Living Large: One Large Species Doing Many Dangerous Things

Collectively we are a stunningly large species. A way of illustrating the global nature of our species comes from calculations of our own ecological footprint; Invariably we exceed the amount of productive land available to us. For example, the population of the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area contains around 9 million people. The amount of land required to sustain each person (the physical footprint of our buildings, land for agricultural productivity and so forth) is about 20 acres. Collectively this is 180,000,000 acres (281,250 square miles). Illinois's land area is 55,593 square miles, making the ecological footprint of Chicagoans five times larger than the state of Illinois. In fact Chicagoans do not live in Illinois - they live wherever their environmental shadow is cast. In turn, the US population is larger than the country which contains us, and the global population footprint is now larger than the globe. We can overshoot on the global scale only by drawing down on global environmental capital. And the planet may prove to be a rather taciturn banker when accounts come due.

The resource gluttony that got us to this point has had extravagant consequences on a global scale: despoliation of the biosphere, vast eutrophication of the hydrosphere, depletion of soils, and atmospheric changes resulting in climate disruption.

We are in the seemingly paradoxical position of not knowing the number of species on Earth to the nearest order of magnitude (are there 5 or 50 million?) but knowing that we have accelerated species loss to rates comparable to that of a mass extinction event. That extinction is the fate of all species is beside the point, since ultimately the loss is measured in repercussions to us. Not the least part of this is the implication for our ethical self-conception. Is it good to be asteroid-like, comparable to the one that took out the dinosaurs?

Art in Irrevocable Times

This essay is published in the Catalog of Climate of Uncertainty a must-see show at DePaul Art Museum.

If we are to have no future, consolingly, there will be no one to look back and blame us. If there is a future for us, however, those who reflect back from their future perch will recognize that which is hard for us to see: that we lived in times of irrevocable transition. The generations living right now are the first to live on a domesticated planet; undomesticating it is not an option. To put it another way, an undomesticated future planet is one without humans.

It is an urban planet besides — that which is not urban is in the resource shadow of our cities, or enjoys the benign neglect of those in cities in areas set aside as “wilderness.” This is a planet upon which the diversity of the biota is diminishing and its distribution reflects confusingly both natural and cultural forces, a planet on which the scale and amplitude of elemental cycles are vastly altered, a planet on which the winds now howl with an almost human voice.

Domesticated Earth is a planet partly of our own making; it is challenging, disturbing, and in innumerable ways beautiful. It is, in other words, the largest artwork ever made. And we now have to learn what it is to live inside this art. But what is the role of art-making from within the frame of Domesticated Earth? How well does it mirror this moment of transition? How does art determine the nature of the very future from the perspective of which it will be judged? Did it illuminate the transition prettily (not an inconsiderable thing to do) or, after our having paused under the lintel and reflected on the irretrievability of the past, did artwork illuminate the possible routes to be taken, routes that were otherwise unimagined?