Gough is not alone in believing the world is about to end. A disturbing percentage of Aussie school kids believe they won\u2019t survive to adulthood, because of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?”: Questions from 10-14yr Old Kids<\/a><\/blockquote>