The Ontological Brakes of Primordial Time

Benjamin Ross, University of North Texas

We are constantly urged to go faster, to work, consume, and experience more. This author posits that this fascination with acceleration may be leading us to a “Snow Crash-esque cyberpunk dystopia” by 2050 unless we alter our perspective of time. This presentation stresses the need for a new, primordial view of time that is capable of reevaluating our role, and place in the world (more).

Human Behavioral Evolution and Climate Change: Evolved Dispositions, Climate Action, and Integration with the Humanities

John Mustol, Fuller Seminary

What can science tell us about what kind of creatures we are, why we behave as we do, and how we might change our behavior in regards to the planet? This presentation will suggest some answers to these questions based on human behavioral evolution, that might be integrated with the humanities and other sources to help show a way forward and make 2050 and beyond more livable – for us and for other creatures (more).

Weakening Nationalities: The Anthropocene as an Era of Personal Responsibility

Larissa Basso, University of California, San Diego

Current institutions seem incapable of dealing with the reality of climate change. This presentation imagines a world in which current fragmentation is intensified as a means to address this deficiency. The author proposes to acknowledge the heterogeneity that exists inside of a nation state and to consider it beyond its borders. By implementing different measures considering personal/group carbon footprint, climate change could be more successfully tackled and a more just climate future could be created (more).

Working with Dirty Hands: A Christian Realist Environmental Ethics

Dallas J. Gingles, Southern Methodist University

This talk draws on the 20th century ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr’s, “Christian realism” to argue that we are right to feel regret, remorse, and even guilt when we realize that we are always already complicit in the problem of climate change. Through this lens, as we work to ensure that the Earth continues to be habitable in the coming decades, the presenter stresses we must be indefatigable in pursuing goods and solutions of all kinds while being realistic about our limitations (more).

A Tale of How Radical Climate Justice Just Might Get Us All to 2050 in One Piece [a novella in progress]

John Foran, University of California, Santa Barbara

This presentation will re-envision Naomi Oreskes and Richard Conway’s grim “future history,” through the hopeful lens of today’s global climate justice movement. The talk will conclude by venturing into the uncharted territory of a post-capitalist world (more).

Changing the Narrative: Viewing the Present from the Future

Christopher Bowman, University of Minnesota—Twin Cities

This paper constructs a counternarrative to dystopian climate fiction by identifying sources of optimism and envisioning the outcomes of their implementation. While ultimately depicting a number of collisions with climate change, this paper charts a more likely—and optimistic—narrative for humanity than its apocalyptic predecessors (more).

The Great Transformation: How We (Just) Avoided a Climate Catastrophe

Jeremy Lent, Liology Institute

This talk imagines a world saved from the brink of collapse by grass-roots communities across the world connected through a shared foundation of core values emphasizing quality of life over material possessions. The presenter outlines what such a movement would entail and how it reverted the world from near certain catastrophe (more).

Three Fragments to Generate Alternative Visions of Climate Futures

Laurence Marty, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

This talk will draw from the presenter’s personal experience in the environmental realm to tell the story of three fictional characters affected by climate change. By expanding the scope of potentialities, including prefigurative experiments developed by social movements, the author hopes to help imagine and create alternative and fairer climate futures(more).

Imagining Plant-Like Futures? Vegetal Intelligence in Brian Aldiss’ Novel Hothouse (1962)

John Ryan, University of Western Australia

How might we imagine humanity in 2050 as more plant-like—as in higher synchronization with vegetal temporality in our scientific, technological, cultural, and interpersonal pursuits? How might we resist denying a future to plants and, thus, to ourselves and other beings? This paper will address questions such as these through a reading of Brian Aldiss’ Hothouse, recipient of the 1962 Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction (more).

Science Fiction Questions the Foundations of Human Progress: Extrapolations of Desire in James: Tiptree Jr.’s A Momentary Taste of Being

Selena Middleton, McMaster University

This paper explores the ways in which science fiction exposes the mutability of our humanity within the context of ecological collapse as depicted in James Tiptree Jr.’s A Momentary Taste of Being. Tiptree’s narrative explores the transformation of the crew members of an interstellar voyage when they come into contact with an alien species (more).

Narrative and Anthropocene Imagination

David Rodriguez, Stony Brook University

An essential part of action in the present is enabled by our image of the future. This presentation will work from now to 2050 through a speculative test of phenomenological theories of imagination that are rather unselfconsciously concerned with how the imagination of the world in the present can affect the future. Through an analysis of three anthropocene texts, I show how these unique imaginative experiences can vitally supplement theorizations of imagination in the anthropocene (more).

Narrative in the Anthropocene

Erin James, University of Idaho

This presentation imagines how narrative can best represent the environmental changes that are to come. Specifically, it engages recent discussions about the Anthropocene to imagine a theory of narrative that is sensitive to matters commonly associated with the epoch. I argue that an “Anthropocene narratology” stands to enrich a universal model of narrative by incorporating ideas pertinent to this new geological epoch and developing a richer vocabulary enabling us to understand better the current state of the world and our relationship to it (more).

Climate Futures, Narrative Experiments

Marco Caracciolo, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

This paper asks how narrative can become a tool for modeling the ambivalence of climate futures. I argue that experimental texts are in a better position than fiction of the realistic variety to build the open-endedness and instability of climate change into a narrative. I focus on five strategies that make this possible, offering concrete examples for each strategy (more).