Professor Peter K. Haff discussed the impact of humanity on climate change in Hodson Hall on Sept. 22 as part of the Critical Climate Thinking Lecture Series, hosted by The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute. Haff is a Professor Emeritus at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. His talk was titled ‘Do humans cause climate change? The Earth’s perspective.’
Professor Rochelle Tobias described the idea behind the Critical Climate Thinking Lecture Series.
“When my colleagues Naveeda Khan, Debbie Poole, and I first talked about a lecture series on climate change, the idea behind it was simple,” Tobias said. “We wanted to see whether the humanities and social sciences could consolidate efforts to produce a discourse on climate change that accounted for it not merely as a scientific phenomenon but as a persistent dimension of lived experience.”
Tobias also defined the series’ titular concept of “critical climate thinking.”
“Critical climate thinking is based on the assumption that we need to change the direction of our thought and view the natural world not only as an object outside us but as something in us. It builds on the insight that whatever we do to tackle climate change has global effects,” she said. “It refers to the complex causal network in which almost all phenomena are interrelated in keeping with what in chaos theory is known as the butterfly effect.”
Professor Haff began his talk by explaining his role in the climate change dialogue.
“I’m not a humanist. I’m not a social scientist. I can’t speak very directly to the human experience. I’m not a climate scientist either. I’m an earth scientist and a geologist,” Haff said. “I’d like to try to give you a geologist’s point of view of how humans and climate change might be connected without talking too much about either one of them.”
Haff’s work centers around the idea that we are living in an era when human activity plays a significant role in shaping our environment, which he referred to throughout his talk as the Anthropocene.
He discussed the problems humans face and the form that their solutions will take. During his talk he focused on how the humanities and the sciences must collaborate to face the challenges posed by climate change.
“One conclusion I’ve come to is that climate change, even though it’s generated in part by technological activities, does not really have a purely technological solution, it’s not maybe something that can be dealt with by bringing more and more technology into the sphere,” Haff said. “In the end we have to look at humanistic considerations to deal with not only the problem of climate change, but other problems, which are following in the wake of, or simultaneously with, climate change that represent additional challenges to humans.”
Freshman Alex Walinskas thought Haff’s connection between sciences and humanities was particularly salient.
“I think it’s great that the humanities are coming together with the sciences to convey the broad-reaching consequences of climate change. In order to adequately solve this problem, we need to use both perspectives,” Walinskas wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Another central idea in Haff’s talk was the idea that in addition to the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere, another sphere, the technosphere, should be considered. He cited its similar qualities with the other spheres.
“I’d like to propose a new sphere that’s much younger, which I call the technosphere, which is comprised of all the humans in the world and all of the technological artifacts and technological systems. I take this to be a new geological sphere, or at least an emerging one,” Haff said.
Sophomore Della Xu thought the technosphere concept made Haff’s talk particularly interesting.
“I think what made his talk different was that he introduced the idea of the technosphere being included when talking about the environment and climate change,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “It is the combination of the natural, human, and technological interactions and processes that form our total environment, and that only through having a balanced and sustainable system that include all of the above can we combat climate change.”
In terms of potential solutions to climate change, Haff emphasized throughout his talk that in order to truly combat climate change, we must change the culture around the production and consumption of technology.
He compared the current situation to an “arms race” in which companies constantly aim to generate new technological devices that will one-up those of their competitors and entice consumers. He argued for a more sustainable option, which would be for the development and release of new technologies to be paced out.
The event was co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Environment, Energy, Sustainability, & Health Institute, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, the Center for Advanced Media Studies and the Center for Africana Studies.
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