Lea Schick is the editor and moderator of this debate forum. During the RETHINK exhibition she will facilitate the RETHINK NATURE discussions here on her blog. We will very much encourage you to participate in the debate! 

Welcome in the nature...

Welcome to the debate forum for rethinking and discussing what we traditionally have been referred to as ‘nature’. It is my hope to establish and moderate a discussion that - from different perspectives such as philosophy, natural science, engineering, sociology, etc. - examines how we can talk about and understand the nature that surrounds us and which is the very protagonist of the antropogenic caused climate change. The debate forum is in its initial phase but more content will soon be added.

The discussion about climate change is often driven by the idea of nature as something outside of us, something clean and innocent, something we destroyed, and something we long for and should aim at getting back to. But WE are nature!
Can we talk about a nature outside of us, when clouds, oceans, soil, and animal species seem to be changed and affected of our presence on Earth? 

Why is it important for us to make this distinction between humans and nature? How can we talk about nature when it is not something outside of us? And is it possible to make our way through climate crisis that doesn’t build upon the romantic idea of the untouched Eden of nature?

When discussing the climate, we often talk about simulated representations of climate, rather than about climate in it self. How is it possible to look at climate and climate change directly? How should the politicians at COP15 think about and articulate nature, the climate, and global warming when negotiating and making decisions?

These questions and many more you will be able to read about and debate here on this blog.
 

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Contributions for RETHINK NATURE

 

ABOUT RETHINK NATURE

Discussions about climate change often seem to be centered around the concept of nature as ‘the Other’ – something that is outside of us. Sometimes lost, sometimes distant, often something we have left behind, and something to which we should perhaps return, in one form or another. But thus nature is also something, which we have been largely able to happily forget over the course of our industrial revolutions, and to omit almost entirely from consideration in conventional human planning and development.

But the reality of climate change – a force of Nature so all-pervasive and profound in the severity of its realized and projected effects that it is compelling us to rethink practically every aspect of life on our planet – makes this romanticization and idealization of ‘Mother Nature’ difficult to maintain, and demonstrates that our perception of any meaningful distance from nature is shockingly illusory. We have not returned to nature; nature is returning to us, forcing us as it did our ancestors to transform our methods of devising and executing every sphere of human existence. When we can (un)intentionally change the weather, when water and air are commodities that we can own, and when the very climate has become a subject of intense political debate at every level, then nature again becomes a complex and ambiguous phenomenon.

How does climate change force us to rethink our notions of nature? And how does our perception of nature affect how we deal with climate change? Through a number of articles approaching different aspects of what we call ‘nature’, we encourage you to share your opinions and thoughts with the writers and with other interested.

 

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Debate the RETHINK NATURE contributions on the blog to the left.