Some proponents of the Anthropocene argue that it is time adopt a future-oriented outlook: natural baselines no longer matter, and humans should remake the planet for the better. This raises questions about whose vision should guide such remaking, and whether the past deserves any consideration in adapting for the future. I argue that the past remains relevant, because the natural, cultural, and social worlds people enter into – shaped by those who came before us – matter. On this view, there (...) are reasons to value ‘nature’, even in a human-altered world, and climate adaptation should take that into account. (shrink)

The debate about a new geological epoch ‘The Anthropocene’ has helped spawn ‘Age of Man Environmentalism’ (AME). According to AME, humans’ planetary impact indicates that respect for independent nature can no longer serve as a guiding value for environmentalism. Traditional goals of nature preservation and restoration are grounded in the illusory ideal of pristine nature. Humans are now fully integrated into nature and must become responsible managers of an earth we have created, governing it by our ideals. This essay repudiates (...) AME, defending traditional environmental values of naturalness and respect for nature’s autonomy. AME’s exaggeration of human influence over Earth manifests an anthropocentric narcissism blind to nature’s ongoing agency. Rather than becoming gods or parents of a nature that allegedly needs us, human flourishing requires we strengthen our commitment to humility, restraint, and respect for nature’s gifted character. Naturalness becomes increasingly valuable the rarer it becomes, even in highly humanized areas. AME’s thoroughly managed future ignores the possibility of rewilding and turning nature loose. Its promotion of non-native species and ‘novel ecosystems’ attempts to polish the image of human-impacted nature and denigrates preserved wild areas. Taking seriously humans’ massive impact on earth does not require abandoning traditional environmental values. (shrink)

The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, (...) the 'Age of Humans'. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognised scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, the book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science. If in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. It means the end of the 'social-only' understanding of human history and agency. These pillars of modernity are now destabilised. The scale and pace of the shifts occurring on Earth are beyond human experience and expose the anachronisms of 'Holocene thinking'. The book explores what kinds of narratives are emerging around the scientific idea of the new geological epoch, and what it means for the 'politics of unsustainability'. (shrink)

In this article, I address and argue against the tendency to understand the anthropocene as inaugurating the end of nature. I conduct two key moves. First, by way of an engagement with the concept of anthropocene technology I explain how understanding the anthropocene as the end of nature prevents us from recognizing what the anthropocene is all about: interventionism. Secondly, I illustrate how a nondualist understanding of the human-nature relation allows us to recognize interventionism as the hallmark of the anthropocene (...) without falling back into the hierarchical human-nature conceptions that underlie interventionism. A nondualist framework that conserves the human-nature distinction helps us in our ability to relate critically to contemporary science and technology in the anthropocene. I illustrate the conceptual narrative of the article through the specific case of gene drive technology development. (shrink)

The Anthropocene is a radical reconceptualisation of the relationship between humanity and nature. It posits that we have entered a new geological epoch in which the human species is now the dominant Earth-shaping force, and it is rapidly gaining traction in both the natural and social sciences. This article critically explores the scientific representation of the concept and argues that the Anthropocene is less a scientific concept than the ideational underpinning for a particular worldview. It is paradigm dressed as epoch. (...) In particular, it normalises a certain portion of humanity as the ‘human’ of the Anthropocene, reinserting ‘man’ into nature only to re-elevate ‘him’ above it. This move promotes instrumental reason. It implies that humanity and its planet are in an exceptional state, explicitly invoking the idea of planetary management and legitimising major interventions into the workings of the earth, such as geoengineering. I conclude that the scientific origins of the term have diminished its radical potential, and ask whether the concept’s radical core can be retrieved. (shrink)

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. -/- Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept (...) of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. -/- Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”. (shrink)

Wilderness preservation is an important issue within the field of environmental ethics. In recent years wilderness has come under attack from people in a variety of different fields. These attacks would lead us to believe that wilderness as a concept is fatally flawed and that the practice of wilderness preservation is misguided. I examine some of the more important criticisms of wilderness coming from environmental philosophy, ecology, and environmental history. The legal-political practice of wilderness preservation reveals paradoxes about how wilderness (...) is preserved. Recent work in ecology leads us to question whether wilderness can be preserved. Philosophical and historical critiques cast doubt on whether there is any such thing as wilderness to be preserved. We are forced to re-examine the metaphysical and scientific underpinnings and moral values of wilderness, but the arguments advanced against it are all found to be wanting. Three questions steer the discussion: What is wilderness? Why does wilderness have value? How should wilderness be protected? The concept of wilderness denotes an important distinction between the more-than-human world and ourselves. Wilderness can have value because it is a significant location of the value-adding properties of naturalness and wildness. Respecting naturalness and wildness can help steer scientific goals and wilderness policies. (shrink)