Cabinet of Deep Time Interventions

When the project Checking-in with Deep Time tour around with our lecture on intragenerational justice and care we gather an inventory of Deep Time interventions. Deep Time interventions could be described as actions and processed with effects that stretch across generational bounds. Its about how actions here and now territorialise the future and how the now is facilitated by actions in the past.

This is a living mapping that can be added to as we go along and that deals with how we can start Checking-in with Deep Time. The input has come from both students, friends and the general public and has given rise to a rather eclectic inventory. The idea is to draw attention to various phenomena that conditions life for several generations to come to raise awareness on the inter-pleatings between what can be seen as various temporal slots. What happen when we let this inventory meet with writings of for example Van der Tuin (2014) - that urges us as "post-postmodernists" to avoid "spatio-temporal fixation" and "linearity" in order to.... what? Questions that arise when doing this is what type of features occur in this mapping, how do they relate to or break out of commonplace temporal categories and how could our deep time temporal encounters alter how we relate to the environmental challenges of today?

Forestry

The loss of forest and clearing of landscape are deep time interventions. Planting trees and to follow them to maturity means to work across several human generations.

Plastic bottles

Sea level change

"Future rise in global mean sea level caused by thermal expansion, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and land water storage changes, is strongly dependent on which RCP emission scenario is followed. Sea level rise at the end of the century is projected to be faster under all scenarios, including those compatible with achieving the long-term temperature goal set out in the Paris Agreement. GMSL will rise between 0.43 m (0.29–0.59 m, likely range) (RCP2.6) and 0.84 m (0.61–1.10 m, likely range) (RCP8.5) by 2100 (medium confidence) relative to 1986-2005. Beyond 2100, sea level will continue to rise for centuries due to continuing deep ocean heat uptake and mass loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (4.2.3.5), and will remain elevated for thousands of years (high confidence)." https://report.ipcc.ch/srocc/pdf/SROCC_FinalDraft_Chapter4.pdf

Intragenerational justice

The picture above was taken at the Climate March in Stockholm (september 2019). The plaque bear the text "i hear the voice of my great grand daughter". My daughter Mathilda informs me that this is a song that many join in around at these marches. A quick trawl through the internet leads me to for example this version of the song published by Extinction Rebellion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u7q3K052sA

One participant suggested that - if we manage to reverse climate damage now that would be a deep time intervention.

Melting ice

Wildfire

Incineration

Soil

Humans are presently moving more soil matters than the planet itself. As pointed out by the project Humus Economicus we have become soil blind - not noticing how important this element is to multi-species thriving.

Garbage duration

Garbage with different decay cycles and duration

Green house gases

The emission of green house gases have set processes in motion, that wount reverse until tectonic movements helps us to.

Climate Change

Human induced climate change is one of the major inheritance that is left for future generations (see Fredengren & Åsberg (in Press) & Fredengren (in Press)) and is a driver for considering justice and care between generations.

Snow

Deer looking back

Arctic fauna

Extinction of animals mean deep time intervention due to irreversibility of actions and loss of ecosystems.

Violine

A deep time intervention is that there are no longer the type of trees to make stradivarius violines. Hence, that special sound may not be about for many futures.

Living matters

Encounters with Deep Time environments

Cabinet of Deep Time Interventions