1/9/2017 Field Notes from the Anthropocene: Living in the Back Loop | The Brooklyn Rail

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FieldNotes June1st,2017

Field Notes from the Anthropocene:

Living in the Back Loop
byStephanieWakefield

I. I feel it coming

Gleaming blue translucent condos and whitewash stucco. Construction cranes and flood barriers.
Mirrored sunglasses and bikini rollerbladers. Architecture that gathers the edge of the world, at least the
American world.

This past December I got married in New Orleans, where

my husband grew up, moving after Hurricane Katrinafirst
into Best Westerns in Houston, next to Seattle on a Red
Cross voucher, and finally to work in New York, where we
met nine years ago. ThankgodforKatrina!, we joke. Last
month we went to Miami Beach for our honeymoon, half for
the sun and halfas you might also do now in Louisiana
to see it before its gone. A joke but not a joke, because
Miami Beach is ground zero for sea level rise.12 As one of
the most low-lying cities in the lower forty-eight states,
Miami Beach is already flooding and will likely be the first MiamiBeach,photobyauthor,February10,2017.
American city submerged by rising seas.3 According to
University of Miami geologist Harold Wanless, Miami will see 2 feet of sea rise by 2048, 3 feet by 2064;
4, 6, or 15 feet by the end of century, and one foot per decade after that.4

Scientists base projections of sea level rise like these on data gathered from microwave and GPS sensors
installed on land and ice, in the oceans and in space.5 This data shows that sea levels have been rising
over the 20th century at a rate that has increased in recent decades, with 2014s level 2.6 inches higher
than 1993s average, which was previously the highest annual average on satellite measurement record.6
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sea levels are rising now
at one-eighth of an inch per year, a rate expected to accelerate in tandem with global warming in coming
decades.7 It was by studying ice samples drilled from melting glaciers themselves that scientists first
detected and measured global warming. These glaciers are the archives of our earth, the memory of its
worlds, of past climates and of breaths released. During past ice ages, glaciers formed as water
evaporated from the oceans, snow accumulated and compressed, layer built upon layer. Under the
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weight of accumulating seasons, the lower snow became ice, formations became glaciers, and ancient air
was preserved, trapped as bubbles within the ice.8 Today ice cores, such as those studied at the National
Ice Core Laboratory in Denver, tell scientists what earths climate was like in the past, providing a
benchmark against which to compare todays temperatures and atmospheric concentrations of
greenhouse gases, as well as a basis for prediction of how the climate will change in the future. For the
last 12,000 years, the atmosphere trapped just enough of the suns energy, giving us the Holocene
golden age, the safe operating space in which human civilization was born, in which we grew up, and
which we are now leaving.9 As increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane trap more of
the suns heat, earths average surface temperature is rising, with the ocean absorbing the bulk of the
warming. So now glaciers in Montana and Iceland, but primarily Antarctica and Greenland, are melting,
sending their water into earths swelling seas.10 All the water on earth is all the water theres ever been.
In the Anthropocene, everything is connected.

Wanless says that all of our predictions of gradually rising seas might be wrong, because none of them
acknowledge the fact that we know previous ice melt and sea level rise didnt happen steadily but rather
in nonlinear, erratic pulses.11 The question remains, just how quickly do pulses happen? Over the
course of a day? A year? A decade? The Holocene mind assumes sea levels are steady and the earth is an
eternal, stable background to our human dramas, but the Anthropocene mind learns otherwise. Even
with our radars, satellites, and ice core labs we cant predict when or how quickly much of this will
occur. Already, sea level is not rising uniformly across the planet, spatially or temporally (New York, for
example, is considered a hot spot).12 The less ice, the less reflective surface able to deflectthe more
dark, sun-absorbing ocean, the more heat absorbed, creating a chain effect, accelerating ice melt, sea
level rise, and coastal inundation.

The ice of memory becomes a deluge! Its waiting for us! Just as we cant predict these processes, we do
not know how the melting of the glaciers, rising of the seas, or global warming will intersect in coming
decades with the long list of other Anthropocene transformations, including mass extinction,
biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, fresh water usage, or ever-increasing wealth inequality and
existential freakout in humans.13 Homo sapiens have never lived at 400 parts per million (ppm) CO2
concentration. Were already in a new world. And at 1500 ppm? Into the unknown!

If we cant accurately predict the rate of melt or rise, we can still foresee some consequences. With 3 feet
of sea level rise around south Florida, Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, located on Biscayne Bay
just south of Miami and already exposed to the sea, will be cut off from the mainland, reachable only by
plane or boat; with more rise it will be completely submerged, perhaps leading to catastrophic
meltdown.14 With 6 feet of sea-level rise, downtown Miamis waterfront and the Florida Keys will be
gone, and the citys cruise ship portthe worlds largestwill be under water.15 But that doesnt even
matter, Wanless says: just one foot of sea level riseexpected by around 2040will cause salt water
intrusion into the citys water systems, rendering tap water undrinkable, sewage systems nonfunctional,
and sending Miami residents fleeing en masse like 21st-century Dust Bowl refugees.16 Wanless sums up
the future of his beloved home Miami by saying, I dont know how its going to happen, but its over.17

But is it? Is this just the end?

II. Resilience 1.0

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One night in Miami Beach we take a walk up to the posh Sunset Harbor neighborhood. We cross
through a cluster of towering condos, where we overhear wealthy condo dwellers debate which duck
dish to order, which would be normal except theyre seated 2 and a half feet under the recently raised
street. The elevated roadways that now loom above the cafes and doorways in Miami Beach are part of
an effort to build resilience to the regular flooding, with the city having already spent $400 million to
elevate streets and install a huge pumping system to push flood water into Biscayne Bay.18 This is the
Miami iteration of climate resilience: maintaining a (static yet ever-receding) pastel and neon art deco
fantasy while the oceans rise around the city, with new infrastructures like these streets alongside a
delirious building boom, with $2.7 billion spent on new luxury high rise construction in 2014 alone.19
The speakers at the condo cafe are playing that Chainsmokers song we all love, Weaintevergetting
older

Miamis efforts to build climate resilience are part of more widespread transformation in urban
infrastructure and design. Coastal cities like New York where I live are being hailed as experimental
laboratories for real-time testing of new designs to make cities resilient to climate change, rising seas,
and natural disasters.20 I have been researching these resiliency efforts for many years, and one thing is
clear. Unlike urban design in the past, which promised a better future, these resiliency designs work
by managing and adapting to changing conditions of catastrophe in order to secure the functionality of
our existing social and political urban order. These resilience designs dont replace modern
infrastructures, butarenecessitatedbythem,and complement them.21 That is, despite their green
characteristicsoysters, swales, reefs, and marshesresilience infrastructures sit perfectly well
alongside the proliferation of pipes, cables, wires and roads that underwrite modern life and project it
into the future. Implicitly or explicitly, these designs tell us that there is little left but surviving in a
landscape strewn with corpses and debris, disasters and debt. In Miami Beachs case, Bvlgari bags will
float on the rising seas as they churn outside the citys preserved art deco hotels: a frozen, yet ever-
receding past of luxury, glamour, exuberant faith in social and technological progress. The possibility of
imagining or creating other worlds disappears.

Listening to the Chainsmokers waft out of the Sunset Harbor restaurant, Im thinking that there really is
a will to survival at the heart of these new resilient modes of administering coastal urban environments.
Rather than promising the future, these resilience measures function to wardthefutureoff.Adapting to
changing conditions so as to keep all other things the same.22 In the novel Im reading on the trip, part
of Steven Eriksons Malazan Book of the Fallenseries, immortality is a curse. A people called the Tlan
Imass undertake a collective ritual to live forever in order to wage eternal war on their enemies who had
once enslaved them. Thousands of years after the ritual, they still wander the continents, haggard,
skeletons with pieces of skin falling off, dreaming of nothing, contemplating their own futility,
remembering little of what it is to live: love, sex, tastes, everyday commonplaces like the smell of
cooking food, children laughing, leaves rustling, birth and death.

III. Letting go: the back loop

Were at Lummus Park, an outdoor workout spot in South Beach. Im watching an amazing woman in
her late forties as she climbs to the top of a 12-foot pole. She raises her body into a star-shaped human
flag, turns upside-down, and holds herself aloft with a single leg wrapped around the pole. Slowly, she
lowers herself several feet, holding herself taut and gracefully dismounting from the pole. Afterward she
doesnt speak to anyone. Shes there to teach her teenage pupils, signaling their drills to them: hanging
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sit-ups, bar flips, handstands. I am amazed by this woman; Im thinking, we really know little of the
human bodys potential! Part of the reason we came to Miami was to visit this world-famous beach gym,
well-known as a place where elite calisthenics and street workout practitioners train their human flags,
planches, and parallel bar handstands under sun-soaked palms. Street workout, a relatively new culture
of choreographed movements on free outdoor parks or infrastructures, is just a physical fitness
component of a wave of experimentation with new ways of transforming bodies, minds, lives, and the
world around them: from hacking, making, modding, prepping, and lifting to citizen science, eco-
design, solar energy grids, wireless mesh networks and crossfit boxes. People everywhere are searching
their souls, scouring the earth for tools, and trying in a million ways to reinvent what it means to be
human and to dwell on earth. Most of these practices in no way see themselves as solutions to climate
change, the impending nuclear catastrophe of a submerged power plant, or large-scale political
structures.23 What then, one asks, is their status? Who could honestly say? Whats clear is that these
practices treat our time not as The End, but rather a beginning, a transitional time in which every
aspect of life is now open to reworking, here and now. As such it cant be pinned down yet. Seeds need
time to grow, adaptation doesnt (usually) happen overnight, and Rome wasnt built in a day. </p

Speaking of which, plants and animals are doing this too. As

global warming has decreased the number of days below
freezing, mangroves habitable range has increased and the
trees are taking root in salt marshes farther north.24
Alligators are adapting to live in residential areas with lakes
or canals and use south Floridas waterways as a network of
highways to get from one place to another.25 The
Everglades are also inhabited by a large population of
Burmese pythonsbrought to the area as exotic pets and
discarded. Despite a state-organized Python Challenge
that awards cash prizes to freelance citizen groups who ElevatedstreetsinSunsetHarbor,MiamiBeach.
catch the most pythons, the release of an iPhone app for
crowdsourcing python sightings, and the states importing of snake-catching specialist Irula tribesmen,
the pythons continue to thrive and multiply in their new environment.26 Seasons are shifting: spring is
coming earlier in many places, while winters as we know them in New York have grown more erratic
and 60 70 degree temperatures increasingly frequent. Insects are emerging earlier; birds are nesting
earlier; plants are flowering and leafing out earlier. The latest of such natural events studies, out last
month, shows that climate change has stretched out the wildflower bloom season in Colorado by 35
days.27 So what I mean is, its not just us. Nature is experimenting too, and we create our worlds in the
worlds it creates, and vice versa.

To paraphrase writer Gretel Ehrlich, is this a world coming apart, or piecing itself back together?

Father of resilience theory C.S. Holling has a useful way of thinking about a time like this. He calls it a
back loop.28 This concept refers to the adaptive cycle, the main heuristic used by resilience ecologists
to describe the four phases of life experienced by all natural systemsa human being, a city, a society, a
civilization, a swamp, a forest, a company. On one hand, the adaptive cycle contains a front loop of
early rapid growth, leading to a persistence or stability phase dominated by a few species and
characterized by rigidity and the capture of earlier energies. Those stable states are not permanent.
Gradual or sharp disturbance can cause systems to slip into a back loop, marked by a release phase
where energies and elements previously captured in conservation phases are set free, unexpected new

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combinations emerge, and wild, exuberant experimentation

becomes the modus operandi. The most understudied
aspect of ecological systems, back loops are also one of the
most exciting. As observed in ecological systems, the back
loop is the phase of life in which individual organisms or
small groups of individual organisms interact across
previously unbridgeable divides and in doing create
something fundamentally original. In contrast to life in the
regimes we are leaving behind, where innovation was stifled
and influence limited to a few actors with the greatest power
the stability trapin the back loop beings and things are
released and open to new potentials.29 Although most back loops studied by ecologists have been
regional in character, in 2004 Holling penned an essay suggesting that we are at the time of a large-
scale back loop, a global situation in which each of us must become aware that he or she is a
participant.30 I think Hollings challenge is important; but it is also an apt description of a
phenomenon already underway.

If we accept being in a back loop, the question becomes, how do we respond? Do we try desperately to
maintain the old safe operating space, freeze a process already in motion? Or could we let go, allow a
time of exploration and experimentation, see what becomes of the pieces of us and the world?

IV. Prometheus 2.0

Back on the beach, we finish our workouts, and watch some guys compete for ridiculous numbers of
reps and sets. I text my friend back in New York who owns the CrossFit gym where I work out, Lets
move here. This could be life, with a photo of the sun and park. He is a Five Percenter of the Nation of
Gods and Earths, a 1960s nonreligious offshoot of the Nation of Islam (NOI) that believes god is neither
separate nor exterior from humans, and not a mystery entity to wait for to bring you food or change
your world. Instead, god is something that humans can cultivate and develop through meditation,
training in mental, spiritual and physical fitness. We are gods. Even though the wealthy elite of the
world withhold this truth from the majority, through living it and knowing our selves, we prove it true.
While some Five Percenters see godliness as reserved for black men only, my friend, whos Puerto Rican,
has his own wisdom. He teaches his daughter to know shes a god, and teaches his friends (who are
many colors) the same, that divinity is your true powerwhich is also our true power, which is the
power of the universe, which is the power of creation of our universe and reality.31 When my friend first
mentioned all this in the car one morning as we groggily made our way through Brooklyn to run a 5K in
Sheepshead Bay, I was surprised not only because Id known him for a long time without hearing about
it, but also because much of my life has also been inspired by the subterranean, often repressed but
constantly reemerging, messianic tradition. The 15th-century Hussite rebellion in Bohemia, when the
Taborites defeated the Holy Roman Empire, proclaimed their own Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and
declared there would be no more servants nor masters; the 16th-century rise of Lurianic Kabbalah in the
aftermath of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain; the heretical ideas of 17th-century Dutch philosopher
Baruch Spinoza, who denied the existence of a transcendent God and said everything is one divine
substance; Nietzsches Zarathustra; and so on. Across place and time, from a Taborite beating a drum
made of their slain leaders skin, to us who meet today in gyms on the terrain of the Anthropocene back
loop, there is a single truth surviving across centuries and continents: the true power of transformation
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belongs to the people. We revise maps, we invent new practices, new movements, new ways of living, in
and with and sometimes despite each others unpredictable paths. A timeless reality, as one Five
Percenter puts it.32

Another unexpected tale from the fabulous/insane new

world offered by the Anthropocene. My friend the god grew
up in Bushwick; Im from Kansas. He lifts more than twice
his bodyweight; I can only do a few pullups. Two very
different beings who, via unique paths, landed on the same
planet. New starting point: the old world is over, a
revolution has begun. In and by people like each other,
through love and building, is born a new sense of the
HaroldWanlessstandinginsunnydayfloodwaterduring
possible.33 Anyway, now Im learning supreme math, and hightideinMiamiBeach,September28,2015.Credit:
hes learning how the spirit became a camel, the camel a 2015CBC/RadioCanada.

lion, and the lion at last a child. New values, new tables!

Speaking of gods, lately Ive been thinking about

Prometheanism, that supposedly horrible word so often
used to describe humanitys reaching the apex of its insanity
as the most powerful geological agent on earth, imagining
itself a force on par with a super volcano or an asteroid, all
possible because this human species raised itself up as the
rational orderer and center of reality. Welcome to the Epoch
of Promethean Man, cue the Accelerationists, the
Breakthrough Institute, the Singularity, the space colonies,
and, on the other end of the spectrum, cue the critical
worlds almost univocal condemnation of human hubris as
an outdated relic of the catastrophic 20th century.34
ClauditaConchaParraguez(@claukitty9)practicingpole
calisthenicsatLummusPark,SouthBeach,MiamiBeach.
But isnt that story getting old? If we creep back to the PhototakenFebruary11,2017byauthor.

Caucasus Mountain where Zeus chained Prometheus and

listen again to the imprisoned gods story, what we actually hear is how Prometheus had gone out
among the humans and found them destitute, lacking all knowledge of the means of production, the
formsthat make life more than bare life, and now living in caves and in holes of the earth, shivering
with the cold because there was no fire, dying of starvation, hunted by wild beasts and by one another.
In hopes of liberating the humans, Prometheus went to Zeus and asked him to give the people fire. Zeus
refused to share even a spark with them, as one tale tells it, for if men had fire they might become
strong and wise like us, and after a while they would drive us out of our kingdom. Besides, fire is a
dangerous tool and they are too poor and ignorant to be trusted with it. It is better that we on Mount
Olympus rule the world without threat so all can be happy.35

In response, not only did Prometheus expropriate fire from the selfish gods and give it to humans, he
also shared with them many other tools: architecture, writing, mathematics, astrology, sailing,
navigation, medicine, divination, musicarts necessary not only to human survival but to the infinite
ways we elaborate the happy, good life.36 A god who would not bow to the gods, the myth of
Prometheus is about human hubris but also aboutthe tools we use to wield our hubris. These arts,
practices, knowledges, and forms give us the means to transform not only ourselves but also our very
modes of existence. For millennia, humans have experimented with tools, designing new ways to stay
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warm, better ways to feed themselves, how to move without being detected, how to prepare food, how to
absorb and attenuate a variety of stressors from cold to combat injuries, how to hack, how to express
beauty and meaning.37 Song. Tools are the myriad, infinite bridgesthat attach us to the world, that
allow us to make useof it, and to give shape to and be shaped by it. By giving the mortal humans these
forms, Prometheus therefore gave them the capacity to create their own worlds. And through this gift a
second one was given to us: the possibility of another future, one not determined in advance but a future
that was an open question.

V. New land, new questions

Anagewasdead.Thenewagebelongedtogenerationsstilltocome.

Steven Erikson

I grew up in the Midwest in the late 90s working in gas stations that played Nirvana and Snoop Dogg at
a time when it seemed like the only thing we knew for sure was that there was no future and that
nothing would ever change. Now it seems like the only thing we know for sure is that everything is
changing. As many resilience theorists argue, we are unprepared to face the new world we find ourselves
in because we are still using tools from the front loop. Outdated ideologies, infrastructures, design
practices, and change models are not going to cut it. Were in the back loop, and we need new tools.

So far it seems actual agencypowers of imagination,

hubris, and tools for their translation into realityis
hoarded in the hands of those who want to preserve and
profit from the present social system as the water rises. Take
note: faced with a society in the back loopunderstanding
we are leaving western civilizations safe operating space
the powerful are experimenting: think Elon Musks SpaceX
Mars I dreams of another space; experiments in de-
extinction of the passenger pigeon or mammoths, dreams of
bringing the past back to the present; New York City
resilience practitioners engineering living infrastructures ArchitecturefirmBjarkeIngelsGroup(BIG)s
and retractable sea walls outfitted with skate ramps, etc.
These experimenters are daring, often so much so that they believe they can transform the very cities we
live in and the solar system around us into large-scale laboratories for their trials. They are maniacally
trying to make a future in the images of their desire. What about the rest of us, how are we to have any
efficacy or agency?

Resilience 1.0the resilience regime I spoke of earliertells us we have no agency, no imagination,

and no dreams apart from whats needed to envision or endure disasters. The human flag pole: an image
to remind us what a massive fiction this is. Resilience 2.0: we have and have always had immense power
to transform our selves and our worlds, as evidenced by the proliferation of techniques developed and
tested out today as people have already begun inhabiting the back loop in diverse ways. Recognizing this
as our capacity and our right, we can reclaim something we never truly lost.

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Instead of looking for final answers, what if we accept that we are living in a transitionaltime, where
things are in disarray, where the futures uncertain, but where more is now possible and authorized than
ever before?38 From this perspective our time is a time for audacity, experiments on the same playing
field where our future is alreadybeing written for us. In short, living in the back loop. This new
orientation and way of life entails finding new modes of nourishing ourselves, designing and raising
buildings, staying warm or cool, and accessing clean water as it is does learning to face the unknown and
learning to look into ourselves and ask what kind of life wewant to make live, what kind of life is worth
living, and really asking previously unaskable questions. What on earth could being be? By we I dont
just mean designers, city governments, planners, or resilience theorists who have already become back
loop participants, as testified by the existence and growth of the resilience paradigm. By we I mean
everyone: common people where they are, how they are, people who will bear the brunt of climate
change, people who already needed the world to end yesterday so they could finally get a chance to live.

VI. An image

Like a Shell futurologist, one can imagine multiple disastrous futures for Miami. Will it become a
southern Super Venice, a la Kim Stanley Robinsons New York of 2140, a watery playground for the rich
and capital speculation: Zaha Hadid-designed high-rise condominiums retrofitted so as to actually
function with permanently elevated sea levels; floating tourist traps on Ocean Boulevard hocking $35
margaritas for what remains of the worlds non-inundated middle classes; a motley and still surviving
working class that ferries in from the overstuffed, substandard housing complexes where they live a kind
of managerial socialism of long lines, board meetings, and just-in-time and rarely adequate dinners?39
Perhaps the hard realism of Paolo Bacigalupis TheWaterKnifeis more apt. The haves live in a series
of Amillarah Private Island arcologies, closed-loop glass-domed living systems with luxury malls, fine
eateries, and augmented reality advertisements in their centers and ringed by air-conditioned
penthouses whose waste water is filtered into the loop, while the have-nots are clustered in camps
along the new coast lines where they have the new Dust Bowl refugees (the Floridians) gathering
around pay-to-drink Red Cross water dispensers as they try to fend off the latest Chikungunya or
Zika.40 Or imagine a super Katrina resulting in something a little more OddsAgainstTomorrow:
Miami a post-flood dead zone abandoned by government and left to rewild, reclaimed by pythons and
alligators and scores of individualists with camping packs on their backs starting from scratch, spending
their days transforming soggy banks into their dream apartments and building ramshackle boat homes
amidst growing marshland. Meanwhile, more refugee camps in the background. Each of these visions
undoubtedly carries an element of truth, but only if we allow it.

For quite some time, governments deployed a powerful

narrative of progress: development, growth, and endless
improvement. Now, many resilience advocates substitute
our ability to shape the future with an oops, we actually
cant survivalism that is hidden behind pristine
architectural renderings. We may live in a world that
increasingly tells us theres no more dreaming (except about
space), but I dont live like that. Miami lit my imagination
on fire. Ever since I visited, I dream of it often. My dreams
arent about the future or the end; they are about the
possibilities opened right now. Taking up the challenge of
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the back loop is fundamentally a wager of the present, and it fromKeyLargoJohnPennekampnaturecenter,by

author,February12,2017
will only be met through a combination of adaption,
reinvigoration, and a radical shedding of obsolete technical, social, and mental systems. To accomplish
this, well need to make the unlikeliest of combinations between the practitioners of Prometheuss gifts.
Perhaps the hard hats need to meet the hackers, and the engineers the ecologists, and the nurses need to
meet the artists, bus drivers, teachers, and mechanics. We are already all here.

Its May 6, 2017, and I am in Biscayne Bay. The sun is radiating on my skin, rough with salt and
sunscreen and sweat. Im watching a family on a dock hosing down a delighted manatee. Im wondering
about the place Miami Beach could become after the housing bubble bursts. A serene image of life is
growing within me, the possibility of a Miami-turned-new-Florida Keys-archipelago, a ride it out salt
life that accepts the reality of constantly rebuilding, building higher, and living differently. It wont be
without its perils, hardship, heartache, or tragedy. Can humans live in water? Of course we can.

Endnotes

BrowardCountyCommissionerKristinJacobs,quotedinUnionofConcernedScientists,FloridaScientistsandLocalGovernmentOfficials
UrgePresidentialCandidatestoAddressSeaLevelRise,2012.StanCoxandPaulCox,HowtheWorldBreaks:LifeinCatastrophesPath,
fromtheCaribbeantoSiberia(NewYork:TheNewPress,2016).
FloridaInternationalUniversitysvideoseriesprovidesgoodfirsthandaccountsofthefloodingineverydaylife.Seealso:R.McKie,The
Guardian,July11,2014.
Wanless,2017,personalcommunication.ForthehigherendnonlinearprojectionsusedbyWanless,see:Hansen,etal.,,Atmospheric
ChemistryandPhysics,16(2016),37613812.Seealso:StanCoxandPaulCox,,TheNewRepublic,November8,2015.
Foruptodatemeasurementsandprojectionssee:.
RebeccaLindsey,,Climate.gov,June10,2016.
Ibid.
RichardZ.Poore,RichardsS.Williams,Jr.,andChristopherTracey,,USGS,September2011.
See:J.Zalasiewicz,andM.Williams,GoldilocksPlanet:The4BillionYearStoryofEarthsClimate(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,2012).
Also:safeoperatingspacecomesfromJ.Rockstrm,etal.,AsafeoperatingspaceforhumanityNature461(2009),4725.
NASA,.
Personalcommunication,April6,2017.
A.SallengerJr.,K.Doran,andP.HowdHotspotofacceleratedsealevelriseontheAtlanticcoastofNorthAmerica,NatureClimateChange
2(2012),884888.
J.Rockstrm,etal.Planetaryboundaries:exploringthesafeoperatingspaceforhumanity,EcologyandSociety14(2):32(2009).
P.Harlem,,SeaLevelRiseCollection2(2008).JeffGoodell(2013)Goodbye,Miami,RollingStone,June20,2013.
R.McKie,,TheGuardian,July11,2014.
Pakalolo,,DailyKos,March19,2015.Seealso:Harlem,2008McKie,2014.
Personalcommunication,April6,2017.
J.Flechas,andJ.Staletovich,,MiamiHerald,October23,2015.Seealso:Fusion,
MuchofthisnewconstructionisaimedatwealthyforeigncashbuyersfromLatinAmerica,Russianoligarchs,aswellascreativeclassyoung
professionals.See,forexample:G.Allen,,NPR,November29,2014.The2014figurecomesfromN.Baptiste,,TheAmericanProspect,
February19,2016.
WakefieldandBraun,Governingtheresilientcity,EnvironmentandPlanningD:SocietyandSpace32,1,(2014),411.
WakefieldandBraun,Oystertecture:infrastructure,profanationandthesacredfigureofthehuman,Hetherington,K.Infrastructure,
Environment,andLifeintheAnthropocene(Durham:DukeUniversityPress,2018).
WakefieldandBraun,InhabitingthePostApocalypticCity,EnvironmentandPlanningD:SocietyandSpacecommentary,2014.
Tobeclear,Iamnotsuggestingthatdoinghumanflagsisgoingtostopclimatechange.@claukitty9sabilitytobeaflagonapole,though
impressive,doesntseemtomeasureuptotheimpendingnuclearcatastropheofthesubmergedpowerplant.Ivesaidnothingaboutthe
questionofthehardlimitssetbyexistingsocialinstitutions.Theproblemsofclimatechangeandrisingseasinvolvehundredsofthousandsor
millionsofpeopletheexamplesIhavedescribedseemtoinvolveindividualsorsmallgroups.
K.Cavanaugh,Polewardexpansionofmangrovesisathresholdresponsetodecreasedfrequencyofextremecoldevents,Proceedingsofthe
NationalAcademyofSciences,,111,2,(2014),723727.
R.Wise,Morealligators,morehuman:thecohabitationturnstotragedyinFlorida,ArchyWorldNews,July4,2016.
ForPythonchallengesee.Seealso:J.Staletovich,,MiamiHerald,January23,2017.
E.Marris,,NationalGeographic,May6,2014.Seealso:Chen,I,etal.RapidRangeShiftsofSpeciesAssociatedwithHighLevelsof
ClimateWarming,Science(2011),10241026.
L.GundersonandC.S.Holling,Panarchy:UnderstandingTransformationsinSystemsofHumansandNature,(IslandPress,2001).
GundersonandHolling,2001andHolling,Fromcomplexregionstocomplexworlds,EcologyandSociety,9,1(2004),11.
CanpanarchyserveasaframeworkforthoughtfollowedbyactioninapotentialphaseofgeopoliticaltransformationpostSeptember11,
2001?Notjustregionalchange,butglobalandinternational?Areweinanotherperiodofchangeliketheonesweexperiencedinthe1930s
and1940s?Areweinadeepbackloopthatpresentsthesameopportunitiesandcrisesastheregionalbackloopstudiesthatwehave
described?().Seealso:Holling,ResilienceandLifeintheArctic,April5,2011.
DanielGenis,,DailyBeast,April4,2014.Seealso:ChristopherJohnson,,NPR,April4,2006.
SupremeUnderstanding,1.
AsIhavesuggestedelsewhere,coulditbethatitisontheterrainoftheAnthropocene,wherewefindthetruecommonandourtrue
similars?Thatourepochisameetingplace?See:S.Wakefield,ReviewofD.ChandlerandJ.Reid(2016),TheNeoliberalSubject:
Resilience,AdaptationandVulnerability,SocietyandSpace,May30,2017.
Onthestigmatizationofhumanhubrisastechniqueofliberalgovernance,see:D.ChandlerandJ.Reid,TheNeoliberalSubject:Resilience,
AdaptationandVulnerability,(London:Rowman&LittlefieldInternational,2016).
Fromaversionofthestoryforchildren:J.Baldwin,.
Aeschylus,trans.WeirSmyth,PrometheusBound,(Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress,1926).Seealso:thehallucinogenicmagicalherb
madefromPrometheussbloodApolloniusRhodius,trans.E.V.Rieu,Argonautica(London:PenguinClassics,1959/1971).
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1/9/2017 Field Notes from the Anthropocene: Living in the Back Loop | The Brooklyn Rail
RegardingimportanceoftoolsforlivingintheAnthropocene,seethisnewprojectbymyselfandGlennDyer:,aimedatcollectingand
sharingthesekindsoftoolsandpractices.
WeareonthebrinkofleavingwhatJohanRockstrm(2017)callsearthssafeoperatingspace:wearethegenerationrightatthattipping
point.Wewerealiveintheexponentialjourneythattooushere,andwewillprobablybealiveinthejourneythatwilldecidetheoutcomefor
thenexttenthousandyears.
See:ZahaHadidArchitects,.
See:AmillarahPrivateIslands,.

CONTRIBUTOR

StephanieWakefield
STEPHANIEWAKEFIELDisa201718visitingAssistantProfessorinCultureandMediaatEugeneLangCollegeTheNewSchool.Shehas
writtenextensivelyonthepoliticalandphilosophicalimplicationsoftheAnthropocene,'living'infrastructure,andurbanresilienceinNew
YorkCity.HercurrentresearchisonsouthFloridawheresheisexploring'experimentation'asamodeofdwellingintheAnthropocene,
andemancipatorypossibilitiesofferedbytheconceptofthe'backloop.'

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