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Ecological civilization is not a new form of civilization that will replace the current industrial civilization, but a basic structure or factor running through all forms of civilization (f...

The accelerated progress of modern science and technology and the appearance of global ecological crisis have both made us realize the end of an old age and the arrival of a new one as we are moving from industrial civilization to a new civilization. There are various views as to what defines the new age or civilization and how we should name it. Two views are worth special attention—the new age or civilization is about ecology or about information. This paper will compare the two views and briefly delineate the vision of the new civilization.

The 18th National Congress of the CPC proposed the path of ecological civilization for China, the first time the banner of ecological civilization was held up in the world and marking a milestone in the twenty-first century. It demonstrates the confidence and commitment of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core for seeking a path different from the western path of industrial civilization with eastern wisdom to adapt to the requirements of the times.

Through a diachronic comparison of the environmental consciousness in the United States and in China in the last chapter, we can see that awareness of environmental issues rose rapidly in the United States from the 1960s to the early 1970s. That was around the time that the first wave of environmental consciousness had been formed in the society with the first wave of industrial civilization. During that time, the establishment of heavy industry with coal, metallurgy, and chemical in western society, economics rose fast in those countries; however, environmental problems with pollutions and nature resources deterioration became more and more serious. As a short summary of the previous chapters, Meuse Valley fog killed 60 people in Belgium due to a combination of industrial air pollution and climatic conditions in 1930 (Nemery, Hoet, & Nemmar, 2001); Donora smog killed 20 people and sickened 7000 more in Donora, Pennsylvania, the United States in 1948; then in 1952, “Great smog” or “Big smoke” affected London, 4000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract (Seinfeld, 2004); in 1956, Minamata disease was first discovered in Minamata city in Kumamoto prefecture, Japan and 1784 had died (Environmental Health Department, n.d.).

In the previous chapter, we discussed the socioeconomic background of ecological aesthetics. We discussed the gradual transition from industrial civilization to ecological civilization from the middle of the 20th century.

This article examines turn-of-the-twentieth-century US world’s fairs and the postage stamps that were issued in their honor. The fairs celebrated the progress of industrial civilization, in part by anchoring themselves to a historical origin point (such as Columbus’ voyages), and the post office designed the accompanying stamps to commemorate a historical story deemed to be nationally significant. Both the origin point and the history associated with it were located within a time-space matrix defined by prior processes of mapping the national territory and standardizing time reckoning within it. The commemorative stamps were sold on the fairgrounds, where they could be postmarked to locate them precisely in time and space as souvenirs of what would become past events that would have value in the future. These overlain commemorative practices reveal how the raw materials of history—time and space—have to be manipulated before the history-making practices of modern societies can even begin.

Images are the key for us to sort out modern British history and study the development of early industrial civilization. This paper takes the most classic representative works of those immortal artists in the long river of British art to create a section of immortal history, and review the historical fragments of modern Britain from the painting brush of art masters, and intuitively feel the historical customs, dress etiquette and natural scenery of Britain at that time.

If an industrial civilization had existed on Earth many millions of years prior to our own era, what traces would it have left and would they be detectable today? We summarize the likely geological fingerprint of the Anthropocene, and demonstrate that while clear, it will not differ greatly in many respects from other known events in the geological record. We then propose tests that could plausibly distinguish an industrial cause from an otherwise naturally occurring climate event., Accepted for publication in the International Journal of Astrobiology

This article examines Industrial Design as a profession that supports the modern-capitalist civilization pattern, which has harmful effects on a global level. In response, it states the possible creation of alternatives to coexist with industrial civilization; these alternatives are development-oriented equivalents of Design that have emerged from traditions that difer from the dominant Western traditions, and originated in locations relegated geographically, as well as in hegemonic epistemo-logical locations. The article concludes that the Designs of the South have been present throughout history; time is required to recognize the Designs, to start designing and be designed by them.

Quebec visual artist Isabelle Hayeur has become known internationally over the past decade for a body of photographic and video work that deals mostly in pseudorealistic landscapes of man-made desolation and devastation, created by the digital photomanipulation of visual evidence of the entropy generated by “development.” Collapsing time and space, cause and effect, visible power and its hidden costs in a single image, she subtly conflates seemingly contradictory aspects of industrial civilization (construction/destruction, spectacle/invisible, power/refuse) in deadpan epics of tragic irony characterized by a disenchanted sublime. Heidegger’s concept of the gigantic helps elucidate this paradox; his definition of modernity as “the conquest of the world as picture” is used here to understand the dark spectacle of its development in terms of the photographic medium itself in a sample of Hayeur’s work since 2008.

In the age of industrialism, wilderness is the counterbalance to human excesses and the inspiration for environmental activists. Today, wilderness is even more important and contested as people face multiple environmental crises on a planet with an exploding human population and voracious consumer appetite. Too often obscured by the technosphere that engulfs us, wilderness awaits its ecoteur filmmakers to give it greater presence on the public screens of the technoscape. After The National Parks: America's Best Idea, wilderness still waits. By treating wilderness as an historical relic and vacation spot, the film saps it of its vital relevance and political power. Audiences must understand the foundational role of wilderness in their lives, instead of being pacified with an history drained of color that disconnects them from wilderness. As people wonder if there is a future for industrial civilization, wilderness provides the last best hope for rethinking our place on earth.

This paper examines the foundation for two scenarios of the future depicting how human civilization might destroy itself and possibly bring about the extinction of the human race in the process. The scenarios are based upon the two human-generated “fires” deeply ingrained within industrial civilization: (1) the nuclear “fire” of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and their automated “launch on warning” alert systems and (2) the slow burning “fire” of global warming and runaway climate change. This paper also examines obstacles that are currently preventing the necessary first steps towards solving these problems.

In this article we analyze the epistemologic bonds between the braudelian concept of longue durée and its particular interpretation of the history of civilizations. The work consists of three epigraphs: «Continuity and discontinuity of the civilizations»; «Uniformity and diversity of civilizations» (where we pay special attention to the reflections of Femand Braudel around the industrial civilization, the national civilizations or the Marxist civilization) and «The triple mechanism of the braudelian definition of civilization: the cultural area, the loan and the repulse». In the final balance the author of this article assures that the concept civilization hides itself one catoptric structure that makes the diffuse image of the historian always appear reflected and, in this sense, Braudel did not constitute an exception.En este artículo se analizan los vínculos epistemológicos existentes entre el concepto braudeliano de «longue durée» y su particular interpretación de la historia de las civilizaciones. El trabajo consta de tres epígrafes: «Continuidad y discontinuidad de las civilizaciones»; «Uniformidad y diversidad de las civilizaciones» (en donde se presta especial atención a las reflexiones de Femand Braudel en tomo a la civilización industrial, las civilizaciones nacionales o la civilización marxista) y «El triple mecanismo de la definición braudeliana de civilización: el área cultural, el préstamo y la repulsa». En el balance final el autor del artículo asegura que el concepto de civilización oculta tras de sí una estructura catóptrica que hace que la imagen difusa del historiador aparezca siempre reflejada y que Braudel, en este sentido, no constituyó una excepción.

Environmental Dispute Coordination in the Teshima Island Industrial Waste Case was concluded between the appellants and Kagawa prefecture on June 6, 2000.This dispute originated from 1975, caused a long time involvement and endurance upon the life of Teshima-islanders. However their governance and involvement toward this man-made calamity should continue even after the waste problems were completely removed and resolved.We made a historical database covering from 1975 to 2002 using original data sources of the islanders, concerning historical events and series, management and governance activities and manpower involvements.In this thesis, we show the comprehensive historical calendar of the quality events and series, and also quantitative events, which affected the islander's management and governance.For the events and series analysis we use Input-Throughput-Output Analysis by R. Deacon, where one process affects the next one by negative or positive feedback.We also show the results of the aggregated manpower analysis and their contents, which can easily make us understand the islander's physical endurance level and socially heavy costs. This thesis shows us the process and the quantity and quality levels of the democratic governavility, and also endogenous empowerment development with external high professional supports.

The social problem then is whether community interests receive attention commensurate with the foresight, skill and ingenuity devoted to securing the utmost industrial advantage; whether the shift for thousands of working people away from the city pressure is to bring an increment of better living, easier living-a lifting of the standards of industrial civilization; or whether, for the great mass, it is merely another swapping of the frying pan for the fire.

This article looks at the archaeological debate over two important questions: whether abrupt climate changes caused or contributed to the collapse of ancient civilizations and, if the archaeological and paleoclimatological record yields evidence to that effect, what would it mean in a world that today debates whether industrial civilization is altering Earth's climate with uncertain consequences. Areas discussed include the following: climate hints from archaeological sites; hesitations about whether climate change caused civilizations to collapse; and the interdisciplinary checks on each side.

In recent years the science of what is to be, futurology, has become one of the most popular branches of knowledge in the West. A fever to prognosticate, the desire to penetrate the barriers of time, to predict or at least sense the central direction of history, possesses philosophers and historians, economists and sociologists, politicians and preachers, public figures, and the heads of scientific institutions and of the largest industrial firms. In the United States, England, France, and Italy, committees to study the shape of the future organization of society appear one after the other. Journals of futurology are founded. Special conferences, seminars, colloquiums and even religious meetings are convened, which produce a veritable squall of prognoses, projects both abstract and narrowly practical, spiritualist prophecies, and predictions positive and irrational.

Among the writer’s collection of colour-photographs taken in Burma in the early sixties is one which shows a Buddhist phongyi, or monk, in his saffron-coloured robe, standing on the platform of a railway station on the outskirts of Rangoon beside one of the modern blue-painted diesel trains made in Japan and supplied to Burma as part of Japanese war-reparations. Here, symbolically, are the ancient and the modern in juxtaposition: on the one hand, the monk in the simple robe that was worn by the holy men of India more than two thousand years ago, and on the other the diesel, the product of the highly complex industrial civilization of the twentieth century and a symbol of the rapid post-war recovery and westernization of the Japanese people. Burma and Japan are both Asian countries, and in both Buddhism has been an important element in the nation’s life. If one were to ask which of these two countries represents the more important trends in the contemporary world, many people would probably say Japan. The Burmese Buddhist monastery and the Japanese factory — one wonders what possible connection there could be between these two, or, to speak more generally, between the Buddhist system of religion and the complicated technological society of the latter half of the twentieth century.

The following interview appeared in Canadian Dimension in December 1979, with this introductory note: "Harry Braverman's work commonly has been criticized as infused with an element of utopianism: a rejection of the kind of division of labor that has so far been characteristic of industrial civilization and a kind of longing for a pre-monopoly-capitalism craftsmanship. In what may well have been [Braverman's] last interview before his death, Toronto broadcaster and film-maker Kelly Creighton put this criticism to him. Here is his reply. - THE EDITORSThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.