Environmental Aesthetics and Global Climate Change

What are the aesthetic transformations taking place through the effects of global warming and human responses to these effects? How should we conceptualize aesthetic environmental change, especially in the context of intergenerational concern for both nonhumans and humans? As the earth’s systems and its organisms experience climate change, these kinds of questions require an understanding of the aesthetic qualities, meanings, and values of lost species, places, and landscapes, as well as those which emerge through mediation and adaptation. The experience of aesthetic value or “aesthetic appreciation” is central to the study of aesthetics and, in practical terms, offers a more intimate scale for understanding the concrete interactions people have with changing environments and places. To explore these issues, the chapter discusses the tools of environmental aesthetics which can assist in grasping shifts in natural and seminatural aesthetic qualities, meanings, and values across both shorter and longer time scales, including intergenerational and future temporalities. The chapter moves on to address the kinds of aesthetic qualities of the earth’s systems which are demanding more attention in order to better understand and uncover what is being lost or affected by environmental change. Negative values are then discussed to address how aesthetics is placed with respect to the range of environmental phenomena caused by climate change, such as wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, droughts, and so on. The chapter closes with a discussion of the interrelationship between aesthetics and ethics in the context of environmental change.