Heise, Eco-Discourse, and Imag(in)ing the Earth

First, I'd like to say that I am a sci-fi enthusiast and I have never heard of Le Guin's World 4470. The book sounds great and I love the idea of "'wide-range bioempathic receptivity.'" I hope to get to it this summer after I read P.K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which equally piqued my interest after reading Buell last week. If you have an interest in imagining the Earth via fiction, then I suggest you read Dawn by Octavia Butler. In her book, Aliens come and salvage Earth (and humanity) after a nuclear confrontation that kills nearly every human on the planet. What is relevant and interesting to our reading of Heise is that the Oankali (Aliens in the book) ships are organic, living organisms. Perhaps Butler was influenced by Buckminster Fuller's Spaceship Earth allegory from 1963? While one could argue that Butler was primarily concerned with hierarchy in human cultures in the book, I think her demonstration of an organic ship of which every living thing on it was interconnected demonstrates an eco-criticism that prompts readers to evaluate their connection (and imagined disconnections) with the suffering and health of other living things, as well as Earth as a whole "sentient superorganism"

An interesting concept discussed in Heise's piece is the sense of Spaceship Earth, whatever allegory we use, can find itself "in a complex conjunction with darker visions of global collapse or conspiracy on the one hand and with the call to return to local environments and communities as a way of overcoming the modern alienation from nature on the other" (20-21).  This connects with Buell's discussion of place and space because how we encompass the earth and all its organisms takes the shape of problematic ideologies (How do we be and let be?).  Heise comments that "the environmentalist emphasis on restoring individuals' sense of place while it might function as one useful tool among others for environmentally oriented arguments becomes a visionary dead end if it is understood as a founding ideological principle" (21). Does this give us a sense of apprehension when ascribing ideology to place, especially since the EJ movement is clearly linked to ideologies about culture and people?

So should we read Heise as backing off of "the recuperation of a sense of place" as Buell may invite and re shaping our stance to understand how places and processes are interrelated and how our activities affect this connection (ow, that hurts my brain . . . )

What impact does Google Earth and Kilma's installation at the Whitney have on our sense of Spaceship Earth? Does it make Earth more of a thing to be consumed? Is this an illusion of connectivity? How much of what is represented on the application is anthropocentric? Ecocentric?