The Future is Now
The Future is Now
Bifrost Online has launched to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was signed on 12 December 2015.
How is climate change impacting indigenous communities in remote regions of Canada?
Indigenous legal scholar Aimée Craft discusses the effects of climate change on remote northern communities in Manitoba not only in terms of impacts on health, economics, and social stability, but also in terms of the threats to language, culture and identity that may be accelerating as a result of the new vulnerabilities caused by environmental impacts. Cultural losses occurring in part due to increased migration from traditional smaller communities to urban centers in Southern Canada represent one of many threats to indigenous heritage among Canada’s First Nations people.
The Trauma of Climate Change
To maintain our capacity to address climate change, we need to recognize and address the trauma it creates.
Why is public debate on climate change so infected?
Climatologist Michael Mann is nearly as well known for his pushback against fossil fuel industry-funded distortions of climate science as for his iconic “hockey stick” graph showing the dramatic rise in global temperatures during the 20th century, which first appeared in a 1999 scientific study published by Mann, Bradley & Hughes in
that presented global reconstructions of annual surface temperature patterns over the previous six centuries. Mann discusses how the fossil fuel industry has promoted distortions of science in public discourse and debate to protect their own economic interests, following the playbook of other industries (Big Tobacco and Big Pharma) that have previously attacked science and scientists when their studies and knowledge advancements challenge industry products and profits.
Can new stories remake the world?
Environmental humanities scholar and theater director Frédérique Aït-Touati discusses how new stories, as much in research as in art, can help to shape new realities in the world, breaking powerful structures to which the terrible stories of the past still chain us.
Women Bear the Brunt of Climate Change
Women, who do the majority of drudge work in the economically and environmentally fragile Hindu Kush Himalayas region are disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change.
What is Juliana vs. The United States of America?
Environmental activist and winner of the inaugural Children’s Climate Prize (2016) Xiuhtezcatl Martinez discusses the landmark climate-change litigation case, Juliana vs. The United States of America, in which he is a lead plaintiff. He is one of 21 youth from across the U.S.A. who have come together in this suit with climate scientist Dr. James Hansen to sue the United States federal government for its failure to protect the health of future generations. By neglecting to safeguard the atmosphere on which U.S. citizens depend from threats such as rising carbon-dioxide emissions, which are closely linked to global warming and climate change in scientific studies and assessment reports, the plaintiffs in this landmark case contend that the U.S. government has violated its fundamental responsibilities to protect the public trust.
How can we avoid dangerous climate change?
What do we need to do to ensure that we avoid disastrous climate change for future generations?
Understanding Cultural-Environmental Connections
How well do we grasp the impacts of our habits of consumption on the world? Does it really make a difference at the poles, or in small island states threatened by sea-level rise, just what food we choose to put into our bodies? How do we imagine ourselves in relation to the environments we inhabit?
Is the IPCC too rigid, too top-down, in its inclusion / exclusion of knowledge domains?
Philosopher and sociologist of science Bruno Latour reflects on the Conference of the Parties (COP) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the antithesis of top-down organizations. He describes the invention of IPCC in particular as an extraordinary accomplishment. Assembling the expertise of the international scientific community while simultaneously foregrounding perspectives of the Global South, where scientific expertise is less concentrated than in the north, the IPCC as an institution has been remarkably successful in Latour’s view in its efforts to link science not only with diplomacy but with activism in neglected and historically exploited regions.
How is climate change impacting the archaeological record?
Rising sea levels, storminess, and coastal erosion, among other effects of climate change, pose significant threats to heritage and the environmental archive, resulting in potential losses of knowledge that archaeologist Thomas McGovern compares to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria.