The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia (2014–) [EN/DE]

A glossary of 80 selected terms associated with the notion of the Anthropocene. Each entry is accompanied by numerous videos of talks and discussions held during The Anthropocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in 2013-2014.

“Forensics and cybernetics, climate crimes and neo-ecology, scopic systems, prosthesis, fossils, beauty, or the obscene. The Anthropocene Project’s core terminology appears incomprehensible and impenetrable at first. The encyclopedia, currently under development as an online presentation at büro eta boeklund, is dedicated to this vocabulary. It offers sidelong glances that can help to illuminate the jungle of discourse and show the beauty of the Anthropocene Project’s terminology in a clear and easily understandable fashion. Like every system of classification, this project calls into question our world’s unspoken habits when it comes to categorization.”

View online in English or German.

Naomi Klein: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014)

In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.

Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.

Publisher Simon & Schuster, 2014
ISBN 1451697384, 9781451697384
576 pages

Reviews: David L. Ulin (Los Angeles Times, 2014), Sandra Steingraber (EcoWatch, 2014).

Book website, Twitter, Facebook
Publisher

EPUB (updated on 2021-8-13)
PDF (updated on 2021-8-13)

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Fifth Assessment Report: The Physical Science Basis (2013)

The first of three parts of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) focuses on the scientific evidence behind climate change and the human role in it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been meeting in Stockholm this week to discuss the final wording of the summary of Working Group One (WG1), which assesses the physical science, such as concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, temperature rises and climate models. It has been written the world’s top climate scientists – 209 lead authors and 50 editors from 39 countries. This summary report will be followed by Working Group I’s full in-depth report on Monday, 30 September.

Set up in 1988, the IPCC is a United Nations body that evaluates the state of climate science. It produces major assessments every five-seven years. The last report, published in Paris in 2007, said that scientists were 90% certain that humans were responsible for global warming. The panel was awarded the Nobel peace prize in the same year, shared jointly with former US vice–president, Al Gore.

Working Group II’s report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability is scheduled to be released in mid March 2014, followed by Working Group III’s Mitigation of Climate Change in early April 2014. AR5 Synthesis Report (SYR) will be released in October 2014.

AR5 Media Portal
UN_ClimateTalks at Twitter
IPCC at Twitter
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report at Wikipedia
Live coverage by The Guardian (27 September)
Global warming likely to breach 2C threshold, climate scientists conclude (summary by Fiona Harvey for The Guardian)
FAQs answered by Adam Vaughan (The Guardian)

Report summary (28 pp, 2 MB, updated on 2015-2-6)
Full report (1535 pp, 375 MB, updated on 2015-2-6)
Press release (27 September 2013)
Other formats and translations (added on 2015-2-6)