Rethinking the Environment for the Anthropocene: Political Theory and Socionatural Relations in the New Geological Epoch 9781138302150, 9781138302167, 9780203731895

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RETHINKING THE ENVIRONMENT FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE

This book brings together the most current thinking about the Anthropocene in the field of Environmental Political Theory (‘EPT’). It displays the distinctive contribution EPT makes to the task of thinking through what ‘the environment’ means in this time of pervasive human influence over natural systems. Across its chapters the book helps develop the idea of ‘socionatural relations’—an idea that frames the environment in the Anthropocene in terms of the interconnected relationship between human beings and their surroundings. Coming from both well-established and newer voices in the field, the chapters in the book show the diversity of points of view theorists take toward the Anthropocene idea, and socionatural relations more generally. However, all the chapters exemplify a characteristic of work in EPT: the self-conscious effort to provide normative interpretations that are responsive to scientific accounts. The Introduction explains the complicated interaction between science and EPT, showing how it positions EPT to consider the Anthropocene. And the Afterword, by a pioneer in the field, relates all the chapters to a perspective that has been deeply influential in EPT. This book will be of interest to scholars already engaged in EPT. But it will also serve as an introduction to the field for students of Political Theory, Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and related disciplines, who will learn about the EPT approach from the Introduction, and then see it applied to the pressing question of the Anthropocene in the ensuing chapters. The book will also help readers interested in the Anthropocene from any disciplinary perspective develop a critical understanding of its political meanings. Manuel Arias-Maldonado is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Málaga, Spain. His research has revolved around different aspects of Environmental Political Theory, mostly the relationship between sustainability and democracy, the philosophical and political character of socionatural relations, the concept of nature, and, as of late, the Anthropocene. Zev Trachtenberg is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma, USA. His work in Environmental Political Theory focuses on ways historical works prefigure thinking about the Anthropocene. He is also interested in the relevance to the field of new developments in the study of human evolution.

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RETHINKING THE ENVIRONMENT FOR THE ANTHROPOCENE Political Theory and Socionatural Relations in the New Geological Epoch

Edited by Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 selection and editorial matter, Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Arias-Maldonado, Manuel, editor. | Trachtenberg, Zev M. (Zev Matthew), 1955- editor. Title: Rethinking the environment for the anthropocene : political theory and socionatural relations in the new geological epoch / edited by Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018038178| ISBN 9781138302150 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138302167 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780203731895 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Human ecology--Political aspects. | Political science--Anthropological aspects. | Nature--Effect of human beings on--Political aspects. Classification: LCC GF21 .R48 2019 | DDC 304.2--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038178 Financial support for the production of the index was provided from the Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Oklahoma. ISBN: 978-1-138-30215-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-30216-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73189-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of illustrations List of contributors Introduction Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

vii viii 1

PART I

Understanding nature in the Anthropocene

17

1 The return of nature in the Capitalocene: a critique of the ecomodernist version of the ‘good Anthropocene’ Anne Fremaux

19

2 Emancipation, capture, and rescue? On the ontological turn and its critique Luigi Pellizzoni

37

3 Novel ecosystems and the return of nature in the Anthropocene Susan Baker

51

PART II

Environmental political theory and the Anthropocene 4 Vocations of (environmental) political theory in the Anthropocene John M. Meyer

65 67

vi Contents

5 The ecological circumstances of politics Zev Trachtenberg 6 What cities can teach us about environmental political theory in the Anthropocene Nir Barak

82

94

PART III

The Anthropocene as a moral question

109

7 Anthropocene: the emergence of the figure of “Governator” Yohan Ariffin

111

8 Real Anthropocene politics Simon Hailwood

123

9 Towards a good Anthropocene? Manuel Arias2-Maldonado

137

PART IV

Democratic responses to the Anthropocene

151

10 Geo-engineering: a curse or a blessing? Marcel Wissenburg

153

11 Sustainability governance in a democratic Anthropocene: the arts as key to deliberative citizen engagement Marit Hammond and Hugh Ward

166

12 Critical design, hybrid labor, just transitions: moving beyond technocratic ecomodernisms and the it’s-too-late-o-cene Damian White

180

IV Afterword: the Anthropocene or welcome to our fluxed futures John Barry

201

Index

216

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure

6.1 The dualism of ‘nature in cities’ (Central Park, NYC)

97

Tables

3.1 3.2 4.1 6.1 12.1

Nature in Our Ragamuffin Earth Novel Ecosystems: Interests and Value Models of the Vocation of Political Theory Summary of City-Nature Theses Pluralizing and provincializing affluent world conceptualizations of possible ecologically modern futures 12.2 Fixity and fluidity in critical design studies for just transition

55 58 74 103 187 196

CONTRIBUTORS

YOHAN ARIFFIN is Senior Lecturer at the Institut d’Etudes politiques, historiques et internationales of the University of Lausanne. His latest book is Emotions in International Politics. Beyond Mainstream International Relations (edited with J.-M. Coicaud and V. Popovski, Cambridge University Press, 2016). SUSAN BAKER is a Professor in the Cardiff School of Social Sciences. She is the author of Sustainable Development (Routledge, 2005) and has co-edited In pursuit of sustainable development: new governance practices at the sub-national level in European States (Routledge, 2008). NIR BARAK is a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University. His PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem focused on environmental political theory in cities and analyzed philosophical, political, social, and policy-related aspects of urban sustainability. His dissertation suggests that transitioning cities into patterns of sustainability is best achieved by deepening patterns of civic participation and democratic citizenship in cities. Nir’s current research analyzes democratic norms and practices in cities and the relationship between urban and national citizenship. JOHN BARRY is Professor of Green Political Economy at Queens University Belfast. His latest book is The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate Changed, Carbon Constrained World (Oxford University Press 2012) and he is currently completing What’s the Story of Economic Growth? Orthodox Economic Growth as our Culture’s Dominant and Dangerous Myth. ANNE FREMAUX has completed a thesis entitled ‘Towards a Critical Theory of the Anthropocene: A Post-Growth Green Republican Analysis’ at Queens University

Contributors ix

Belfast. Her publications include La nécessité d'une écologie radicale. La pensée àl'épreuve des problèmes environnementaux (Le Sang de la Terre 2011) and L’ Ère du levant (Rroyzz 2016). SIMON HAILWOOD is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool and Managing Editor of the journal Environmental Values. He has published three monographs, the last one being Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2015). MARIT HAMMOND is Lecturer in Politics at Keele University, UK. She is also a Co-Investigator at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), a five-year ESRC-funded research project across seven universities and several outside partners led by the University of Surrey. Recent work has appeared in Contemporary Political Theory, Democratization, Policy Sciences, Representation and Constellations. JOHN M. MEYER is Professor and Chair in the Department of Politics at Humboldt State University. He has written and edited several books, including Engaging the Everyday: Environmental Social Criticism and the Resonance Dilemma (MIT, 2015) and is an editor of the journal Environmental Politics. LUIGI PELLIZZONI is a Professor in Sociology of the Environment and Territory in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pisa, Italy. He has recently authored Ontological Politics in a Disposable World: The New Mastery of Nature (Ashgate, 2015) and co-edited Neoliberalism and Technoscience: Critical Assessments (Ashgate, 2012). MARCEL WISSENBURG is Professor of Political Theory and Head of the Department of Public Administration and Political Science at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His latest book is the edited volume Political Animals and Animal Politics (Palgrave, 2014; co-edited with David Schlosberg). HUGH WARD is an emeritus professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. His recent empirical research focusses on the effects of autocracy and democracy on environmental outcomes, and on international environmental networks. DAMIAN WHITE is Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. He has published, among other books, Technonatures: Environments, Technologies, Spaces and Places in the Twenty-First Century (Wilfred Laurier Press, 2009) and The Environment, Nature and Social Theory: Hybrid Approaches (Palgrave Macmillian, 2015). He is presently working on a book called Climate Futures and the Just Transition.

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INTRODUCTION Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

It is not at all surprising that the Anthropocene proposal has resonated strongly within Environmental Political Theory (‘EPT’). The name EPT refers, loosely to be sure, to the work of an informal community of scholars, whose overlapping interests cannot be precisely defined—indeed, not all of them would even embrace the term (for an overview of EPT see Gabrielson et al. 2016). We use the label, non-definitionally, to identify and describe work in political theory characterized by concern for the ways human beings transform their environments. That concern typically is intertwined with an interest in how scientific inquiry into environmental phenomena bears on political considerations. EPT has hardly regarded science uncritically, but has recognized how the intricate relations between scientific practice and economic, social, and political power lead to a multiplicity of roles science can play, indeed, of what might count as science at all. Nonetheless, EPT scholars recognize that scientifically validated ideas enter into the legitimation of normative positions on how human beings ought to inhabit the planet, as individuals and collectively. This recognition makes the EPT community an ideal forum for the emerging conversation about the evolution of the Anthropocene from scientific hypothesis to epistemic framework for understanding relations between society and nature in a rich and nuanced way. The goal of this book is to advance that conversation by collecting new work that exemplifies EPT’s ability to relate normative thinking about the Anthropocene to a sophisticated appreciation of the relevant science. In this Introduction, before offering a preview of the chapters, we will provide an account of EPT, in order to elaborate why we think it is well suited to theorizing the Anthropocene. EPT is primed to see the Anthropocene as conceptually ‘thick.’ A ‘thick’ statement is one whose meaning as a description cannot be understood in the absence of its normative content (O’Neill 2007: 134). For example, the statement that climate change is dangerous implies at once some specific effects, and that those effects are bad. Thus, EPT sees how, in particular deployments of the Anthropocene idea, normative

2 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

interpretation and scientific description are inseparable. The conceptual thickness of the Anthropocene is visible in the debate over when it started. The leading candidate starting dates are differentiated by their conformity to scientific criteria they invoke (see Ellis 2018). EPT can illuminate the political connotations of each candidate, in part by exploring the implications of each set of criteria. This is not so much to choose the correct start date—something that is intelligible only on the basis of having chosen the correct criteria (Lewin and Macklin 2014). Rather, it is to suggest that EPT can help articulate and then distinguish among several normatively charged uses of the word ‘Anthropocene,’ so that we can see how different discussions of the Anthropocene refer to distinct complexes of meaning: if not distinct underlying material facts, at least distinct interpretations of them (see Trachtenberg in this volume). Thus, initial presentations of the Anthropocene idea dated it to the beginning of the industrial era in England (Crutzen 2002), or the ‘Great Acceleration’ in international trade in the wake of World War II (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007). However, the proponents of those start dates in effect presented social phenomena (industrialization, globalization) as facts of nature: their significance was that they accounted for the physical evidence cited as meeting the scientific criteria that the Earth System was entering a new, post-Holocene state. As theorists in sympathy with EPT observed, the normative meaning implicitly associated with the Anthropocene as it first appeared was that it is due to the aggregated activities of an undifferentiated humanity, which would thus be, as a whole, morally responsible for it. Closer attention to the social character of the social phenomena at work has led to proposals bearing very different normative meanings (see e.g., Malm and Hornborg 2014, Moore 2015, and Fremaux, White and Arrifin this volume). This line of thought has been influential within EPT. Conceptual disaggregation of human activity and recognition of difference among human agents prompts more specific attributions of responsibility: from this perspective the Anthropocene concept incorporates a critical stance toward capitalism and the specific groups who have benefited inequitably from the globalized economic processes that are transforming the planet so dramatically. (Hence Moore’s (2015) call that we talk about the ‘Capitalocene,’ not the Anthropocene.) Other proposed start dates, e.g. the dawn of the Atomic Age (Zalasiewicz et al. 2017); 1610 as a marker for the Columbian Exchange (Lewis and Maslin 2015); or the development of agriculture over 5,000 years ago (Ruddiman 2003) bring with them analogous opportunities for competing normative interpretation. Altogether, these controversies among alternative thick understandings of the Anthropocene demonstrate that adopting a political perspective opens up conceptual possibilities that may not be initially apparent in narrowly scientific presentations of the facts marshalled in evidence for this or that start date. From the perspective of EPT it is these thick meanings, rather than strictly the facts, that are salient; the goal of this volume is to reveal the range of meanings made available by current reflections on the Anthropocene within EPT. ***

Introduction 3

Our goal should be understood in light of a broad distinction that helps characterize the kind of work carried out under the banner of EPT. In general, EPT leans more toward political theory, rather than political philosophy (see Meyer, in this volume, for a discussion of EPT as political theory). This distinction has an important bearing on subjects like the Anthropocene, in which the relation between society and its physical setting is at the forefront. But the distinction is frequently overlooked, perhaps due to a decreased emphasis on it in academic practice. Nonetheless, it is worth noting the different emphases of the two endeavors, as a way of appreciating EPT’s sensitivity to conceptual thickness. Specifically, political theory tends to be more engaged with factual reality and empirical data, while political philosophy tends to be more occupied with considering political norms and concepts in the abstract, transcending the details of particular contexts. Thus, the former aims at ‘clarification of concepts’ in the interest of more accurate description of political phenomena (Raphael 1990: 5–21), whereas the latter is mainly a ‘reflection on, or the exposition of, political ideas’ (Strauss 1988: 12). Needless to say, political philosophers cannot disengage themselves completely from worldly events. Yet they generally feel less constrained by them, making political philosophy relatively ‘thin’ with respect to empirical content. And of course political theorists aim not just to describe the world but also to explain it (if not indeed to contribute to political change). Because their explanations attempt to reveal the normative stakes in politically relevant situations—for the people involved in them if not indeed for the theorists themselves—political theory typically yields relatively thick accounts that merge facts and norms. More specifically, political theory tends to seek explanations of facts that foreground normative considerations, in particular considerations of power and responsibility. In contrast to the kind of purely causal explanations of physical processes characteristic of natural science, political theory aims for explanations of social processes that expose the junctures most subject to individual or social choice—explanations that take account of structural conditions that might facilitate or limit choice, in particular among different agents. For it is the presence or absence of opportunities for choice that make those processes matters of normative judgement—and makes explanation in political theory a step towards critical evaluation. How does all this apply to EPT—which is to ask, what does it mean for political theory to be environmental? We can resolve these questions into this one: what is it that EPT theorizes? To answer ‘the environment’ only provokes further questions. Does that mean ‘nature?’ Not in any simple way; it did not take the advent of the Anthropocene to make clear that consideration of ‘nature’ from a political point of view immediately reconstitutes that object of enquiry into something more conceptually rich, something in which human beings ‘always already’ have a constitutive role. Rather than a putative entity, nature (which is notoriously ambiguously defined—see Williams 1980), it is more perspicuous to think of the object of EPT as a complex network of relations, what we shall call ‘socionatural relations.’ For what makes nature a political matter includes (though is certainly not exhausted by) the obvious fact that human beings gain survival from their physical environment through their membership in societies. Societies provide for their members’ survival in

4 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

virtue of myriad interactions with the environments in which they are enmeshed—both drawing from and transforming them, while being subject to their unceasing impingements all the while. These mutual influencings in effect blur the boundary between them—hence the shift from a language of society and nature as distinct entities to a language of socionatural relations. Nonetheless politics as such are located in the human moment of the human/non-human dialectic—as broad arrangements and more concrete decision-making processes through which society contributes, and likewise responds, to the ceaseless flux shading from itself to its surroundings. Though enmeshed in relations with the non-human, only humans act politically. EPT, then, has a central focus on socionatural relations conceived as the object of society’s politics. It is therefore easy to appreciate one way EPT is fundamentally engaged with normative concerns. The relations between society and its surroundings are shaped by the interplay of normative stances—sometimes shared, frequently contested—that society’s human members take towards the non-human beings and inorganic elements that constitute their physical environment. And naturally, people also take normative stances towards each other, as members of their social environment; these stances bear on the distribution of benefits and burdens associated with different positions in the socionatural relationship. Thus, EPT’s normative concerns are intensified by the fact that socionatural relations are embedded within social relations among human beings themselves, the justice of which can always be considered. Practitioners of EPT can explain the character of socionatural relations by reference to the normative appeals they observe at work within the human sphere, motivating human actions that contribute to the dynamic interconnections between society and nature. But they can also themselves affirm critical judgments regarding socionatural relations, based on their own normative commitments (which vary widely across the field of EPT scholars, as the varied contributions in this book attests). In attending to socionatural relations, that is, EPT perforce attends to the norms at their foundation, and is drawn to articulate norms by which they can be evaluated. It goes without saying that EPT is especially attuned to norms that are characteristically political—in particular, norms that have to do with just arrangements for, and application of, social power. Thus, representative works in EPT have closely examined the environmental implications of political subjects including, among many others, democracy (e.g. Doherty and de Geus 1996), citizenship (e.g. Dobson and Bell 2006), and particular political doctrines such as republicanism (e.g. Barry 2012). A recurring concern of EPT is the way political power is organized and deployed; this concern gains normative force both because political power can serve or frustrate environmental values, and because of the essentially normative questions of whether and how power is shared among those who wield it and those who bear its effects. Again, it is not hard to see why EPT is a profoundly normative enterprise, whose discourse is, in the sense we have seen, inherently thick. ***

Introduction 5

By broaching the topic of power we have returned to a point of intersection between EPT and the Anthropocene. For to claim that human activities have reset fundamental parameters of the Earth system is, in effect, to suggest that human beings have become that powerful. As Jeremy Davies holds, power is an indispensible category for our understanding of the Anthropocene; he argues that ‘any worthwhile account of [it] has to be underpinned by a historically nuanced account of how power relations operate, both across the earth system as a whole and between human beings’ (Davies 2016: 56). The foregoing overview demonstrates that EPT is positioned to account for the Anthropocene in just this way. It recognizes that the power required to disrupt planetary systems is more accurately characterized as social and socially differentiated than generically human and species-wide. That is, to register their geological impact, human actions cannot be viewed individually, but rather as aggregated by societies. That process of aggregation is not homogeneous, but subject to differences in social and economic power: there are vast differences among individuals in the degree of influence they exercise over the aggregate impact. As has been noted frequently the Anthropocene is not the work of an undifferentiated ‘anthropos’ consisting of all of humanity acting in concert; some people have disproportionate control over the ways society’s impacts are aggregated and felt. But the political character of the impact stems from its source in a complex of social processes, which are in turn modulated by political institutions. EPT brings the understanding that the social relations at work in those processes must be recognized as socionatural relations, linking the human realm to its physical setting. Thus it meets a conceptual agenda Davies identifies. As he puts it, ‘to understand the Anthropocene means widening the focus of sociopolitical critique and working toward an analysis of the power relations between geophysical actors, both human and nonhuman’ (2016: 62, emphasis in original). The Anthropocene is therefore readymade for analysis by EPT. Practitioners of EPT have long considered the effects of humans on nonhuman actors, and of anthropogenic environmental problems at global scale. It is a small step for the field to take up the notion that the planet is transitioning (or indeed has transitioned) to a different state, whether characterized in geological terms or in terms of Earth System Science, due to the vast scale of the systemic impacts of human activity. The recognition, associated with the Anthropocene proposal, that human societies have the power to fundamentally transform the Earth thus comes quite easily to EPT. As does this broad normative response: EPT offers normative reflection aimed at guiding attempts to exercise social control over this transformative power, either to direct it or to rein it in, through deliberate, self-conscious rearrangements of socionatural relations. That is how EPT conceives of politics in the Anthropocene. Notably, attention to this relational nexus that binds society and nature entails that EPT acknowledges the inseparability of the human and the non-human. It looks beyond human societies to their physical contexts, thereby ‘coming to terms with bumpy processes of planetary self-organization that interact with each other

6 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

and with human cultures’ (Connolly 2017: 33). Thus EPT transcends the ‘humansonly’ orientation found too often in social science; it grasps that what scientists are telling us about planetary change requires us to accept that history is more than a purely intra-human affair, hence that social analysis requires information about more than purely human interactions (Hamilton 2017, ix). EPT’s recognition of the Earth-shaping power now present in human hands, and its grasp of the centrality of non-human factors to humans’ wellbeing, both entail that the science of the Anthropocene is of particular importance to its normative project. EPT engages with scientific findings about the workings of Earth’s physical systems, and humans’ impact on them—from climate change and its countless effects, to the loss of biodiversity or the appearance of novel ecosystems. Granted, science has become ‘post-normal:’ it must deal with a high degree of uncertainty, and scientists’ own assumptions must be acknowledged, so that scientific results cannot be taken merely as neutral, objective observations of the bare facts about the world (see Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). But neither can scientific results be treated as merely one more way of representing reality that is no more valid than any other. EPT cannot afford a trivializing relativism that downplays rigorous empirical observation and validation by a community of researchers according to shared standards of enquiry. EPT draws on science for descriptions of phenomena it goes on to evaluate normatively; this becomes clear if we consider how incongruous an EPT that ignored science would be. As Clive Hamilton rightly argues, ‘whatever conclusions one might draw as to the ultimate causes and the solutions to the Anthropocene, an understanding of the basic science of it must come first’ (2017: 10). Yet it is equally incongruous to regard EPT as something like a conduit that transmits scientific results to a non-scientific scholarly community. EPT draws on Anthropocene science, but problematizes it, in two key ways. First, EPT explores its meanings for social life, in particular its normative implications. Thus, scientific descriptions properly serve as a departure for the normative discussions offered by EPT practitioners, and offer at least a provisional common ground around which debates among normative positions can be organized. We must stress the provisionality of the science, however: as we noted above, even the basic question of the start date remains controversial, with some researchers arguing that it would be best not to seek a formal answer to the start date question at all, but rather to only use the term Anthropocene informally, with a small ‘a’ (Ruddiman et al. 2015: 39; see also Davies 2016: 55, Castree 2018). Second, even were the science to be more settled, EPT has a longstanding wariness of ways that a mantle of scientific authority can lend some voices undue influence within decision-making processes that ought to be more robustly political, i.e. inclusive of many voices. In the case of the Anthropocene, it has been argued that scientific presentations of the Earth as an integrated system, with scientists seen as claiming the role of authoritative ‘voice of Nature,’ may contribute to an ultimately technocratic ‘planetary governmentality’ (Uhrqvist and Lövbrand 2014: 342). This fear has been reinforced by normative statements made by

Introduction 7

scientists who have been interpreted as calling for a non-democratic, managerial approach to the Anthropocene (e.g. Crutzen 2006: 23; Ellis and Haff 2009). Now Davies’ observation on this point is well taken; he notes that the association between Anthropocene science and an a-political reliance on expert management refers to relatively early publications, and misses the diversity of opinion that emerged in later discussions (2016: 55). Nonetheless the broader conceptual lesson remains: normative conclusions cannot gain validity immediately and univocally from strictly scientific authority. Practitioners of EPT take this lesson to heart. They acknowledge the role of scientific findings as a source of empirical content— crucial elements among the data about which they offer normative theories. But they understand that scientific claims do not imply normative conclusions directly; deriving those conclusions is the work they construct their theories to do. *** As we have indicated, the response to the Anthropocene within EPT is well underway. Though the field had considered global scale anthropogenic environmental change since it emerged in the 1990s, members of the EPT community began to address the Anthropocene explicitly as a group at their conference in 2013; essays from those sessions appeared in the journal Telos in 2015 (see Luke 2015). Edited volumes such as this one have started to appear, showing an increasing level of theoretical sophistication and diversity of points of view (see Hamilton et al. 2015, Polt and Wittrock 2018, Biermann and Lövbrand 2019). Papers on the Anthropocene have appeared in journals that feature work in EPT, and the two leading journals on the Anthropocene—The Anthropocene Review and Anthropocene—published work that reflects EPT’s concerns. And book-length treatments that have been actively discussed within EPT include monographs by Moore (2015), Hamilton (2017), Latour (2017), and Connolly (2017). Admittedly, the Anthropocene has enjoyed a wider vogue in recent years, across academic disciplines, and spreading out to popular culture. What specifically have EPT scholars contributed to the broader conversation—from their perspective, precisely what news does the Anthropocene bring? We can gain a sense of the broad topics the concept raises from the following list of questions. A sense of EPT’s approach emerges from a consideration of them, and they help frame the discussions the essays in this collection seek to join.  



Who is exactly the anthropos that the term Anthropocene conjures? Is it the entire human species, or some differentiated group within it? Can the Anthropocene be understood in terms of some generic human capacities, or must it be explained by specific social structures? For example, ought we speak of it as the ‘Capitalocene,’ i.e. as the product of the capitalist economic system? Is democracy suited to the task of confronting the challenges of the Anthropocene? Are the required trans-national actions—or, even more radical

8 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

 

 



systemic changes—feasible within existing or foreseeable democratic political institutions? Can there be a ‘good Anthropocene?’ If the transition out of the Holocene is now inevitable, is it possible to avoid bad outcomes? What standards would allow us to conceive of an Anthropocene future as good? Is naming a geological epoch after ourselves an exercise in realism or an act of megalomania? Are human beings now in command of the planet, or instead ought we acknowledge our diminished role in the face of planetary changes we have unleashed but cannot control? How should we conceptualize the kind of non-conscious agency instantiated by geological events or environmental processes? What does it mean to suggest that human beings are in political relationships with non-human entities? Does the Anthropocene, with its suggestion of pervasive human influence over the planet, show conclusively that ‘nature’ has ended? Is the suggestion that nature has always involved hybridity a way of obscuring the destructiveness of human agency? What language should we use and what images should we choose when representing the Anthropocene? What do they convey and what do they exclude? What is the best way to represent the Anthropocene in culture and the arts, so that citizens become aware of their ‘earthly’ condition?

As noted, these questions help identify the agenda for the ongoing explorations of the Anthropocene across a variety of disciplines. Once the Anthropocene was proposed by natural scientists, environmental historians became engaged and helped open up the conversation to scholars in other fields, including social theorists. The use of the concept in social theory has not waited on the formal designation of the Anthropocene in the strict geological sense; the term has come to refer more broadly to a period of socionatural history where human transformative powers have brought about a qualitative change in natural systems on a planetary level. But as it gained currency among theorists steeped in a critical awareness of the ways knowledge is produced, the Anthropocene has come to exemplify a challenge to knowledge production. For, it makes vivid the concern that neither the sciences nor culture are external observation points from which the world can be neutrally described, but rather are parts of the processes by which we operate within it (Renn and Scherer 2017: 15). The acceptance—including by scientists themselves (Brondizio et al. 2016)—of the absence of an authoritative source of knowledge about the Anthropocene entails the acceptance of multiple sources of relevant knowledge. As much as (if not more than) any other subject, therefore, in the spirit of ‘post-normal science’ the Anthropocene demands a blurring of the boundaries between disciplines, becoming itself a new framework for interdisciplinary research, moral reflection, and political action. The increasing inadequacy of single traditional disciplines to the intellectual task of encompassing the Anthropocene reflects the decreasing plausibility of a conceptual distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘society’ as separate entities. As we

Introduction 9

suggested above, EPT’s focus on socionatural relations has allowed its practioners to take on the complex entanglements responsible for the significant human impact on the planet, its ecosystems and living beings—from disruptions in the ecology of local landscapes to the global reach of climate change. The placement of human beings into a wider network of human and non-human connections has prompted questions about the centrality and extent of human influence. EPT seems to oscillate between the view that humanity has become powerless in the face of earthly phenomena (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2013, Fremaux in this volume), and the view that human agency still matters, and should be directed to averting socioecological collapse by creating a ‘safe operating space for humanity’ (Rockström 2009), or a ‘just and safe operating space for humanity’ (Raworth 2012), or even more optimistically, aiming toward a ‘good Anthropocene’ that deploys technological progress to successfully manage the socionatural relationship (The Breakthrough Institute 2015, Arias-Maldonado in this volume). For EPT, however, attention to socionatural relations encompasses the more traditional sociopolitical concern with the distribution of power among human beings; practitioners of EPT call attention to environmental disruptions as manifestations of the dynamics of power within society. As noted, Jason Moore has advocated for the term ‘Capitalocene,’ to make clear the specific responsibility of the capitalist system, and those who have benefited from it, for the harms associated with the Anthropocene (Moore 2015). But there are multiple ways to politicize the Anthropocene. For instance, William Connolly offers hope for a ‘politics of swarming’ that leads to a ‘general strike’ that brings together disparate social groups against neoliberal blindness (Connolly 2017), and Stacy Alaimo calls for new modes of representation that facilitate the production of ecologically aware citizens (Alaimo 2017). The need for a transnational approach is argued by Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil, and François Gemenne, who have called for a ‘gaia-politics’ (Hamilton, Bonneuil, and Gemenne 2015), though it is unclear whether this is a matter of working with existing institutions to advance towards earth-system governance (see Biermann 2014), or rather is tantamount to proposing a new global social contract that takes nature into account (see Williston 2015). And some theorists have called for an extension of politics to include the nonhuman realm; Donna Haraway, notably, has proposed the term ‘Chthulucene’ to encourage attention to the wider network of connections among humans and nonhumans. Even this sample of views lends credence to Eva Lövbrand’s and her collaborators’ call for ‘competing understandings of the entangled relations between natural and social worlds,’ in order to ‘extend the realm of the possible for environmental politics’ (Lövbrand et al. 2015: 212). Though EPT’s focus on socionatural relations sensitizes it to the powerful agency of the non-human revealed by the Anthropocene, at the same time it recognizes that the Anthropocene nonetheless calls for, indeed demands, human agency. For EPT grasps that human beings must face the Anthropocene with a collective response that is able to reshape socionatural relations in ways that are environmentally sustainable and morally enlightened. The researchers who first

10 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

brought the science of the Anthropocene to wide attention declared that human beings must come to accept their role as ‘stewards of the Earth,’ and act accordingly (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007: 618). EPT has asked what stewardship should be like—indeed whether its managerial connotations even suggest that it should be supplanted by a more robustly political vision of human beings’ relationship with their environment. A robust political vision sees that relationship as more than a technological matter: it is at once a relationship human beings have with their physical surroundings, and among themselves. Reshaping socionatural relations thus necessarily involves intra-human social relations as well. As people gain a fuller understanding of anthropogenic planetary change, including of its social, political, cultural, and economic drivers, the task of thinking through what human beings ought to do about it becomes ever more urgent. This normative vocation is something EPT accepts as its response to the Anthropocene. *** The chapters in this volume all represent EPT’s commitment to articulating a normative outlook on the Anthropocene. But together they also display the pluralism in the community of EPT scholars—as well as interactions that occurred among leaders in the field and younger scholars who have responded to their insights. Indeed the collection grew out of a workshop on ‘Reframing environmentalism? Environmental Political Theory in the Anthropocene’ held at the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research in Pisa in April, 2016; the chapters here reflect the exchanges among the participants during and after the workshop. The volume therefore provides a survey of the diversity of EPTs current engagement with the Anthropocene, and indicates diverse directions research will take in the future. The book is divided into four sections, with an Afterword by a senior member of the EPT community. Section 1 is devoted to the question of nature in the Anthropocene, that is, how the very idea of nature is transformed by the rise of geologicalcum-social accounts of the relation between nature and humanity. It contains three chapters. The first, by Anne Fremaux, of Queen’s University Belfast, addresses the philosophical proposition that nature has ended. She addresses theorists who hold that the Anthropocene idea gives decisive support, for better or worse, to the notion that the natural world has become so subject to human influence that the concept of an independent nature is no longer useful. She argues against this position, on the grounds that attention to socionatural relations is consistent with a recognition that nature escapes complete control, indeed complete understanding, by human beings. This fact is manifested by the ‘return of nature’ in the form of unmanageable natural hazards. ‘At the very time when nature is declared “dead,”’ she holds, natural processes are making their comeback in the form of … unintended consequences of the Western attempts to dominate nature.’ In the next chapter, Luigi Pellizzoni of the University of Pisa examines the ‘ontological turn’ within social theory, and argues that it may not support a univocal critique of the Anthropocene, as some theorists hope. The ontological turn

Introduction 11

links political domination to conceptual distinctions between types of entities, where one side of the dualism takes normative precedence over the other—e.g. mind/body; male/female; human/non-human. Overcoming domination is said to involve rejecting such dualisms in favor of a non-dualistic ontology. However, Pellizzoni provides examples of ways non-dualist insights from contemporary science have been enlisted to support existing structures of power—capitalist economic structures in particular. He concludes that the ontological turn can work on behalf of, as well as against, domination—an ambiguity he takes to be exemplified by the Anthropocene. For, he observes, to grasp that and how human actions interpenetrate planetary processes does not guarantee that that knowledge will not be used to advance the interests of some people over others’. The final chapter of Section 1 is by Susan Baker, of Cardiff University. She uses the idea of ‘novel ecosystems,’ or ecosystems that are generated by some form of anthropogenic disturbance (from landscape transformation, to species introduction, to climate change) to provide a nuanced analysis of the possibilities for nature in the Anthropocene. The presence of novel ecosystems across the globe can be taken as an indicator for the Anthropocene, i.e. for the degree to which humans have shaped nature. But while acknowledging that nature is subject to human influence, Baker argues that this a matter of degree. Thus, while novel ecosystems might be initiated by human activity, in some cases they can sustain themselves without human assistance—showing that nature can maintain a vitality whose outcomes are not determined by human intention. Thus, Baker insists that our understanding of socionatural relations in the Anthropocene be tempered with the recognition that nature has not been not completely subsumed into society, but retains its own autonomous dynamic. The three chapters in Section 2 consider a variety of ways the discipline of EPT might orient itself in its response to the Anthropocene. John Meyer, of Humbolt State University, begins the section by reflecting on different professional roles, or ‘vocations’ familiar to EPT scholars as political theorists. In the vocations of the traditional scholar, and the public intellectual, theorists might address different audiences, in different voices—but typically they conduct their work on their own. Meyer articulates an additional vocation EPT scholars might adopt: what he calls ‘broad interdisciplinary engagement,’ as members of multi-disciplinary teams. He argues that EPT scholars are well positioned to make vital contributions to the broadly interdisciplinary—i.e. inclusive of natural science, social science, and the humanities—exchanges a comprehensive understanding of the Anthropocene demands. In particular, they are able to help colleagues in disparate fields appreciate the nuance, and even indeterminacy, in crucial normative concepts that can easily be applied too simplistically in discussions of the Anthropocene. The second chapter is by Zev Trachtenberg, of the University of Oklahoma. Trachtenberg observes that the Anthropocene proposal encourages us to view the impacts of human activities on the Earth in geological terms—but that this outlook does not help explain the human processes that produce those impacts. He thus proposes that EPT adopt a more biological outlook, which he associates with the

12 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

so-called ‘early Anthropocene’ hypothesis offered by Ruddiman (2003). Trachtenberg appeals to the ecological and environmental idea of ‘“niche construction”—the idea that organisms reorganize their surroundings to fashion an environment that provides for their metabolic needs’—and offers an abstract account of politics as ‘the regulation of human society’s efforts to construct a niche.’ He then examines what it means to conceptualize politics in such naturalistic terms, concluding that while it is incorrect to think that any instance of niche construction by human beings is justified simply on the grounds that it is natural, nonetheless niche construction’s inevitability requires EPT to confront its normative implications. Section 2 concludes with the chapter by Nir Barak, of Hebrew University, who shows that EPT can approach some of the central questions about socionatural relations in the Anthropocene by considering the case of cities. Barak begins with an idea raised in the previous chapter: he notes that ‘by manifesting the transformative power that humans exercise over nature, cities embody the notion of niche construction in the Anthropocene.’ He then considers three theses about the relationship between cities and nature. The first two are familiar from critiques of dualism, and can be seen at work in current thinking in city planning; they are that cities and nature are interrelated (e.g. spatially and in terms of their effects on each other) and interdependent (e.g. in terms of their mutual shaping of each other). But Barak insists as well that cities and nature are experientially and qualitatively different; as he puts it, we distinguish ‘between the ‘urban jungle’ of New York City and the ‘natural’ Amazon jungle.’ This is not to retreat into dualism; to the contrary, it is to ensure that a proper balance be maintained between considerations of nature and considerations of politics when thinking of urban policy in particular, and the Anthropocene more generally. The third section of the book explores how the moral response to the Anthropocene can be complex, if not indeed ambiguous. It begins with an historical study by Yohan Ariffin, of the Université de Lausanne. He situates theoretical responses to the Anthropocene within a long tradition—dating to Antiquity—of ambivalence toward civilization. This ambivalence is expressed in contrasting treatments of the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to human beings, along with the technical skills to improve the conditions of their lives. Whereas the Sophists celebrated Prometheus for the benefits of civilization, the Cynics viewed him as a corruptor, who deprived human beings of their natural self-sufficiency. Ariffin sees echoes of these views in contemporary debates between ‘techno-optimists,’ who hold that problems associated with the Anthropocene can be overcome by refining the technologies that caused them, and ‘techno-pessimists,’ who hold that technology must be reined in to prevent further damage. He concludes by presenting a new promethean figure that expresses contemporary ambivalence toward the civilization that has produced the Anthropocene: the ‘Governator,’ ‘half terminator of nature energized by fossil fuels, and half governor of a nature gone mad by his own labours.’

Introduction 13

In the second chapter, Simon Hailwood, of the University of Liverpool, examines a moral stance he sees in certain accounts of the Anthropocene. He is concerned with what he calls ‘Strong Anthropocene Advocacy.’ This view holds that human influence on nature is now so pervasive that it is simply false that anything like ‘pure’ nature remains, and therefore it follows that moral concern for the environment cannot reasonably be motivated by an ideal of autonomous nature. The absence of pure nature leaves anthropocentric considerations as the only reasonable basis for environmental policy. Hailwood contends that this position is built on a strawman fallacy: the view it rejects (‘wilderness fanaticism’) is a weak position that few actually hold, so showing that human beings have had wide ranging impacts across the planet does not actually support that anthropocentric conclusion. Therefore, he rejects the notion that the Anthropocene as a scientific proposal implies ‘that traditional environmentalism be muscled out of the way, rather than renewed in the light of developing and darkening environmental circumstances.’ The third chapter of Section 3 is by Manuel Arias-Maldonado, of the University of Málaga. He addresses the so-called ‘good Anthropocene’ idea—the view, associated with ‘ecomodernism,’ that it is possible, through technological innovation, for human beings to cope with the dangers posed by wide-scale planetary change, and organize their societies in ways that both protect elements of nature and provide for flourishing human lives. Critics of the idea charge that a good Anthropocene is a contradiction in terms—they hold that the changes the Anthropocene is bringing will make good human lives impossible, and in any event that the ecomodernist reliance on technology will only make matters worse. Arias-Maldonado distinguishes between the ecomodernist vision of a good Anthropocene and the idea of a good Anthropocene in itself. Though the ecomodernist vision might be rejected in light of the particular political values that inform it, the possibility remains of framing some other vision, based on more compelling values. The alternative, Arias-Maldonado notes, is despair at the inevitability of a bad Anthropocene; he argues that the hopefulness associated with the good Anthropocene idea offers greater promise for political change. The final section of the book takes a more pragmatic turn, by presenting several discussions of practical responses to the Anthropocene—nonetheless informed by theoretical considerations. The first chapter is by Marcel Wissenberg, of Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen. He examines geo-engineering: the deliberate intervention in planetary processes for the purpose of altering the climate (e.g. by fertilizing the oceans with iron to spur the growth of algae in order to remove CO2 from the atmosphere). Wissenberg observes that geo-engineering is necessarily a problem for political theory, because it would involve a political—state- or indeed multi-state-based—effort to implement. Though noting that there are certainly other values relevant to geo-engineering, he provides a nuanced analysis of freedom as a foundational political value in order to assess the impacts geo-engineering might have on freedom at the level of states and individuals, as well as at the abstract level of humanity as a whole. Paradoxically, on Wissenberg’s view, the promise geo-engineering holds, of a degree of

14 Manuel Arias-Maldonado and Zev Trachtenberg

control over nature that increases freedom, is paired with the ‘nightmare’ that, if it works, ‘it will in one respect reduce the effective freedom of both states and individuals, since large-scale cooperation is required, in other words: it entails self-binding.’ The next chapter, by Marit Hammond of Keele University and Hugh Ward of the University of Essex, argues that the arts have a crucial role to play as society faces the Anthropocene. For Hammond and Ward, the complexity of socionatural relations under Anthropocene conditions further complicates the social pursuit of sustainability. They hold that a ‘key foundation of sustainability is therefore an open, critical discourse continually pushing against the boundaries of established ways of thinking.’ The institutional setting appropriate to that kind of discourse is deliberative democracy—a political process which does not simply aggregate citizens’ preferences, but gives citizens the opportunity to reflect on and revise their views of what is best for society. However, they note that two capacities are crucial to deliberative democracy’s success: ‘empathetic listening, including to the voice of nature, as expressive of ecological concern,’ and ‘critical contestation of entrenched ways of thinking.’ Hammond and Ward go on to argue that a vital, independent arts scene serves as an arena where citizens can hone those capacities; the arts thereby can play an essential role in facilitating the kinds of civic deliberations sustainability in the Anthropocene demands. The third chapter in the section is by Damian White, of the Rhode Island School of Design. White contends that discussions about how to respond to the Anthropocene have become ‘stuck,’ because they have been reduced to two irreconcilable options: ‘embrace a technocratic and centrist vision of a good Anthropocene or consign ourselves to the unfolding of the apocalyptic Anthropocene.’ White rejects the notion that these are the only choices. Discovering alternative ways of imagining the future, however, will require a much more particularized approach than is currently deployed. ‘Provincializing’ and ‘pluralizing’ discussions of the Anthropocene, White argues, would enable finer-grained analyses that reflect the views of a fuller range of people than are currently represented, allowing a ‘much broader and much more plural set of understandings [to] emerge around modernity, capitalism and what it might mean to conceptualize post-Holocene futures.’ But the transition to the future must involve the design of the physical and social systems that embody socionatural relations. Thus White concludes by discussing possibilities for critical and participatory design processes, which could allow for the formulation and implementation of these more plural visions. The last chapter in the book is an Afterword, by John Barry, of Queen’s University Belfast. Barry is a pioneer in EPT; since the early 1990s he has published several landmark books and dozens of path-breaking articles that have helped define the field. He has brought to EPT a critical understanding of political economy, influenced by Marxist thought, as well as a deep appreciation for the republican tradition in political theory; he is closely associated with the strand in EPT known as ‘green republicanism.’ In addition to his scholarly work Barry has been directly engaged in political life in Northern Ireland, as an activist with the Green Party, and as an elected official.

Introduction 15

Barry’s Afterword reflects his involvement with the intellectual interaction this book reflects; he was a co-organizer of the 2016 workshop at which the initial versions of the papers were presented. He provides an overview of the range of views the chapters express that is grounded in his close familiarity with the wider discussions in EPT that served as a backdrop for the authors’ arguments. But it is firmly grounded in his own profoundly considered viewpoint, according to which responses to the Anthropocene must orient themselves with respect to capitalism. The ‘distinctly political debate around the Anthropocene,’ he holds, is ‘between those who wish to also preserve capitalism (either on normative or strategic grounds) and those for whom global capitalism needs to be overcome or radically transformed.’ Barry interprets the stance offered in each chapter in this light. His perspective helps identify areas of shared and disparate thinking among the chapters—and from the interplay of ideas about the Anthropocene he concludes that ‘what needs to be the object of our attention is how to manage, control and transform not nature but rather our relationship/s to nature.’ Through his comments Barry thus contributes an additional distinctive voice to the discussion of the central topic of this book.

References Alaimo, S. (2017). ‘Your Shell on Acid: Material Immersion, Anthropocene Dissolves.’ In Anthropocene Feminism, edited by Richard Grusin. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press. Barry, J. (2012). The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon-Constrained World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Biermann, F. (2014). ‘The Anthropocene: A Governance Perspective’. The Anthropocene Review, 1(1): 57–61. Biermann, F. and Lövbrand, E. (eds.). (2019). Anthropocene Encounters. New Directions in Green Thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming). Bonneuil, C. and Fressoz, J-B. (2013). The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us. London & New York: Verso. Brondizio, E.S. et al. (2016). ‘Re-conceptualizing the Anthropocene: A Call for Collaboration.’ Global Environmental Change, 39: 318–327. Castree, N. (2018). ‘The ‘Anthropocene’ in Global Change Science: Expertise, the Earth, and the Future of Humanity»’ In Anthropocene Encounters, edited by F. Biermann and E. Lövbrand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming). Connolly, W. (2017). Facing the Planetary. Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming, Durham & London: Duke University Press. Crutzen, P.J. (2002). ‘Geology of Mankind.’ Nature, 415: 23. Crutzen, P.J. (2006). ‘Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulphur Injections. A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?’ Climatic Change, 77(3–4): 211–219. Davies, J. (2016). The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland: University of California Press. Dobson, A. and Bell, D. (eds.). (2006). Environmental Citizenship. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Doherty, B. and de Geus, M. (eds.). (1996). Democracy and Green Political Thought. London: Routledge. Ellis, E. and Haff, P. (2009). ‘Earth Science in the Anthropocene: New Epoch, New Paradigm, New Responsibilities»’ Eos, 90(49): 473–474. Ellis, E. (2018). A Very Short Introduction to the Anthropocene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Funtowicz, S.O. and Ravetz, J.R. (1993). ‘Science for the Post-Normal Age.’ Futures, 25(7): 739–755. Gabrielson, T., Hall, C., Meyer, J.M., and Schlosberg, D., (eds.). (2016). Introduction. In Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hamilton, C. (2017). Defiant Earth. The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Polity. Hamilton, C.; Bonneuil, C. and Gemenne, F. (2015). ‘Thinking the Anthropocene»’ In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, edited by Clive Hamilton et al. Abingdon: Routledge. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lewin, J. and Macklin, M. (2014). ‘Marking Time in Geomorphology: Should We Try to Formalise an Anthropocene Definition?’, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, 39:, 133–137. Lewis, S.L. and Maslin, M.A. (2015). ‘Defining the Anthropocene.’ Nature, 519: 171–180. Lövbrand, Eva et al. 2015. ‘Who Speaks for the Future of Earth? How Critical Social Science Can Extend the Conversation on the Anthropocene.’ Global Environmental Change, 32: 211–218. Luke, T.W. (2015). ‘Introduction: Political Critiques of the Anthropocene.’ Telos, 2015(172): 3–14. Malm, A. and Hornborg, A. (2014). ‘The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative’. The Anthropocene Review, 1: 62–69. Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. O’Neill, J., (2007). Markets, Deliberation and Environment. New York: Routledge. Polt, R. and Wittrock, J. (eds.). (2018). The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene. London: Rowan & Littlefield. Raphael, D. (1990). Problems of Political Philosophy. London: Macmillan. Raworth, K. (2012). A Safe and Just Space for Humanity: Can We Live Within the Doughnut? Oxford: Oxfam. Renn, J. and Scherer, B. (eds). (2017). Das Anthropozän. Zum Stand der Dinge, 2nd edition. Matthes & Seitz: Berlin. Rockström, J. et al. (2009). ‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.’ Nature, 461: 472–475. Ruddiman, W. (2003). ‘The Anthropocene.’ Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 25 (41): 45–68. Ruddiman, W. et al. (2015). ‘Defining the Epoch We Live In: Is a Formally Designated ‘Anthropocene’ a Good Idea?’ Science, 348(6230): 38–39. Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. and McNeill, J. (2007). ‘The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?’ Ambio 36(8): 614–621. Strauss, L. (1988). What is Political Philosophy? Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. The Breakthrough Institute. (2015). ‘A Good Anthropocene? Competing Visions of Our Environmental Future’. 14 June. Available at: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/dia logue/can-we-have-a-good-anthropocene. Uhrqvist, O. and Lövbrand, E. (2014). ‘Rendering Global Change Problematic: The Constitutive Effects of Earth System Research in the IGBP and the IHDP’. Environmental Politics, 23(2): 339–356. Williams, R. (1980). ‘Ideas of Nature.’ In Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso. Williston, B. (2015). The Anthropocene Project. Virtue in the Age of Climate Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zalasiewicz et al. (2017). ‘The Working Group on the Anthropocene: Summary of Evidence and Interim Recommendations. ’Anthropocene, 19: 55–60.

PART I

Understanding nature in the Anthropocene

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1 THE RETURN OF NATURE IN THE CAPITALOCENE A critique of the ecomodernist version of the ‘good Anthropocene’1 Anne Fremaux

There are countless examples of writings today that bemoan, celebrate, or just try to adjust to the new regime of truth according to which nature is ‘dead.’ The recent proposal to rename our geological epoch ‘The Anthropocene,’ or ‘Age of Humans’, is, for some theorists, another attempt to claim the ‘end of nature.’ ‘Nature is gone,’ says Erle Ellis in an article eloquently entitled ‘Stop trying to save the Planet’ …: ‘[w]e now live in the Anthropocene’ (2009). In the ecomodernist narrative, the Anthropocene or new ecological era is not an event to be lamented and feared but rather ‘an opportunity for humans to finally come into their own’ (Hamilton 2015: 233).2 When Bill McKibben spoke about ‘the end of nature’ in his eponymous 1989 book, he had a few concrete developments in mind (which he lamented): for instance, global warming and ozone layer depletion that rendered extinct the idea of nature as something absolute and separate from us (1989: 54). The ‘end of nature’, as he saw it, was the end of nature as we used to know it. That was the end of representation—of an independent, autonomous nature, free from human influence and impact.3 In the same vein, when Carolyn Merchant (1980) famously evoked ‘the death of nature,’ she meant the change of paradigm from nature understood in a vitalistic and organicist way to a basic mechanic and reductionist view. Probably neither McKibben, nor Merchant would have ever thought that the metaphoric ‘abolition of nature’ would become an ontological signifier in the era of the Anthropocene and that it would even have, for some, positive implications. Indeed, what is at stake, now, is not ‘the supposed end of nature as an idea or symbol…[but] nature’s reality’ (Arias-Maldonado 2014: 4). What does ‘the end of nature’ in the Anthropocene mean? In a soft version, it says that ‘(i) natural processes can no longer be defined as independent from human influence, and [that] (ii) natural forms and processes have been influenced by humans to a very high degree’ (ibid: 5). The close intertwinement between nature

20 Anne Fremaux

and culture and the fact that human actions influence, even on a large scale, natural processes is nothing that traditional environmentalists would deny. But the idea that nature is ‘dead’ goes further. First of all, it ignores the fact that rather than being neutrally ‘dead,’ nature is rather being ‘destroyed’ and ‘devastated’ by identifiable social processes such as class relations, technologies, growth logics, etc. (Moore 2015). But more philosophically, ecomodernists such as Ellis deny nature’s own agency in the new techno-postmodern hybridist socio-ecological compound offered by postmodern thinkers.4 Humans’ cultural and technological mediations are the grand winners of the ‘good Anthropocene.’5 As Pellizzoni playfully says (in this volume): ‘[a]s happens in George Orwell’s Animal Farm; some agents seem to be more agential than others.’6 However, the ‘ecological crisis’ itself and all its material components (the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap, rising temperatures and sea levels, the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, species extinction, pollution, etc.), show that nature is not entirely subsumed within the human power. As Adorno says, ‘objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder’ (1973: 5). This mysterious ‘leftover’ is maybe what some postmoderns call ‘Gaia’ (Stengers 2015; Latour 2014). Gaia, says Hamilton, juts through into our world as ‘an intruder, a trespasser, a gate crasher’ who ‘is crashing the party [of progress]’ (2014). The ecomodernist view seems to be flawed, even from the postmodern perspective it sometimes wants to embrace. Indeed, in socio-constructivism, nature is seen as a relativist concept and, therefore, should be open to social discussion (social consensus). However, ecomodernists do not replace the old single concept of (pristine) nature by the ‘Contested Natures’ dear to postmoderns (Macnaghten and Urry 1998). They do not argue for increased democratic debates on environmental issues and the entering of the Anthropocene in the agonistic political realm (for instance on the issue of global and environmental justice). On the contrary, the new ecomodernist and constructivist socio-ecological regimes are rather ‘antidemocratic’ and ‘technocratic’ (mandating scientists to decide which arrangements are to be elected), ‘conservative’ (privileging the current capitalistic management of nature), and ‘Universalist.’ Indeed, the Anthropocene, as Arias-Maldonado (2016) says, is heading inevitably towards ‘the convergence of different societies around the Western, capitalistic-driven model of socionatural relations’ considered by the author as a ‘universal impulse’ (7). The teleological conception of history which considers (neo)liberalism as ‘the end of history’ (Fukuyama 1992) does not take into account the peoples on Earth who suffer from eco-social destructions induced by capitalist modes of production and consumption, or environmental and social movements that resist the capitalistic appropriation of the world (grassroots movements, Indigenous struggles, antiextractivist Buen Vivir movement, Navdanya movement for peace and democracy in India, etc.). The ecomodernist version of a ‘good Anthropocene’ driven by an undifferentiated global subject (‘the Anthropos’) and heading toward the European or American unsustainable norms of production and consumption7 is a typical modernist and Western-centric interpretation of history that forgets the billions of people

Return of nature in the Capitalocene 21

who still live in severe poverty lacking elementary goods such as food, clean water, basic medical care, or shelter to survive.8 Moreover, it assumes that all humans are equally implicated and equally affected by the situation. Bonneuil (2015), for instance, criticises the dominant narrative and ‘view from nowhere’ that put forward an undifferentiated biological entity and geological agent (‘humanity’), uniformly concerned or even implicitly guilty for the mechanisms that gave rise to the advent of the Anthropocene. Some, like the historian and sociologist Jason W. Moore (2015, 2016) argue that the Anthropocene is not the geology of a species but rather the geology of a system of power, profit and re/production, namely capitalism, and as such, should be renamed ‘Capitalocene.’ For Malm and Hornborg (2014), the Anthropocene is not a scientific story but the index of capital accumulation, of privileged resource consumption, of differentiated and unevenly distributed environmental impacts. According to these views, this is the same system (capitalism) that has produced the devastating ecological effects that typify the Anthropocene and social inequalities that characterize our contemporary world. As Newell and Paterson put it: ‘[w]hat makes [anthropogenic climate change] a particularly tricky issue to address is that it is the people that will suffer most that currently contribute less to the problem, i.e., the poor in the developing world’ (2010: 7). The ecomodernist program does not only deny natural limits and the capacity of the environment to absorb the by-products (waste, green house gases, etc.) of advanced societies; it also denies the burden of responsibility carried by the Western world for the ecological plight. Contrary to the need for accountability, eco-constructivists,9 also called ‘ecopragmatists’ or ‘neo-environmentalists’, urge us to produce the technological innovations necessary to adapt to the new situation without changing the usual way of doing (what can be called the ‘business as usual’ scenario). They advocate the decoupling from nature in order to ‘save’ it; celebrate the ‘end of nature’ as well as ‘the death of (romantic) environmentalism.’ They recommend more technology, and especially a ‘neoliberal conservation’ guided by economic rationality and humancentered managerialism’ (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). This agenda is opposed to the challenge of postmodernity,10 which as Michel Serres frames it, demands conceiving of nature in intersubjective terms: not as an enemy to be conquered but as a partner worthy of respect and recognition; in effect, a declaration of peace between the human species and the natural world (Stierstorfer 2003: 180). The novelty and ‘originality’ of ecomodernism, compared to the former tenets of ecological modernization, stem from the alliance it promotes between green capitalism and postmodern discourses on the ‘end of nature.’ Ecomodernists have indeed seized the opportunity of the new post-natural hybridist narrative and the anthropocentric world picture offered by the ‘Anthropocene,’ to foster traditional techno-socio-capitalistic arrangements, presented as the roadmap for the future. This is a typical techno-optimist position, according to which ‘technological innovation incentivized by capitalism and the free market (coupled with a willingness to leave the planet), means that we can continue with our energy-intensive, consumer-intensive, globalized ways of life and socio-economic orders indefinitely’

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(Barry 2016: 109). This school of thinking includes authors such as Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger, Bjørn Lomborg and Rasmus Karlsson. ‘One way of describing this form of thinking is ‘Cornucopian,’ understood to mean the confident belief that technological advances and scientific knowledge and its application will continue to deliver high levels of material goods and services, material abundance now and in the future’ (Barry 2016: ibid.). By fostering such a techno-optimistic agenda, these thinkers ignore 1) the nonreductionist conception of Earth brought about by Earth Science System (ESS) and post-normal science (Ravetz 2006), both of which show the unpredictability of Earth’s trajectory in the Anthropocene; 2) the postmodern warnings about the ‘intrusion of Gaia’ (Stengers, Latour); 3) the deconstructive critiques of human exceptionalism in the post-nature connectionist and relational narrative, or ‘the blurring of boundaries’ between humans and nonhumans (Latour, Haraway, Braidotti, etc.). While uncritically appropriating insights of the hypermodern narrative of control11 and of the postmodern narrative of hybridity (‘nature is us’), the ecomodernist narrative and the unapologetic picture of a ‘good Anthropocene’ it offers, remain entirely situated in the prejudices of modernity. These prejudices include, among other ideas, a blind faith in technology,12 a ‘domination of nature’ narrative, and a dualism by which nature is seen as pristine or as not existing at all. Ecomodernists could, therefore, be renamed ‘mostmoderns,’13 a provocative appellation aiming at denouncing the postmodern claims of ecomodernism while they remain highly (un-reflexively in my opinion) modern. This chapter argues that to acknowledge the increasing entanglement of nature and culture around us—and inside us—does not require us to abandon the analytic distinction between aspects deriving from human societies (the construction of nature by human labor and technologies) and those arising from nature’s ‘nonidentity’ (otherness). The affirmative ‘identity thinking’ characteristic of both hypermodernity and constructivist postmodernism (‘nature is dead’) is an attempt to reduce the other to the self, the object to its representation, the making to the knowing and, in the capitalistic framework, the particularities of nature to abstract forms of monetary exchange. It represents, therefore, a source of dominating hubris (Adorno 1973; Horkheimer and Adorno 2002), a philosophical anthropocentric fallacy and a justification for destructive practices. As White et al. say, summarizing the position of eco-Marxism on this issue: ‘Humans viewed from the perspective of geohistory over time are indeed more one force bobbing on the sea than a producer of socionatures’ (2016: 139). Against the further capitalist exploitation that the ecomodernist version of the ‘good Anthropocene’ promotes, I argue that the repeated failures of ecological modernization, ecomodernism, and environmental managerialism should be an opportunity to re-think our place on the planet. Particularly, it should urge us to accept the fragility and vulnerability of the human species in the face of complex and unpredictable natural phenomena. The great challenge that lies ahead us is not the further humanization of the planet nor its mastery but rather the further humanization of humanity and the mastery of our mastery. The current ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore 2015, 2016), where the global ecological crisis

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is not so much the humanization but rather the capitalization of the earth (Barry 2007) leads us to unforeseen and unpredictable catastrophes, spelled out here as ‘the return of nature.’

ESS, ecomodernism, and geoengineering: the (hyper)modern narrative of mastery and control From the perspective of ESS, our planet is going through a huge change, leaving behind the thousands of years of exceptional stability of climate and sea levels that characterized the Holocene, to enter a new epoch of uncertainty and significant transformations. The ESS approach puts forward processes such as global warming, biodiversity loss or the prevalence of artificial organic molecules throughout the world that push the Earth System towards tipping points at which more or less stable systems will shift to a different state, or be disrupted altogether. Although the very idea of ‘tipping point’ comes from the analytical model of systems theory, this approach considers feedback mechanisms inherent in forces that escape our analytical models, and sudden collapse thresholds of ecosystems as carrying unpredictable consequences that will change the conditions of life on Earth. The ‘Anthropocene’ is, therefore, bringing about fears that the planetary system is leaving the stable trajectory that characterized the Holocene (Folke et al. 2010). From the ESS perspective, traditional answers such as Promethean science or ‘business as usual’ modes of thinking and doing (e.g. carboniferous capitalism) are ‘now dangerously obsolete… [They are] an invitation to impending catastrophe’ (Sardar 2010: 441). Modernity’s key concepts can no longer apply. Science and technology no longer open a path of linear and unidirectional progress, where uncertainties can be managed and mitigated by technology and science. Humans are no longer able to predict the future ramifications and consequences of their actions. The nonmastery of their technological ‘mastery’ leads to the introduction of indeterminacy at the very core of nature, not only because of what is involved in any human action (Smith 2011: 139) but also because of a technological power that surpasses humans’ perceptive abilities. In modern capitalist societies humans are not able to control their control of nature, nor can they control their own lack of control. Therefore, from the ESS outlook, the Anthropocene is an event to be lamented and feared rather than to be celebrated (Hamilton 2015). Considered as an ecological predicament, the Anthropocene shows the structural limitation of our knowledge: it is better seen as ‘nonknowledge,’ or rational ignorance linked to uncertainties and ontological indeterminacy. But further, it also displays the helplessness of already accumulated scientific knowledge to trigger necessary changes.14 We have entered a world of limits: a material world of ecological limits but also a symbolic world of scientific limits (what post-normal science calls the ‘unknown unknowns’ (Ravetz 2006)). However, and in spite of the warnings contained in the very notion of Anthropocene, key proponents of the concept—or ‘Anthropocenologists’ as Bonneuil and Fressoz (2016: 48–49) label them—assume that governing ecological

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limits under a condition of emergency will require more technology (possibly including large-scale technologies),15 better management of the Earth, and the guidance of scientists and engineers to mitigate the situation. This narrative is what Bonneuil calls the ‘tale of scientific shepherds and green geo-technologies’ (2015: 23). Anthropocenologists, more or less enthusiastically, welcome the Anthropocene as being ‘the beginning of a new geological era ripe with human-directed opportunity’ (Ellis 2012). We can find here Ellis (2009, 2011, 2012), Crutzen (2002), Crutzen and Steffen (2003), Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill (2007), Crutzen and Schwägerl (2011). All of them offer a ‘science-driven vision of Earth stewardship’ (Lövbrand et al. 2009) where humans are sometimes crudely presented as Masters or demiurges of the planet. For instance, in a famous piece co-authored by Crutzen and the German environmental journalist Christian Schwägerl, we can read: ‘[t]he long-held barriers between nature and culture are breaking down. It’s no longer us against ‘Nature.’ Instead, it’s we who decide what nature is and what it will be’ (2011; my emphasis). Astrophysicist Lowell Wood, likewise, embraces the prospect of geoengineering: ‘we’ve engineered every other environment we live in – why not the planet?’ (quoted in Hamilton et al. 2015: 9). For Marc Lynas, author of The God Species, ‘[n]ature no longer runs the Earth. We do. It’s our choice what happens here’ (2011: 8). Ellis proclaims that ‘we will be proud of the planet we create in the Anthropocene’ (2011; my emphasis). Stewart Brand’s statement is probably the acme of this Promethean vision: ‘[w]e are as gods, and we have to get good at it’ (1968). It seems obvious that those eminent scientists and ecomodernists, some of them being members of the Breakthrough Institute,16 make a confusion between ‘human-induced planetary change’ and ‘human planetary control,’ thinking that the extent to which we alter the planet gives us control of it. In their defence, those statements could also mean that our largely unconscious global environmental destruction demands now that we, consciously this time (under the stewardship of global managers and experts), ‘manage’ the planet. Contrary to those views that praise the control or ‘management’ of the planet, reflexive ESS and postnormal science (Ravetz 2006) show that the consequences of scientific and industrial developments are a set of uncontrollable and unforeseen large-scale risks and hazards (‘manufactured risks’). As Beck, says, ‘we are living in the age of side effects’ (Beck et al. 1994: 175; original emphasis.). Ignoring this gloomy outlook or welcoming it in the same way as Latour encourages us to ‘love [our] monsters’ (2012), ecomodernists greet the new ecological era as ‘an optimistic view toward human capacities and the future’ (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). Hamilton (2015) compares the ecomodernist narrative of the ‘Good Anthropocene’ to a theodicy intended to make us believe, like in Voltaire’s caustic tale on Enlightenment’s optimism, that ‘everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’ (Candide, ou l’optimisme, 1759).17 Especially, the ‘good Anthropocene’ argument aims to convince us that further technological innovation, further undifferentiated economic growth, further urbanization, further population growth,18 etc. will save us from the predicament these processes have created. This view is similar to a blissful invitation to continue the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario and the modernization

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process that lie at the root of the ecological predicament. Especially, ecomodernists’ statements about the ‘good/great Anthropocene’ reflect a misreading of the warning signals reflexive ESS is sending concerning the alteration of the planet’s selfregulation dynamic that has been occurring over the last two to three centuries. The concept of the earth systems’ resilience, dear to ecomodernists and neoconservationists,19 fails to acknowledge that it is not nature’s resilience which is put into question insofar as the earth (which does not need to be a ‘home for humans’) will continue on its route, but the very survival of human and non-human life on the planet, or in other words, the resilience of the biosphere. If resilience means for ecomodernists that the natural world will always offer humans a welcoming home, this is a tragic mistake. As Hamilton puts it, ‘[t]hroughout its geo-history the planet has never “bounced back” from one epoch to the previous one. The Earth has now crossed a point of no return; its great cycles have changed, the chemical compositions of air and ocean have been altered in ways that cannot be undone. By the end of the century it will very likely be hotter than it has been for 15 million years’ (2015: 237). Denying the adverse consequences of the Anthropocene, ecomodernists have ‘instate[d] an “anthropodicy” in which human-directed progress takes the place of God’ (Hamilton, 2015: 234). Western technologically-fitted humans, like gods, are capable of transcending natural limits: it is not nature that rules over man but the man who rules over nature. If Crutzen and Schwägerl deny that the Anthropocene, understood as a name which ‘highlights the immense power of our intellect and our creativity, and the opportunities they offer for shaping the future’ is ‘another sign of human hubris,’ (Crutzen and Schwägerl 2011), for Arias-Maldonado ‘a bit of prometheanismus seems hard to avoid’ (2012: 70). Those discourses reflect the old dream of mastery typical of pre-reflexive modernity. Indeed, by closely associating the progress of humanity to the developments in science and technology, they are still ‘largely trapped inside the enlightenment tale of progress as human control over a passive and ‘dead’ nature that justifies both colonial conquests and commodity economies’ (Plumwood 2007: 1). But because of the technological level now achieved, the modernist logic is pushed to its upper limits and becomes a hypermodern narrative where humans do not aim at becoming ‘like masters and possessors of nature’ but rather real demiurgic (geological) forces unable, however, to anticipate the implications of their actions. As Hamilton quips: ‘[t]he Moderns are convinced it’s a party with no end. The eco-Moderns go further. ‘Yes, yes,’ they agree, ‘we have entered the Anthropocene, but that is just another phase of the party, which can only get better.’ They have a name for the next phase of the party, uniting two words we thought would never be put together, the ‘good Anthropocene’’(Hamilton 2014). For ecomodernists, the so-called ‘natural world’ has been progressively so shaped by human activities, through technoscientific progress, that the otherness and exteriority of nature have almost disappeared: we have entered a ‘post-nature’ era (which needs, in turn, ‘post-environmentalist’ thinkers). The concept of ‘postnature’ means here that the planet has been literally—not metaphorically-socially

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constructed. This hypermodern narrative still conceives nature as an ontological exterior (pristine?) reality that humans have managed progressively to conquer until its quasi-final disappearance. The epistemological separateness of nature from humans, as per the nature-culture distinction, leads to its empirical destruction. The ‘end of nature,’ here, is an ongoing process and not a philosophical a priori (as it is the case in postmodern discourses which consider that nature isolated from humans has never existed). For ecomodernists, and despite their attempt to adopt a postmodern hybridist narrative, nature is still an amenable external matter waiting for its anthropization. As Ellis says, our task is to ‘shoulder the mantle of planetary stewardship’ (2012). The conquest of the earth can go on: the geopower will now regulate the globe’s thermostat and reconfigure the living beings on the planet.20 Hyper-ecomodernists find in the postnatural narrative a precious ally to prepare the public for more technological fixes and capitalistic innovations: as AriasMaldonado warns us: ‘[r]eality will be much more mixed and hybrid than its current representations’ (2012: 82). The post-environmentalist theory works like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more nature is destroyed by techno-capitalistic apparatuses, the more humans will be dependent on technology and capitalistdriven investments to survive. The Anthropocene concept provides eco-constructivists with an opportunity to achieve a form of philosophical and scientific reductionism. Indeed, ecomodernists, as well as some unreflexive Promethean scientists who use the pretext of planetary ecological emergency to promote techno-fixes such as geoengineering and who support, by doing so, technocratic scientific-based modes of decision-making and governance,21 ask us to redouble our faith in modernist rationalism. However, as Hamilton asks: ‘how can we think our way out of a problem when the problem is the way we think?’ (2013: 182). According to the geoengineering conception, the world is still conceived as an aggregation of material objects, meaningless in themselves and devoid of agency, that can be rearranged and reorganized according to human’s will (scientific reductionism). Promethean hyper-modernists seem to have lost sight of the fact that Anthropocene scientific perceptions are not only concerned with dreams of mastery but also with nonlinearity, the existence of critical thresholds, bifurcations and stochasticity, that is with doubt, uncertainty, irreversibility, and unpredictability. The Anthropocene will be an era of considerable instability for the Earth system, which might turn out to be threatening to human life. As Hamilton recalls, warning us and geoengineers, the planet is a ‘complex and uncooperative beast’ that might not react as planned to the manipulations of the atmosphere (2013: 37). Nature, indeed, is not only natura naturata but natura naturans, a self-causing reality, an active process, and a self-productive power that ceaselessly generates new forms. In spite of its entangled relationships with culture, ‘nature retains its exteriority, otherness, and agency’ (Baskin 2014: 10). The consequences of the denial of a natural agency—which has reappeared in techno-postmodernism under the mysterious form of ‘Gaia’—are enormous for ecology. If everything is produced and reproduced, if natural products are nothing more than an internal differentiation of society and production processes

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(‘commodities in the making’),22 then no normative limits to the social and capitalistic appropriation (and therefore spoliation) of the natural world can be set up. As Cafaro says, preserving nature ‘involves setting limits to human demand on nature, not endlessly accommodating them. It involves setting limits to the degree of human influence that is acceptable … This in turn, limits the degree to which real conservationists can accept the dominant trends of the Anthropocene’ (2014: 138). To forsake ‘the bounds of the ecologically possible,’ an expression that defines sustainability (Brundtland Commission 1987), means nothing less than to lose any normative means of resistance against the destruction of the living world entailed by globalized neoliberal capitalism. By identifying de facto ‘nature’ with ‘techno-nature,’ that is by naturalizing the process of destruction of the natural world (which becomes in post-environmental terminology mere ‘transformation’23), advocates of the post-nature narrative offer a typical example of an ‘affirmative thinking’ (Adorno) which turns out to be on the side of nature’s neoliberalization.

Ecomodernism (again) and postmodern constructivist narrative: another version of the ‘end of nature’ in the Capitalocene On the other hand, and complementary to the hypermodern conception, a new attack on nature has come from another front, that is the ‘post-nature grand narrative’ of the Anthropocene (Bonneuil 2015: 24) which declares that ecology must be ‘without nature.’ According to this conception, nature and societies have always been commonly produced, and reality has always been made of complex hybrids and mixed socio-material assemblages. Not only does this narrative acknowledge ‘a la McKibben’, that ‘nature had ended as an independent force’ (1989: ix), but it extrapolates, from nature’s history of humanization that nature as an ontological reality was always somehow ‘dead.’ For postmodern post-nature theorists, the opposition between nature and culture, that is the fundamental antagonism central to modernity, is flawed. Modernity has compromised itself into false dualisms that postmodern theory has dissolved. We live in the ‘mesh’ (Morton). Old tactics of preservation and protection of nature are therefore obsolete. Future-oriented environmentalism must develop an ‘ecology without nature’ (Purdy 2015; Vogel 2015; Morton 2007). New post-environmentalism is no longer about protecting nature but about offering a better capitalistic and technological management of hybrids (Arias-Maldonado 2016). To overcome the false dichotomies of modernity, postmodern and posthumanist thinkers such as Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Isabelle Stengers, or Peter Sloterdijk (among others) have tried to show how much nature and culture are entangled and how much our world is made up of imbroglios, assemblages, and hybrid entities. According to this conception, everything is interconnected; everything is linked and attached: ‘the nonhuman world,’ says Haraway, ‘is dialogic… a co-productive participant in human social relationships’ (quoted in Soulé and Lease 1995: 3). The world is made up of ‘naturecultures’: Haraway likes to cite the

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OncoMouseTM as an apotheosis of this mixed reality. Post-nature techno-thinkers have refashioned nature as a flexible hybrid, a relational reality without solid content, which can be easily deconstructed and re-constructed by market forces.24 In effect, the refusal of the nature/culture divide does not work in favor of nature but rather benefits technology and artificial arrangements. According to this view (which concurs with a global capitalist outlook), reality is made of ever-changing networks where everything can be remolded or re-composed at any time. Our world is a techno-natural continuum made of hybrids, mixed entities, and cyborgs. Postmodern eco-constructivism is a cultural monism, namely the exact opposite of the natural monism developed by deep ecology. It also opposes the relational ontology of genuine postmodern worldviews, Mick Smith’s for instance, which ‘counter the modern ideological flight from body, nature, and place’ (Spretnak 1997: 223). The techno post-nature narrative departs from the old ‘domination of nature’ thesis insofar as the latter describes an ongoing process by which nature comes progressively and increasingly under modernity’s rationalizing. In the modern and hyper-modern views, nature is still seen as an external force standing in the way of the industrial civilizational process. As Arias-Maldonado says, the basis for civilization lies in ‘the transfer of wealth from nonhuman environments into human ones’ (2016: 2). The postmodern post-nature narrative, for its part, no longer conceives nature as a separate entity but as a fluid techno-reality that was always already mixed with the products (and waste) of technology. Pollution, nuclear waste, modified crops, climate change, etc. are all ‘naturecultures’ that we need to accept as part of our ‘postmodern’ reality… As Latour says, we must love our ‘monsters’ like our own children (2012). The aim is not any longer to destroy the otherness of nature but to contend that there is no otherness. This kind of reasoning is trapped into affirmative thinking (only sociocultural arrangements exist) and strawmen (nature is pristine or is not). The modern mastery of separate nature and the ‘postmodern’ conception of eco-social assemblages under the hegemony of culture are two anthropocentric theoretical frameworks that contest nature and lead to the same antinaturalist consequences. They typify two forms of techno-capitalocentric hubris that fail to recognize the value of nature’s agency. By praising technology and evacuating ontological natural limits, they both open the door to further humancaused degradation of the world for the sake of economic development and scientific innovation. The complacency of this ideology about the current capitalistic organization of the world makes its views very attractive to the advocates of the status quo, those who want to go on maintaining the same patterns of development and (unsustainable) ways of living. However, as next section shows, nature is never merely a social product, neither a pure raw material that awaits human inventiveness and ingenuity passively. It is a complex system that can wake up at any time: this is what I call ‘the return of nature’ in the Capitalocene era. As Callicott says, ‘nature is dead. Long live nature!’ (1992).

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The return of nature: nature as ‘non-identity’ For many, the Anthropocene means nothing less than that the phenomenon of anthropization has become so extended that policies of environmental conservation are now out-moded. Our impact on the world, it is argued, is so pervasive that traditional environmental goals of protecting, restoring, and valuing natural environments are just romantic pipe-dreams, like the human virtues of humility, prudence, and restraint which accompany green radical political projects like degrowth or postgrowth political economies. If nature does not exist and has, maybe, never existed, why bother protecting it?25 An article in The New York Times written by environmental professionals (including the chief scientist for Nature Conservancy), and entitled ‘Hope in the Age of Man’ illustrates this worrisome moral and metaphysical perspective. It argues that viewing our time as ‘the age of man’ is ‘well-deserved, given humanity’s enormous alteration of earth’ and concludes that because ‘this is the Earth we have created,’ we should, therefore, ‘manage it with love and intelligence … We can design ecosystems…to new glories’ (!) (Marris et al. 2011; emphasis added) The condemnation of archaic and outdated cautious positions concerning human/nature relationships, the optimistic utterances about the ‘good Anthropocene’ as well as the denial of planetary boundaries give to Anthropocenologists a surprising air of déjà-vu. Indeed, we witness here a reappearance of the glorious years of the 17th century, except for the fact that the new Prometheus knows that ‘our powers may yet exceed our ability to manage them’ (Ellis 2012). In other words, we know that we will produce monsters (which are redefined as ‘hybrids’ for more convenience) and ecological catastrophes. The latter are actually the material signs of nature-as-other’s resistance, of the non-identity of nature, or what Adorno calls the ‘non-mediated,’ because it is not reducible to concepts. As O’Connor explains, there is ‘an irreducible, nonidentical moment’ in our experience of reality (quoted in Cook 2011: 37). There is actually a ‘surplus’ in nature that can never be summarised in a final synthesis.26 This surplus is displayed in our experience in the form of ecological tragedies and uncontrollable risks. The lesson to be learned is that nature can never be totally subsumed under social practices and that its own logics and meaning must be respected in order to avoid tragic feedbacks loops or negative consequences. What is needed is, therefore, a reflexive form of ‘societal relationships with nature’ that would respect its ‘non-identity.’ This concept, borrowed from Adorno (1973) defines what, in nature, is ungraspable and unknowable by concepts and therefore what escapes the process of domination. Adorno, as Hailwood explains, criticises the fact that instrumental reason has attempted [and still attempts] to override nonidentity, that is to ‘reduce everything to the graspable’ (2015: 132). Hypermodernity is unable to respect nature’s non-identity while postmodern constructivist thinkers mostly deny its existence. To ignore nature’s non-identity or, in other words, to pursue the domination and appropriation project, entails the ‘return of nature’ on the scene of human history in the form of biological dysfunctionalities and environmental disasters.

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On the one hand, nature is a social construction: nature is constructed discursively through language and, empirically, through human practices. But on the other hand, nature, through the dialectic interdependence of nature and society, produces a society and also remains a principle of production on its own, displaying processes that societies cannot control. The dialectical perspective criticises the subsumption of nature under the purposes of society, that is to say, the technical and symbolic project of natural capital substitution. And this, for those reasons: 1) because it dismisses the natural rootedness of societies, exposing societies to the risks entailed by the ‘omission’ of the natural processes that also inform them (the ‘return of nature’ under the form of risks and catastrophes); 2) and because it locks up societies in the logics of ‘identity thinking’ according to which things exist only to the extent they fit into humans’ concepts. Consequently, societies ignore the non-conceptual content of nature—its Otherness—and are unable to accept and respect nature’s agency. The concept of the Anthropocene, which embodies those two pitfalls is, in this regards, ‘tautological:’ it substitutes unity for diversity (for instance the Anthropos as a homogeneous actor; cultural artefacts for natural diversity), simplicity for complexity (the complexity of feedback loops and Earth’s singularity being sacrificed on behalf of reductive causal laws), identity for difference (nature being declared identical to society while it is also non-identical). An adequate concept of society would acknowledge the extent to which we are part of, and not only apart from nature, and would cease to oppose humanity ‘destructively and self-destructively to [nature]’ (Cook 2011: 160). The failure to acknowledge the autonomous, complex, and rich agency of nature might otherwise lead to more tragic ‘ecological hazards.’ As Brand et al. say, ‘certainly, the process of modernity is based on an increasing control of nature, but this domination does not lead to an increasing control over nature’ (2008: 12; emphasis added). Rather, the relentless project of commodification and objectification of the world rebounds in the destruction of natural processes on which we depend for our own living (the social processes being always materially embedded) and in more uncontrollable reactions from nature that translate in forms of destructive ecological risks like global warming, acidification of oceans, viral microorganisms, radioactivity, atmospheric pollution, etc. At the very time when nature is declared ‘dead,’ natural processes are making their comeback in the form of uncontrolled phenomena. Societies are more and more confronted with the unintended consequences of the Western attempts to dominate nature. The uncontrolled hybrids (or ‘monsters’) we create and the risks for living beings they entail show that we are less and less able to control the impacts of our actions. This experience proves that a reality foreign to human constructions blows up in our faces. Shall we call it ‘non-identity,’ ‘Otherness’ or ‘Gaia’? Environmental hazards are, indeed, a consequence of the remaining natural agency in the socio-ecological compound. As Görg says, ‘[t]he more nature is seen as something influenced and produced by human action, the more our experience is that we are far away from having real control over nature’ (2011: 43). The power on nature that defined modernity’s progress could paradoxically become an obstacle to the furtherance of human civilizations… and human progress. There is,

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indeed, a widening gap between our capacity to influence nature and our inability to control the consequences of our deeds. It is very likely that the Promethean attempts to resolve this contradiction offered by Anthropocenologists (that is geoengineering and more growth-based economic management) will only dramatically expand the gap. We thought that the growing reflexivity and awareness concerning the ecological crisis would have favored other types of relationships with nature than the capitalistic forms of dominance, appraisal, and appropriation of nature. ‘Traditional’ ecologists have tried to put at the forefront some forms of knowledge and practices that cultivate an entirely different, more respectful treatment of nature, for example, post-anthropocentric approaches, the ecofeminist ethics of care or ecological humanism (weak anthropocentrism). However, they did not count on the infinite capacity of capitalism to invent new ways of bouncing back to pursue the planned and deliberate destruction of the Earth for the sake of short-term economic profits and a small elite’s interests. The ‘Anthropocene/Capitalocene’ is the new name given to the further instrumental and capitalistic domination of the Earth at the expense of its most vulnerable inhabitants. A humbler and more cautious view is desperately needed to replace the misleading arrogant Western-centrism inherent in this so-called ‘age of humans.’ One of the central paradoxes related to the Anthropocene concept is probably that just as the impact of humans on ecosystems has become so significant that it prompts some to celebrate the ‘age of humans’, the survival of humanity has never been so much challenged and under global threat. The Anthropocene concept should, therefore, be seen as a warning sign rather than an appeal to ‘new glories.’ Otherwise, the perspective stretching in front of us (and future generations) is the one of a humankind left without a world to inhabit or, supreme irony, an anthropized planet without the Anthropos.

Notes 1 The article herein largely draws on Anne Fremaux’ s Doctoral Thesis ‘Towards a Critical Theory of the Anthropocene and a Life-affirming Politics’. 2 Ecomodernism is a recent movement associated with prominent environmental figures such as Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberger, Steward Brand (2009), the physicist David Keith (2013), Nobel Laureate Joyashree Roy, and filmmaker Robert Stone who co-authored The Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015). It also designates the neo-conservationist movement associated with Peter Kareiva, Michelle Marvier, Emma Marris, and Robert Lalasz. Institutional allies and supporters of Neo-Greens are The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, The Breakthrough Institute, The Long Now Foundation, The Nature Conservancy. For a detailed account of their claims, see Wuerthner (2015) and Soulé (2013). 3 However, Vogel (2015: 241, n.33) and White (1995:183) are right to argue that McKibben un-reflexively travels back and forth between epistemological and ontological insights regarding nature. 4 In order to overcome the nature-society dualism constitutive of modernity, theorists such as Haraway (1991) or Latour (1993) who can be considered as the paradigmatic thinkers of the deconstructive posthumanist field have refashioned nature as a ‘technonature’ (‘socio-technical assemblages’); that is as a flexible entangled hybrid reality. Even if Haraway’s position is subtler on this concern, both show little attention to the

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5 6 7 8 9

10

11

12

13 14

15

16

17

18

idiosyncrasies and significant otherness of the nonhuman world and privilege the human agency and technological side of the equation. In our opinion, both authors remain caught in the very human exceptionalism they try to denounce, preventing their theories from being authentically ‘postmodern.’ For a further analysis of the ecomodernist ‘good Anthropocene,’ see Hamilton (2015). The absence of thick characterization of what ‘nature’ and ‘society’ are facilitates the absorption of nature in plastic capitalistic flux (see Pellizzoni in this volume). According to the blogger and journalist Tim De Chant, if the world’s population lived like the US, we would need 4.1 planets (Elert 2012). Nearly half of the world’s population—more than 3 billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day (Shah 2013). Ecomodernists or eco-constructivists perpetuate ‘the social siege of nature’ (Soulé and Lease 1995), started by constructivists/deconstructivists but in new sophisticated forms (geoengineering, hybridist and postnature narratives, hypermodern dreams of control and reproduction of nature, etc.). They promise a ‘good Anthropocene,’ thanks to unbridled technological and capitalistic developments. This is a challenge which is taken up by genuine postmodernists such as Smith (2001, 2011), Alaimo (1994), Mathews (1996, 2003), Gibson et al. (2015) who seek to develop ontologies/ethics that decentre the figure of the autonomous and self-sufficient human in favour of a humbler positioning in the world. The hyper modern conception of the Anthropocene is mostly un-reflexive and flatly techno-optimist: little space is devoted to doubt, uncertainties, precaution, etc. It is an arrogant and hubristic orientation of anthropocentrism that presents humanity, the ‘top’ species in the rank of agency, as able to control and rearrange the natural world. It also rehearses the very modern conceptions of progress and freedom as an escape from nature’s determinations and limits. Concerning the warning against the possible destructive effects of technology, it is a view reduced to a cliché by Arias-Maldonado (2012: 93), a threat attributed to romantic environmentalists that should be swept aside in the face of the inexorable advancement of science and modernity. An appellation I borrow from Spretnak (1997). Actually, the issue is not anymore to get a clearer picture of the situation by accumulating scientific data but to understand ‘how we entered the Anthropocene despite very consistent warnings, knowledge and opposition’ (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2016: 79; original emphasis). As Barry notes, ‘the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change has accumulated to the extent that we could be the first species to accurately document our own demise’ (2012: 1; emphasis added). It is salutary to note that Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, who first announced the arrival of the Anthropocene, support geoengineering in the name of ‘climate emergency.’ Despairing over governmental capacity and ability, they suggest that only the global scientific research and engineering community might be able to guide mankind to sustainability, thanks to large-scale geoengineering projects (2000: 18). Their support to the ‘Anthropocene’ is therefore not of the same nature as the blind enthusiasm we can find in ecomodernism. Mark Lynas and Steward Brand are two of the co-authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). Steward Brand and Erle Ellis are senior fellows of the Breakthrough Institute. Steward Brand is also the cofounder and president of The Long Now Foundation. See https://thebreakthrough.org/about/people. This blissful view is particularly expressed in the Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015) where ecomodernism’s spokesmen express the view that thanks to human creativity and inventiveness, we will create a world—maybe a ‘rambunctious garden’ as Marris (2011) proposes—where ‘nearly all of us will be prosperous enough to live healthy, free, and creative lives’ (2015). For Ellis, ‘humans appear fully capable of continuing to support a burgeoning population by engineering and transforming the planet’ (2012).

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19 ‘Nature is so resilient that it can recover rapidly from even the most powerful human disturbances’ (Kareiva et al. 2011). 20 Some techno-ideologues even think of creating a human species able to adapt to climate change. On human genetic engineering, see Liao et al. (2012). 21 The notion of ‘Anthropocene boosters’ also covers the scientists, such as Paul Crutzen or Will Steffen who optimistically—or not—praise geoengineering and large-scale technologies as a new efficient way to ‘manage’ the earth. All these discourses have in common to be driven by an unreflexive Hubris. In another work (Fremaux and Barry 2018, forthcoming) we have characterised them as part of unreflexive ESS in contrast with reflexive ESS. 22 Smith shows very well how capitalism does not aim only at plundering nature but also at increasingly producing a ‘social nature’ as ‘the basis of new sectors of production and accumulation’ (2007: 33). 23 See Crist (2013). 24 There is, actually nothing more ‘constructivist’ than the market, an entity that aims at transforming everything into saleable commodities circulating in fluid networks. 25 As Hamilton shows, those views are factually contested by the Wildlife Conservation Society who estimate that 26% of the Earth’s land may be classed as ‘last of the wild’ (Hamilton, 2013: 188). 26 This position could be named ‘critical realism’ (Baskhar 1989) or ‘subtle realism’ (Hammersley 1992), that is a position which assumes that there are real world objects apart from the human knower (objective reality), that our ability to know this reality is imperfect, and that our claims about these objects must be, therefore, subject to wide scientific critical examination and caution.

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Görg, C. (2011). ‘Shaping Relationships with Nature–Adaptation to Climate Change as a Challenge for Society.’ Die Erde –Journal of the Geographical Society of Berlin, 142(4): 411–428. Hailwood, S. (2015). Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University. Hamilton, C. (2015). ‘The Theodicy of the “Good Anthropocene”.’ Environmental Humanities, 7(1): 233–238. Hamilton, C. (2014). ‘Gaia Does Not Negotiate.’ Available at: http://clivehamilton.com/ga ia-does-not-negotiate/ (accessed 30 October 2017). Hamilton, C. (2013) Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hamilton, C., Bonneuil, C. and Gemenne, F. (eds) (2015). The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Hammersley, M. (1992). ‘Ethnography and Realism.’ In What’s Wrong with Ethnography? Methodological Explorations, edited by M. Hammersley. London: Routledge, 43–56. Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T.W. (2002/1947). Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kareiva, P., Lalasz, R., and Marvier, M. (2011). ‘Conservation in the Anthropocene.’ Breakthrough Journal. Available at: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-is sues/issue-2/conservation-in-the-anthropocene/ (accessed 25 October 2017). Keith, D. (2013). A Case for Climate Engineering. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. 27 July (2014). ‘What Does Gaïa Request of Us? ’ Available at: http://modeso fexistence.org/what-does-gaia-request-of-us/ (accessed 12 October 2017). Latour, B. Winter (2012). ‘Love Your Monsters.’ In Love Your Monsters Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by M. Shellenberg and T. Nordhaus. San Francisco, The Breakthrough Institute. Available from: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journa l/past-issues/issue-2/love-your-monsters (accessed 23 October 2017). Liao, S.M., Sandberg, A., and Roache, R. (2012). ‘Human Engineering and Climate Change.’ Ethics, Policy & Environment, 15(2): 206–221. Lövbrand, E., Stripple, J., and Wiman, B. (2009). ‘Earth System governmentality: Reflections on science in the Anthropocene.’ Global Environmental Change, 19(1): 7–13. Lynas, M. (2011). The God Species. London: Fourth Estate. Macnaghten, P. and Urry, J. (1998). Contested Natures. London: Sage. Malm, A. and Hornborg, A. (2014). ‘The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative.’ The Anthropocene Review, 1(1): 62–69. Marris, E. (2011). Rambunctious Garden: Saving nature in a Post-Wild World. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Marris, E., Kareiva, P., Mascaro, J., and Ellis, E.C. (2011). ‘Hope in the Age of Man.’ The New York Times. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/the-a ge-of-man-is-not-a-disaster.html (accessed 12 September 2017). Mathews, F. (2003). For the love of matter: A Contemporary Panpsychism. Albany, NY: Suny Press. Mathews, F. (1996). ‘Community, and the Ecological Self.’ In Ecology and Democracy, edited by F. Matthews. London, Portland (Oregon): Frank Cass, 66–100. McKibben, B. (1989). The End of Nature. New York: Random House. Merchant, C. (1980). The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: HarperCollins. Moore, J.W. (ed.) (2016). Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, U.S.: PM Press.

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Moore, J.W. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso Books. Morton, T. (2007). Ecology without nature: Rethinking environmental aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Newell, P. and Paterson, M. (2010). Climate Capitalism: Global Warming and the Transformation of the Global Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nordhaus, T.and Shellenberg, M. (2011). ‘Introduction.’ In Love Your Monsters Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by M. Shellenberg and T. Nordhaus. San Francisco: The Breakthrough Institute. Plumwood, V. (2007). ‘Review of Deborah Bird Rose’s Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation.’ Australian Humanities Review, 42: 1–4. Purdy, J. (2015). After nature. A Politics for the Anthropocene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ravetz, J.R. (2006). ‘Post-Normal Science and the Complexity of Transitions Towards Sustainability.’ Ecological Complexity, 3(4): 275–284. Sardar, Z. (2010). ‘Welcome to Postnormal Times.’ Futures, 42(5): 435–444. Shah, A. (2013). ‘Poverty Facts and Stats.’ Global Issues. Available at: http://www.globalis sues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats. (accessed 26 September 2017). Smith, M. (2011). Against Ecological Sovereignty: Ethics, Biopolitics, and Saving the Natural World?Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. Smith, M. (2001). An Ethics of Place: Radical Ecology, Postmodernity, and Social Theory. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. Smith, N. (2007). ‘Nature as accumulation strategy.’ Socialist Register, 43(43): 16–36. Soulé, M. (2013). ‘The “New Conservation” (Editorial).’ Conservation Biology, 27(5). Soulé, M. and Lease, G. (eds) (1995). Reinventing Nature? Responses to Postmodern Deconstruction. San Francisco: Island Press. Spretnak, C. (1997). The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World. New York, N.Y.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Steffen, W., Crutzen, P.J., and McNeill, J.R. (2007). ‘The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?’ Ambio, 36(8): 614–621. Stengers, I. (2015). ‘Accepting the Reality of Gaia. A fundamental shift?’ In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, edited by C. Hamilton, C. Bonneuil, and F. Gemenne. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Stierstorfer, K. (ed.) (2003). Beyond Post-Modernism: Reassessments in Literature, Theory, and Culture. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Vogel, S. (2015). Thinking like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy after the End of Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. White, D., Rudy, A., and Gareau, B. (2016). Environments, Natures and Social Theory: Towards a Critical Hybridity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. White, R. (1995). ‘Are You an Environmentalist or do you Work for a Living? Work and Nature.’ In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by W.W. Cronon. New York City: Norton & Co, 171–185. Wuerthner, G. (2015). ‘Anthropocene Boosters and The Attack On Wilderness Conservation.’ Independent Science News, 12th May. Zimmerman, M.E. (1994). Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

2 EMANCIPATION, CAPTURE, AND RESCUE? On the ontological turn and its critique Luigi Pellizzoni

The ‘ontological turn’ (Woolgar and Lezaun 2013), or ‘new materialism’ (Coole and Frost 2010), represents a relevant phenomenon of recent years in philosophy, political theory, social sciences and the humanities. The wave begins to rise in the 1990s, subsequently taking growing momentum. It can partly be considered a reaction to the post-modernist ‘excessive power granted to language to determine what is real’ (Barad 2003: 802). However, the case is not for a return to conventional forms of scientific realism or economic materialism, but for novel accounts of reality. The ontological turn is also characterized by prominent normative implications – for some (Viveiros de Castro et al. 2014) it is first and foremost a political endeavour. Browsing related literature one frequently meets the claim that novel accounts of reality would imply a new ‘ontological politics’, in the twofold sense of struggles focused on a contestation of western dualisms and their dominative implications (beginning with the idea of mind as separated from and acting over a passive materiality) and of the embodied, rather than discursive, character of such struggles. The issue is of obvious relevance to environmental political theory, especially when tackling the Anthropocene thesis. ‘Part geoscience hypothesis, part global alarm’ (Clark and Yusoff 2017: 7), the amazing success of the latter has been accompanied by growing criticism, much of which takes issue with what has been called its post-social, post-political and post-natural ontology (Lövbrand et al. 2015). The first two aspects are most frequently addressed. The case for the Anthropocene would gloss over major differences about responsibilities for and impacts of environmental change and related mitigation or adaptation solutions, obscuring the significance of capitalist relations in all these regards. The third ontological aspect of the Anthropocene, however, plays a fundamental role. Nature would have been domesticated and technologized to the point that it can no longer be distinguished from culture. Though awkwardly combined with traditional objectivism when reference is made to boundaries within which Earth

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system processes ensure ‘a safe operating space for humanity’ (Rockström et al. 2009), the claim is that ‘nature is us’; that ‘it’s we who decide what nature is and what it will be’ (Crutzen and Schwägerl 2011). Humans, in this account, can and should become ‘stewards the Earth’. In enunciating this task, however, there is no attempt to take distance from the exploitative orientation that is at the origin of ecological problems. The Anthropocene thesis seems therefore to disconfirm the new materialist argument regarding the non-dominative implications of non-dualist ontologies. In the following I try to make sense of that. I start by outlining the case for nondualist ontologies. That the emancipatory import of new accounts of reality cannot be taken for granted results from criticism about the embroilment of the new intellectual wave with emergent forms of capitalist accumulation, which I address in subsequent sections. Yet, while this criticism is correct in stressing the nonnecessity (that is, the historical contingency) of the link, it fails to identify the key capture dispositif at work. ‘Rescuing’ the case for non-dualist ontologies from capitalist takeover requires more than relying on the ‘vital overflows’ of sociomaterial forces. This is crucial to exploring whether and how the Anthropocene thesis can support social transformation towards sustainability, rather than a continuation and intensification of the status quo. In this sense, what follows is to be regarded as preliminary to the formulation of a proper research program. Some minimal indications are suggested in the conclusion.

The ontological turn and its political case The ontological turn is broad and diversified, yet a core tenet is the rejection of the binaries traditional to modern thinking: mind/body, subject/object, matter/language, reality/knowledge, natural/artificial, sensuous/ideal, and so on. Such rejection builds on three connected arguments (Pellizzoni 2016), namely: a) reality consists of a single plane of immanence; b) on this plane there is no fundamental divide between the ontological and the epistemic, matter and cognition and so on; c) binary oppositions (and the humanist tradition building on these) have dominative implications, one pole being invariably privileged to the detriment and repression of the other—think of human/nonhuman, man/woman and so on. The first point builds on a variety of inspirational sources, from sociologies of practice and everyday life to the phenomenology of bodily experience of MerleauPonty, from actor-network theory to post-structuralist philosophies of immanence (with Deleuze often playing a pivotal role). The second point is well exemplified by the notion of ‘agential realism’ developed by Karen Barad, a prominent feminist theorist. Building on Bohr’s quantum physics, she regards phenomena as ‘the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting components. That is, phenomena are ontologically primitive relations—relations without preexisting relata’ (Barad 2003: 815). Phenomena are not representations of things but things as such. Entities are continually reconstituted through material-discursive ‘intra-actions’, where neither the material nor the cultural aspect takes precedence. For example,

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the material set up of foetal imaging simultaneously supports and is influenced by a politics of individual autonomy and subjectivity. The foetus that the scientists can see as an object is also the foetus that law defines as an independent subject. Hence, ‘the foetus is not a pre-existing object of investigation with inherent properties. Rather the foetus is a phenomenon that is constituted and reconstituted out of historically and culturally specific iterative intra-actions of material-discursive apparatuses of bodily production’ (Barad 2007: 217). Barad’s approach is in tune with recent scientific and technological outlooks on materiality. The inorganic realm is increasingly depicted as having vital connotations, while life is infused with dematerialized characterizations—textuality, information, codification (Keller 2011). Mining and processing of huge amounts of data generate unforeseen insights where knowledge and production of reality can hardly be distinguished (Calvert 2012). The ontological divide between machine and organism is questioned by the ‘penetration of computational processes… into the construction of reality itself’ (Hayles 2006: 161). Epigenetics challenges the gene/ environment and brain/body dichotomies (Papadopoulos 2011). Biological information, from genes to immune system, indicates how texts and signs can be reconfigured as ‘substantively or ontologically material’; how ‘“life itself” is creative encryption’ (Kirby 2008: 9), a continuous rewriting of itself. In short—and this argument plays a central role in much new materialist literature—‘new physics and biology make it impossible to understand matter any longer in ways that were inspired by classical science’ (Coole and Frost 2010: 5). Boundaries become porous, distinctions blur. Matter exhibits agency, inventive capacities, generative powers. It is ‘not a thing but a doing’ (Barad 2003: 822); an incessant process of becoming. Everything can be otherwise, its appearance being the result of contingent entanglements (Grosz 2011; Stengers 2008; Woolgar and Lezaun 2015). Another major inspirational source for the rejection of binaries comes from anthropological studies of ‘non-modern’ accounts of the world, with special reference to Amerindian perspectives, to describe which the notion of multinaturalism is often used (Viveiros de Castro 2014). Western modernity, it is stressed, reads reality as made of one nature and many cultures, whereas Amerindian ontologies conceive of a plurality of human-nonhuman collectives across time and space. The Pachamama, the Mother Earth, is composed of elements (animals, plants, ecosystems, spirits) provided with will and sensations of their own. Notions such as the Quechua sumak kawsay or the Aymara suma gamaña (in Spanish buen vivir, that is, ‘living well’) express the idea of a fullness of life achieved in the gathering together of the human and the nonhuman, the material and the spiritual. The third point above indicates that the case against dualist thinking is charged with major political implications. If everything in the world is lively, dynamic, active, unpredictably open, then human agency turns out disempowered and defective, distributed and assembled with nonhuman entities—hence also modest, careful and responsible (Bennett 2010). And if distinctions such as subject and object or mind and matter have no ontological substance, then the ‘real’ and the ‘political’ are reciprocally implied, in the sense that the world is enacted in

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multiple, unstable and contested ways; that the conditions of possibility of what comes into being are ‘historically, culturally and materially located’ (Mol 1999: 75). Politics becomes ‘ontological’. It should no longer be conceived in a dualistic manner—that is, as human struggles occurring in a material world provided with given features—but as socio-material struggles over the very constitution of what comes into being, as enacted in practices. Hence, critique as deconstruction of discourses and arguments, with its reproduction of the separation of body and mind, matter and language, is (to be) replaced by affirmative standpoints building on thingness and corporeality as sites of resistance, creativity and hope. In short, novel accounts of reality are taken to imply a new sort of emancipatory politics. Such politics often takes marked anti-capitalist connotations. Arturo Escobar, for example, defines ‘ontological’ those Latin America’s struggles against dams, oil drills, mining, deforestation, genetically modified crops, which build on a denaturalization of western binaries in favour of perspectives holding that ‘all beings exist always in relation and never as “objects” or individuals’ (2010: 39). A comparable case is made by scholars focusing on emergent mobilizations in the North of the planet, particularly concerning food and energy (farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture, food policy councils, community energy initiatives, the ‘transition towns’ network, etc.) and the ‘new domesticity’ of crafting and making (canning, sewing, mending, upcycling etc.). Such ‘new materialist politics’ overcomes discursive critique, placing political interventions at the level of bodies and material practices (Schlosberg and Coles 2016; Meyer 2015). As with Latin American struggles, its task is not only to ‘help promote certain futures, but also … to “figurate” the future in its very enactment’ (Viveiros de Castro et al. 2014). The aim is not to make certain values and concerns influent in policy processes or market dynamics, but to forge alternative flows, institutions and collectives, away from the circulations of capitalism.

Ontological politics and the neoliberalization of nature To sum up, the case for ontological politics claims that, since domination and exploitation build on dualist thinking, rejecting dualisms as a theoretical and embodied gesture is provided with major, perhaps decisive, emancipatory significance, which many refer first and foremost to capitalist relations. That things are more complicated, however, is suggested by controversy over the actual import of new mobilizations. Browsing the literature on the topic, one notes a variety of tones: from the enthusiastic to the moderately optimistic, to the fairly critical. Some, for example, observe that extractivist and productivist policies are hardly hampered, and in some cases even favoured,1 by non-western ontological frameworks, even when the latter are given a solemn legal status, as with the rights of the Mother Earth recognized by the Bolivian and Ecuadorian constitutions (Gudynas 2011). Critics note as well that many ‘alternative’ initiatives rely on market solutions, are diffident towards contentious politics, and emphasise community self-help and ‘defensive localism’ (protectionism, particularism, misrecognition of internal difference

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and wider social interests and connections). In short, they hardly challenge, but rather align with, dominant relations of power (Kenis and Mathijs 2014). That new forms of activism have had so far no significant impact on dominant circulations of power, capital and resources can hardly be contested. However, it is fair to say that new mobilizations are challenged by ‘extraordinarily strong counterflows of power’ (Schlosberg and Coles 2016: 174). Thinking for example of alternative food chains, one should avoid unreasonable expectations that the global industrial agri-business can be revolutionized singlehandedly by these initiatives (Davidson 2017). In short, it is possible to argue that ‘ontological struggles’ are still in their beginning. It is too early to say whether they will be able to elicit major changes, and if and what sorts of combinations with traditional forms of political contestation will be realized to this purpose. More fundamental problems emerge, however, when one considers the socalled ‘neoliberalization of nature’. A broad scholarship (mostly but not exclusively Marxist) has recognised that the biophysical world is crucial to the accumulative thrust inaugurated by the post-Fordist restructuring of capitalism and the neoliberal reforms of the state. On this view, neoliberalization of nature is shorthand for how more aspects of the biophysical world are subject to appropriation, commodification, and marketization (Castree 2008). Yet, the issue is not just quantitative, but also qualitative, as non-dualist ontologies seem increasingly to lie at the core of capitalist strategies. For lack of space I provide just two examples.2 The first is biotech. Corporate narratives depict it as nothing else than the continuation of what humans did for thousands of years, or what nature always did, ‘the “technology” in these practices [being] nothing more than biology itself, or “life itself”’ (Thacker 2007: xix) —a life portrayed as simultaneously matter and information, with genes working as carriers of behavioural instructions, suitable for translation into different media. In western modernity the nature/culture divide has been contested many times and in many ways, famous examples coming from Marx and Darwin.3 However, with biotech the past and the future of agriculture, and indeed the past and the future of life itself, are reframed to align with the technological present. Biotech makes nature what it always was—or could have been. As a result, GMOs can be depicted (and legally protected) as indistinguishable yet also different (more usable, more valuable) to natural entities. The second example is carbon trading. This is more than an application of the cap-and-trade approach. Carbon trading builds on the assumption that, once a conversion rate between the ‘global warming potential’ (GWP) of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is defined (courtesy of the IPCC, and despite a lot of uncertainties and speculative reasoning), reducing one of these gases anywhere in the world can be regarded as materially equivalent to reducing CO2 here. In this way, the intractable complexity of the real impact of different quantities of diverse gases emitted in opposite parts of the world at different times is transformed into a matter of calculation (MacKenzie 2009). Yet, what is exactly GWP? It is a conceptual abstraction like money, since it works as an exchange rate. However, for carbon trading to be more than an economic fiction, a mere financial game, it must be also

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a physical phenomenon, something happening (or prevented from happening) in the atmosphere. So GWP is simultaneously real and virtual, material, and textual, a thing and a cognitive construction. As with biotech, the commodification of the atmosphere builds on ontological fluidity. Patented genes and GWP, therefore, are more than ‘fictitious commodities’ (Polanyi); they make obsolete the distinction between reality and abstraction, matter and cognition, the human and the nonhuman. Capitalism, it seems, is performing its own ‘ontological turn’. This brings into question the humble, nondominative implications new materialists usually draw from their case and draws attention to how—whatever the political inclinations of its proponents—the Anthropocene thesis looks simultaneously an expression and an influential justification of capital’s takeover of non-dualist ontologies.

A non-necessary relationship One of the first to pay attention to the problem was Slavoj Žižek (2003), when arguing that the philosophy of Deleuze reproduces key traits of neoliberal capitalism. In the following, however, I will focus on recent contributions of Bruce Braun and Sara Nelson, for the neat formulation of the issue they offer and how the reply they give is emblematic of the limits of a broader critical literature about the current phase of capitalism. Braun starts by noting the lack of dialogue between new materialism, as ‘a diverse and increasingly well-known body of writing’ that deals in non-dualistic and non-deterministic ways with the generative processes that constitute things in the world, and ‘an equally expansive body of writing on the neoliberalization of nature’. The need of a joint reading, he says, stems from growing acknowledgment that, in the processes addressed by the second literature, ‘we can discern the capture or recuperation of critical impulses animating the first literature’ (2014: 1–2). Braun stresses the ‘profound effects’ of new materialism on the social sciences and the humanities, but also how ‘it has remained surprisingly unreflexive about the emergence of its own concepts and thus relatively silent about how these ideas relate to, or might be taken up within, socio-ecological projects’ (2014: 3). For him, while it is ‘not only justifiable but also necessary’ to turn to science to elaborate on ontological concepts, new materialists select what is useful to them in order to support their philosophical standpoints, as if science would speak in one voice,4 and forget ‘that all ontologies—and the scientific claims on which they are based – are deeply historical modes of thought […] coming into view at particular historical junctures’ (2014: 4, emphasis original). ‘Scientism’ and ‘a-historicism’, thus, would preclude understanding of the relationship between new accounts of the world and neoliberalism as a mode of ecological governance. Yet, ‘if we dismiss the language of non-deterministic nature as inherently neoliberal, we may be complicit with capital’s own naturalization’ (2014: 11, emphasis original), as an overarching force or logic ultimately indistinguishable from the world of things and practices. It is therefore important to acknowledge that ‘the encounter between

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ideas of non-deterministic nature and capital is necessary only from the perspective of the present’ (2014: 9), that is, post factum; that capitalism has captured and turned to its advantage what originally were critical and oppositional forces. This argumentative strategy is not new, being common to many critiques of post-Fordist capitalism. A well-known example is Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2005) thesis about the ‘new spirit of capitalism’, as building on the integration of the ‘artistic critique’ raised by intellectuals and social movements against the Fordist mode of production, with the values of freedom, autonomy, and creativity being translated into flexibility, networking, communication, and permanent education. What Braun adds to this argument is a reflection about the ecological aspects of the crisis from which post-Fordism emerged. To this purpose he draws on Sara Nelson’s account of the neoliberal counterrevolution. Nelson remarks that energy scarcity and mounting environmental threats were of no lesser relevance than stagflation and declining profits in triggering the crisis and its outcome. Crucial in this regard, she notes, was an emergent ecological thinking, for which the environment is not ‘an inert collection of resources, [but] a set of integrated complex systems whose dynamics defied prediction’ (2014a: 466). This ecological thinking underpinned two different replies to the crisis. One is exemplified by the Limits to Growth report and Daly’s ‘steady state economy’. For Nelson, ‘in recognizing the breakdown of Fordist-Keynesian equilibrium [such reply] sought to re-establish this equilibrium on a global scale’ (2014a: 470), by means of strengthened state control of economy. The other reply was the post-Fordist counterrevolution: non-equilibrium ecology and adaptive management theories offered a framework for redirecting socio-ecological instability towards a new regime of accumulation. The case for the limits to growth was reverted into a case for the growth of limits. For Nelson, however, theories of complexity and non-equilibrium—such as Crawford Holling’s (1973) influential model of adaptive cycles, which celebrates uncertainty, surprise and ‘creative distruction’ as triggers of renewal and change— contained also ‘an explicit critique of industrial-era management practices’ (Nelson 2014b: 4). On a similar line, Walker and Cooper note how Holling’s theory attracted the interest of major neoliberal thinkers, namely Hayek, but also how complex system theory ‘grew out of libertarian, environmentalist and often leftist critiques of the “command and control” logistics of Cold War, first-order cybernetics’ (2011: 157). In other words, theories of complexity, indeterminacy and resilience are suitable to both ‘progressive’ and ‘counterrevolutionary’ uses. They began as critical enterprises, became subservient to capital accumulation and neoliberal regulation, but can be re-appropriated for transformative political projects. Resilience theory, Nelson maintains, ‘offers theoretical tools for an anti-capitalist ecological politics’ (2014b: 16), grounded on the role of the ‘self-organizing capacities of ecosystems […] in shaping and contesting the structures of post-Fordist accumulation’ (2014a: 475). Braun reiterates this argument by stressing that, to resist the case for capital and nature as being ‘one and the same’ (2014: 12), the task is to further enhance new materialist ontologies of potentiality and non-dualist accounts of the generativity, the immanent vitality, the innovative force of nature.

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Vitality as a capture dispositif All right, then? Is the encounter between post-Fordism and non-dualist socio-material ontologies an event that does not preclude anything for the future? Are the emancipatory capacities of novel accounts of nature and humanity still intact? Can therefore the Anthropocene thesis be disentangled from (allegations of) supporting the (capitalist) status quo and redirected towards a new politics of sustainability (Arias-Maldonado 2013)? Possibly. At a closer look, however, things look again not so simple. Braun and Nelson’s case is a variation on the argument about cognitive capitalism developed by post-workerist scholarship (Hardt and Negri 2004; Vercellone 2007). The idea is that, the more capitalism builds on knowledge and innovation, the more the production of surplus value shifts from machines to the linguistic and communicative abilities of humans, their creativity, affective awareness, and ethical sensibilities. These capacities, it is claimed, are formed outside production processes. This offers room for enacting post-capitalist relations, orienting innovation accordingly. Cognitive labour, in other words, would be simultaneously central to capital accumulation and to the possibility of radical change. A complement to this claim, then, concerns the ‘infinitely productive’ potentiality of non-human nature, ‘as something presupposed, but not produced, by state and capital’ (Braun 2014: 11). The expanding economy of ‘ecosystem services’—the benefits biophysical systems provide to humans5—would indicate the growing relevance of ‘self-organizing dynamics and regenerative social-ecological capacities outside of the direct production processes’ (Nelson 2014a: 462). On both sides, the human and the nonhuman, capitalism would therefore appear parasitic on a dynamism and vitality that it grabs but is unable to produce and constantly overflows its attempts at control.6 That capital is losing hold over immaterial and material labour, however, is questionable. On one side human creativity is not free-floating but affected by precarious work conditions and prescriptive cultural and organizational models of fulfilment, achievement and reward, including the orientation to result and the domination of client demands (Dardot and Laval 2014a). On the other, the more the ‘immense but underestimated economic value’ (FAO 2012) of ecosystem services is recognized, the more the self-organizing, regenerative capacities of nature become the object of appropriation and commodification. There are certainly tensions and contradictions in such commodification (Robertson 2012), yet this does not seem to hamper the expansion of the ‘payment for ecosystem services’ (PES) sector.7 Nature’s creativity is therefore hardly beyond the reach of capital accumulation. Capitalism’s key capture dispositif seems actually to be precisely life, matter’s vitality, as unlimited potentiality, unconstrained potency. If reality is ever changing contingency with no ontological substance, then capital—with its constitutive inessentiality, its being just endless flux and becoming—mimics such liveliness at its purest. As a result, any ‘excess’ of the vital, of human and nonhuman creativity, seems bound to be assimilated ever more quickly (recent social mobilizations have been worrisomely short-lived!) by the next round of capital’s reorganization.

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Applying resilience as a conceptual tool for an anti-capitalist politics is also problematic. While sustainability traditionally focused on the interlinkage between justice, equity, human well-being, and environmental integrity, resilience tends to be treated as a descriptive, politically neutral concept.8 This, it has been noted, entails for the distinction between the unexpected and the contentious or the unwanted to fade away together with any sense of cause or origin of events, as well as of choice or direction (Pizzo 2015). (Re)politicizing resilience, thus, is likely to be a difficult endeavour. Furthermore, non-dualist ontologies are ever-more enrolled—inadvertently or otherwise—in support of capitalist agendas. The case of Latour is emblematic. Human development, he has recently stressed (Latour 2011), requires ‘a process of becoming ever-more attached to, and intimate with’ the nonhuman world—a claim subscribed to by new materialist supporters of a humble, ‘caring’ attitude towards the latter (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011). Yet, this very quote appears in a book published by the Breakthrough Institute, a neoliberal think tank9 known for its pro-nuclear, pro-biotech, extractivist, trans-humanist positions, as part of an ‘ecomodernist’ or ‘post-environmentalist’ agenda grounded on the assumption that, to escape pending threats, humans should increasingly decouple themselves from biophysical systems, accelerating or intensifying the Anthropocene (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). This position seems to reproduce classic Western subject/object dualism, and Latour has later taken distance from ecomodernism, claiming precisely that its ontology is not suited to the Anthropocene, where humans can no longer be conceived as being ‘alone on stage’ (Latour 2015: 223). However, this means missing the basic point about ecomodernism, which is closer to Latour than he (now) seems to like. Technological intensification means more, not less, intimacy, with materiality. In fact, the hypertrophic role assigned to technology, as effectively capable of replacing nature, depicts a total blurring of the human and the nonhuman. The historical record of human transformation of materiality becomes a testimony that nature is what we want it to be. Nature is reframed as an internal differentiation of technology (or capital?); a sphere already comprised in the latter yet (provisionally) ‘let alone’, for aesthetic or moral reasons (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). Moreover, when discussing Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis (the Earth as a self-regulating system made up of a tight coupling of all living and non-living things), Latour (2017) insists that its crucial value lies in the idea of a full (yet non-holistic, headless) interpenetration of living and non-living entities, where the inside/outside or internal/external dualism disappears, presenting this as opposed to the ‘neoliberal theory of action’ implied in the neo-Darwinist account of a selfish gene, organism, or individual trying to extract the most from the surrounding environment. This misunderstanding of neoliberalism10 leads to neglecting how connectivity or lack of boundaries may challenge dominative hierarchies but correspond also to denial of alterity and full exposition to capital’s flows—economic globalization offers plenty of evidence about that. Of course, it is possible to contrast the case for an accelerated Anthropocene with co-evolutionary accounts of socio-material assemblages, which have long warned how past records of success do not warrant a technological fit with changing biophysical conditions (Norgaaard 1994). One may also object how, for both

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ecomodernists and Latour,11 capitalism is strangely the only thing assumed to persist in a runaway, ever-changing world. Yet this sort of criticism can be circumvented: if success is unwarranted, so is also failure; capitalism is also plastic, and so on. The core point remains: non-dualist ontologies can be enrolled to fulfil opposite agendas. Growing intimacy with materiality may mean a call to humbleness, care and restraint but also an invitation to unprecedented forms of exploitation. If this crucial issue is left unaddressed, ‘good Anthropocene’ is bound to remain an empty signifier.

Conclusion Environmental political theory is an appropriate terrain for tackling this task. The turn to non-dualist understandings of reality can hardly be neglected, being distinctive of cutting-edge social and political theory, emergent techno-scientific practices and regulation, and new social mobilizations. In this context, the Anthropocene thesis emblematizes the ambivalence of non-dualist ontologies. Social and political theory has mainly regarded these as expressing and promoting an emancipatory agenda, the dominative implications of dualisms being often seen as entrenched in the structure of capitalist relations. Mainstream versions of the Anthropocene, however, while stressing the growing intimacy between human agency and the biophysical world, do not question a traditional account of the former. ‘Stewarding’ the planet, in this framework, means perpetuating the exploitative orientation that is the main cause of environmental problems, and actually intensifying it thanks to such growing intimacy, which the blurring of ontological dichotomies expresses and underpins. For environmental political theory, thus, the task is to elaborate on the notion of ‘stewardship’, disentangling the farewell to naïve conceptions of nature from a revamping of human exceptionalism, as leverage over a fully plastic materiality open to endless (purportedly benign) transformations, and at the same time avoiding to take what Bessire and Bond call ‘anticipatory evocations of heterogeneous assemblages’ (2014: 441) as alternative realities in the making, capable of overcoming, by force of their affirmativeness and in a frictionless dance of encounters and transformations, any dominative relationship. A research program is needed to this purpose. Such program has not necessarily to build from scratch. For example, Critical Theory (especially Adorno) has long warned that the rejection of the metaphysical separation between world and human cognition should be accompanied by the acknowledgment that there is always a remainder between things and words, matter and knowledge, will and reality.12 Making sense of this remainder entails sensitizing oneself to the theoretical mistake, and the practical risks, of assuming the acquisition of nature to technology, or the technical character of nature itself. Whatever theoretical framework is adopted, the task is to identify ‘hot spots’ for investigation. One is property. Historical inquiry has shown that characteristic of the modern notion of property is the replacement of earlier ideas of concrete,

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situated connections between humans and things, the ‘thickness’ of which limited regulatory discretion, with the idea of a volitional act of domination, first of all over oneself as the source of free will, and then over things, which can therefore be managed in whatever way one may wish (including their destruction, as the ultimate expression of ownership). Modern property, in other words, corresponds to an ‘incoercible tendency to expand oneself’ (Grossi 1972: 312) —not by chance non-proprietary relationships are crucial to many new mobilizations in the South and the North of the planet. The thesis, or the event, of the Anthropocene, then, sounds as an invitation—better, an urgent call—to acknowledging how property and other core institutions (for example science) cannot be left unaddressed if the flourishing, perhaps the survival, of the human species is to be ensured for the future.

Notes 1 For example, about the ‘indianist’ politics in Bolivia, Franck Poupeau talks of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ (2012: 67), the pre-eminence given to ethnic identity over social inequalities resulting functional to neo-extractivist policies and unable to challenge dominant relations of exchange. 2 I provide additional ones in Pellizzoni (2016). 3 For Marx human action over nature is a relation internal to a single unity, where subject and object of transformation cannot be neatly distinguished. For Darwin there is no ultimate distinction between natural and artificial selection. 4 A comparable type of criticism has emerged in anthropology. ‘In its eagerness to avoid the overdetermined dualism of nature–culture’, the ontological turn would ‘reify the most modern binary of all: the radical incommensurability of modern and non-modern worlds’ (Bessire and Bond 2014: 442), glossing over the variations and contaminations characterizing Amerindian ontologies. 5 These include provisioning (e.g. food, water, energy, genetic and medicinal resources); regulating (e.g. carbon sequestration and climate regulation, waste decomposition, pest and disease control); supporting (e.g. nutrient cycles, soil formation, crop pollination); and cultural services (e.g. spiritual and recreational benefits). See Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). 6 Besides parasitism, this argument makes use of the classic trope of contradiction: getting full control over human and nonhuman vitality would mean undermining it, hence also capitalism’s own survival. 7 PES are defined as voluntary transactions by which owners are compensated by users for ensuring a service—say potable water—by maintaining the associated resource—say a catchment basin. 8 Nelson’s and Braun’s idea that resilience is suitable to both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary uses implicitly supports this politically-neutral reading. 9 Despite a lack (to my knowledge) of explicit standpoints in this regard, describing the Breakthrough Institute as neoliberal seems accurate, given its argument about the ‘planning fallacy’ of embedded liberalism and its case for market-driven innovation within a regulatory framework ensured by institutions like the WTO, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007). 10 Latour (2017) claims that the idea of headless connectivity is different to that of the market as ‘Great Dispatcher’ of goods (alternatively to the God of the earth, or the State). Yet the difference holds only according to a liberal understanding of the market, as a place where full-fledged individuals meet to exchange according to own predetermined goals, whereas in the neoliberal understanding interaction occurs between

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suitably regulated, permeable subjectivities (Dardot and Laval 2014b). Said otherwise, neoliberal regulation presumes and pursues precisely the erasure of any (human and nonhuman) inside/outside boundary. 11 Callon and Latour (2013) have talked of the ‘ineluctability of capitalism’! 12 The friction between world and knowledge is of course implied in the revisable status of scientific claims. The dominative orientation of current science, however, depends on the fact that the disclosure of truth becomes an anticipated future which retroacts on the present producing, among the other results, what Ulrich Beck calls ‘organized irresponsibility’: technologies are legitimated on the grounds of knowledge deemed reliable, yet liabilities for accidents and ‘side effects’ are rejected on the grounds that scientific knowledge is always limited and perfectible.

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FAO (2012). ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services.’ Available from: http://www.fao.org/3/a -ar584e.pdf (accessed 24 August 2017). Grossi, P. (1972). ‘Usus facti. La nozione di proprietà nella inaugurazione dell’età nuova.’ Quaderni Fiorentini, 1: 287–355. Grosz, E. (2011). Becoming Undone. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gudynas, E. (2011). ‘Buen Vivir: Today’s tomorrow.’ Development, 54(4): 441–447. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004). Multitude. War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin. Hayles, N.K. (2006). ‘Unfinished Work. From Cyborg to Cognisphere.’ Theory, Culture & Society, 23(7–8): 159–166. Holling, C.S. (1973). ‘Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.’ Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics, 4: 1–23. Keller, E.F. (2011). ‘Towards a Science of Informed Matter.’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 42(2): 174–179. Kenis, A. and Mathjis, E. (2014). ‘(De)politicising the Local: The Case of the Transition Towns Movement in Flanders (Belgium).’ Journal of Rural Studies, 34: 172–183. Kirby, V. (2008). ‘Subject to Natural Law.’ Australian Feminist Studies, 23: 5–17. Latour, B. (2011). ‘Love Your Monsters.’ In Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by M. Shellenberger and T. Nordhaus. Oakland, CA: Breakthrough Institute. Available at: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/ issue-2/love-your-monsters (accessed 14 December 2017). Latour, B. (2015). ‘Fifty Shades of Green.’ Environmental Humanities, 7: 219–225. Latour, B. (2017). ‘Why Gaia is not a God of Totality.’ Theory, Culture & Society, 34(2–3): 61–81. Lövbrand, E., Beck, S., Chilvers, J. et al. (2015). ‘Who Speaks for the Future of Earth? How Critical Social Science Can Extend the Conversation on the Anthropocene.’ Global Environmental Change, 32: 211–218. MacKenzie, D. (2009). ‘Making Things the Same: Gases, Emission Rights and the Politics of Carbon Markets.’ Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34(3–4): 440–455. Meyer, J.M. (2015). Engaging the Everyday. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-Being; Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. Mol, A. (1999). ‘Ontological Politics. A Word and Some Questions.’ In Actor Network Theory and After, edited by J. Law and J. Hassard. London: Blackwell, 74–89. Nelson, S. (2014a). ‘Beyond The Limits to Growth: Ecology and the Neoliberal Counterrevolution.’ Antipode, 47(2): 461–480. Nelson, S. (2014b). ‘Resilience and the Neoliberal Counterrevolution: From Ecologies of Control to Production of the Common.’ Resilience, 2(1): 1–17. Norgaard, R. (1994). Development Betrayed: The End of Progress and a Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future. London: Routledge. Nordhaus, T. and Shellenberger, M. (2007). Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. New York: Houghton Mifflin. Papadopoulos, D. (2011). ‘The Imaginary of Plasticity: Neural Embodiment, Epigenetics and Ectomorphs.’ Sociological Review, 59(3): 432–456. Pellizzoni, L. (2016). Ontological Politics in a Disposable World: The New Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge. Pizzo, B. (2015). ‘Problematizing Resilience: Implications for Planning Theory and Practice.’ Cities, 43: 133–140. Poupeau, F. (2012). Les Mésaventures de la Critique. Paris: Raisons d’Agir.

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Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2011). ‘Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things.’ Social Studies of Science, 41(1): 85–106. Robertson, M. (2012). ‘Measurement and Alienation: Making a World of Ecosystem Services.’ Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37(3): 386–401. Rockström, J., Brasseur, G., Hoskins, B. et al. (2009). ‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.’ Nature, 461: 472–475. Schlosberg, D. and Coles, R. (2016). ‘The New Environmentalism of Everyday Life: Sustainability, Material Flows and Movements.’ Contemporary Political Theory, 15(2): 160–181. Stengers, I. (2008). ‘A Constructivist Reading of Process and Reality.’ Theory, Culture & Society, 25(4): 91–110. Thacker, E. (2007). The Global Genome. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vercellone, C. (2007). ‘From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism.’ Historical Materialism, 15(1): 13–36. Viveiros de Castro, E. (2014). Cannibal Metaphysics. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing Viveiros de Castro, E., Pedersen, M.A. and Holbraad, M. (2014) ‘The Politics of Ontology: Anthropological Positions.’ Cultural Anthropology, 13(January). Available at: http:// www.culanth.org/fieldsights/462-the-politicsof-ontology-anthropological-positions (accessed 22 October 2014). Walker, J. and Cooper, M. (2011). ‘Genealogies of Resilience. From Systems Ecology to the Political Economy of Crisis Adaptation.’ Security Dialogue, 4(2): 143–160. Woolgar, S. and Lezaun, J. (2013). ‘The Wrong Bin Bag: A Turn to Ontology in Science and Technology Studies?’ Social Studies of Science, 43(3): 321–340. Woolgar, S. and Lezaun, J. (2015). ‘Missing the (question) mark? What is a turn to ontology?’ Social Studies of Science, 45(3): 462–467. Žižek, S. (2003). Organs Without Bodies: Deleuze and Consequences. London: Routledge.

3 NOVEL ECOSYSTEMS AND THE RETURN OF NATURE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE Susan Baker

Prompted by the naming of the Anthropocene, social scientists are awakening after a long history of disregard for the natural world, and are now aware that ‘nature’ itself has to be understood as having social quality. This has brought recognition of the ways in which social processes shape the natural environment, including through consumption and production activity, as well as through cultural and spiritual engagement. While at the local level these activities can both protect and destroy the natural world, there is growing concern that at higher global, temporal and spatial scales human influence is increasingly disrupting earth system processes, including ecosystem functioning, carbon and nitrogen cycles, and oceanic and climatic systems (Steffen et al. 2015). Biodiversity loss and climate change are key indicators of this disruption. The attention of social scientists has thus turned not only to consider the structural factors at play, such as trade regimes, relationships of economic and political dependency, and globalization, but also the role played by underlying beliefs and social norms, including those related to consumption and the generation of wants (for a good overview see Gabrielson et al. 2016; Redclift and Woodgate 2011). As political actors negotiate and bargain in national, regional and international arenas over how best to adapt to the Anthropocene, attention has also turned to detailing the disruption to ecosystem services, and thus threats to the benefits that humans derive from nature (MEA 2005a). Some also pay attention to the unequal distribution of these impacts as they compound already existing social inequalities, particularly for those already marginalized and impoverished in the Global South (Baker 2015; Schlosberg 2013). Nature, far from being out in the cold, is now the focus of substantial attention. These discussions need to be informed by a deeper understanding of nature and thus too of the Anthropocene itself. For many social scientists, nature remains a ‘black box’, with mysterious or unknown internal functioning, processes or mechanisms. This paper takes key developments within Ecology and Conservation

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Biology to drive a more advanced understanding of nature into social science analysis. The lens of novel ecosystems, that is modified or engineered ecological assemblages, or niches in the Anthropocene, is used. This is a choice driven by the belief that this lens is a particularly useful one for directing discussions on the Anthropocene. Although the Anthropocene is far from a settled concept (Lövbrand et al. 2015), we believe that investigation of novel ecosystems can afford an opportunity to investigate whether claims that humans are playing the central role in geology and ecology (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007) are justified. Novel ecosystems raise an array of complex challenges both to how we understand and respond to the Anthropocene, and to the type of future relationship with nature that the Anthropocene makes possible.

Recognition of novel ecosystems All ecosystems are naturally dynamic, recognition of which is at the core of the discipline of Ecology. There is growing acknowledgement that socio-ecological systems are ‘coupled’ and, as intrinsically linked systems, their dynamics are determined by the positive and negative feedback loops that operate within this system (Folke et al. 2010). So too is recognition that human society has shaped land use patterns and altered ecosystems for millennia, especially since the development of agriculture (Baker and Durance 2018). Although difficult to quantify in simple metrics, at least a third, maybe more, of the Earth’s land surface is to some degree now ‘novel’ (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008; Hobbs et al. 2009; Perring and Ellis 2013). Global assessments of the state of the world’s ecosystems also confirms the extent of such systems (Ellis et al. 2010; MEA 2005b). The Anthropocene is thus marked by ‘novel ecosystems’ (Seastedt, Hobbs, and Suding 2008), a term introduced by Chapin and Starfield (1997) to recognize the response of the boreal forest to current and anticipated climatic changes. They were previously described as ‘emerging ecosystems’ (Vitousek et al. 1997). The recent and very rapid development of novel ecosystems that differ in composition and/or function from past systems is a consequence of several anthropogenic factors. Land use changes and land conversion, such as through intensive agricultural practices and biofuel conversion, dam building, timber harvesting, soil removal, quarrying, or changing soil composition from chemical inputs, such as nitrogen deposition, are key influences. They drive local species extinction but also prevent the reestablishment of pre-existing species assemblages. Re-establishment can also be prevented by land fragmentation due to road building and urban sprawl. Novel ecosystems can also arise through the introduction of new species into the system. Global trade in particular has breached traditional biogeographical boundaries, and facilitated the spread of exotic species (Hobbs et al. 2006). Land abandonment can also bring novel ecosystems, because when agricultural land management ceases, such as in pastoral systems, nature ‘recolonises’ these abandoned sites, but under new biotic conditions with new assemblages of species. Such spontaneously ‘re-wilded’ landscapes now offer niches for biodiversity in farmlands

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abandoned in Europe (Navarro and Pereira 2012). As ecological niches, novel ecosystems can include ‘technosols’ (Ellis and Ramankutty 2008). Technosol is soil that contains artefacts, soils from wastes (such as sludge or ashes) and soils from humanmade materials (FAO 2015; Zalasiewicz et al. 2016). Indoor environments, especially given household cleaning regimes, can be examples of novel ecosystems, although few have studied the evolutionary processes that are at work in these environments (Ellis 2011). Sometimes novel ecosystems are created, including for the purposes of planning mitigation, for example under ‘no net loss of wetlands’ regulations in the USA (Baker et al. 2013). Deliberate creation of novel ecosystems is also used for the management of remnant land in urban settings (Perring, Standish, and Hobbs 2013). There is also a sense to which deliberate re-wilding is leading to novel ecosystems, spontaneously, as self-regulating processes take over from planned human interventions (Svenninga et al. 2016). Novel ecosystems are also emerging due to climate change (Root and Schneider 2006; Morse et al. 2013). It can be seen from this list that novel ecosystems emerge as unintended consequences of diverse forms of economic activity, in ecosystems that have been subject to a variety of human induced stressors, and in both urban and rural landscapes. There are also calls to intentionally create more of such systems in anticipation of further climate change, such as through assisted migration or deliberate movement of species in anticipation of shifting climatic envelopes (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2008). As human population growth and land use changes have fundamentally altered global patterns of ecosystem and biodiversity, the term ‘Anthropocene’ has gained traction (Zalasiewicz et al. 2010). In this context, anthropogenic disturbances function as mechanisms for the generation of novel ecosystems (Seastedt, Hobbs, and Suding, 2008). The theoretical framework for understanding their emergence comes from the ‘panarchy’ paradigm developed by Holling and colleagues (Holling 1973, 2001; Gunderson and Holling 2001). Applied to the study of ecosystems, ecosystems are seen to pass through different states with different characteristics over time, some of which are vulnerable and others resilient to change. When a disturbance affects a sensitive system, restructuring occurs. The extent of this restructuring depends upon the state of the system and the spatial scale at which the disturbance takes place. Historically, this pattern of interactions produces sustainable cycles. This understanding explicitly acknowledges change as a fundamental process occurring in all ecological systems. While these systems can be expected to redevelop following disturbances, the case of the Anthropocene is different: human interventions prevent the redevelopment of pre-existing compositions, either because of the degradation of the original ecosystem or the introduction of new species, or both. In other words, they have passed at least one threshold, a point along an ecosystem’s trajectory at which a change in ecosystem properties becomes difficult or impossible to reverse (Morse et al. 2013). In this situation, we find the emergence of novel ecosystems. Whether on land or at sea, they possess greater or lesser degrees of novelty, but none has strict analogue in present or historic records (Perring, Standish, and Hobbs 2013). From an ecological point of view, they generate a no-analogue future, that is, where no modern counterparts for them exist (Fox 2007).

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Novel systems are characterized by two key features. First, novelty: they consist of new species combinations and relative abundance that have not occurred previously within a given biome. Second, they are characterized by human agency, that is, they are the result of deliberate or inadvertent human activity but, crucially, they ‘do not depend on continued human intervention for their maintenance’ (Hobbs et al. 2006: 2, emphasis added). They persist over time, and independently of humans. A defining feature of the threshold they have passed is that the resultant ecosystem sustains itself in its new-post threshold state without human assistance (Hobbs et al. 2009; Morse et al. 2013). In other words, both the new biotic (living components of an ecosystem) and abiotic properties (non-living physical and chemical components) of the system are self-sustaining.

The significance of novel ecosystems Regarded by some as ‘the new normal’ (Marris 2010) and subject to disputes as to their characteristics and extent (Murcia et al. 2104), the recognition of novel ecosystems supports prevailing views within Ecology that we inhabit a dynamic world that has been in continuous environmental and ecological flux (Jackson 2013). At the same time, they present us with several ethical challenges and are the source of considerable debate within conservation policy, throwing into question its purpose as developed during the 19th and 20th centuries. In order to explore these matters we begin by seeing how and in what ways the more recent notion of novel ecosystems coincides with other well established views of nature that draw from environmental political and social theory, geography, planning, and ecology. Does the recognition of ‘novel ecosystems’ provide us with a different understanding of ‘nature’? Disciplines from across both the natural and social sciences tell us that much of the world is now a patchwork of different land uses and ecosystems. As we question the notion of the ‘wild’ (Dudley 2012; Marris 2011), nature instead can be seen as a bounded, enclosed systems, such as in national parks, European Union Natura 2000 sites, and marine protected areas. Here is managed nature, often involving the removal of local, indigenous people and of keystone species, in order to conserve what is deemed to be their ‘naturalness’ (Brockington and Igoe 2006; Cock and Fig 2000). To this, we add nature that is restored, an important new arena for the reconstruction of nature given policy commitments at the UN, EU, and national levels to restore lost habitats by 2020 (Baker 2016). While restoration is now a major tool for addressing global environmental change (climate change and biodiversity loss), restored sites are highly controversial. Elliot, for example, argues they are not part of ‘nature’, but artifacts that show lack of authenticity, an interruption of historical continuity and a change of origin, all of which arise from human interventions (Elliot 1982). Nature can also be fragmented, remaindered through the creation of so-called TOAD (temporary, obsolete, abandoned, or derelict) sites, especially in the urban landscape, or it can be linearized (Lister 2016). Linearized systems, such as Europe’s motorways, to take an example, increased in length by almost 41% (15,000 km) within the last decades of the 20th century and

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TABLE 3.1 Nature in Our Ragamuffin Earth

Type

Example

Value

Wild Enclosed Cultivated

Antarctica Yellowstone Park Farmland, managed landscapes

Reconfigured

Novel ecosystems e.g. spontaneously re-wilded abandoned farmland Sabah river corridor, Borneo

High biodiversity value High ecosystem value High ecosystem services value and mixed biodiversity value Disputed

Restored

Linearized Remaindered

Encased

Roadside verges ‘TOADed’ sites: post-industrial sites; ‘junkspaces’ near infrastructural builds; ‘crudescapes’ Concreted over; built upon; culverted (rivers)

Trashed

Coral reefs

Finished

Dead zones in marine and coastal habitats

Moderate biodiversity and ecosystem value; High cultural /social value Moderate biodiversity value Increasing social value via guerrilla gardening/re-greening; green infrastructure Negative Disregarded/disrespected; dysfunctional Negative Sense of both symbolic and functional injury Negative Non-functional High negative emotional and functional loss

are set to increase further, creating long strips of verges (Hambrey Consulting 2013). Land fragmentation also results, with negative impacts on ecological processes and biodiversity. In the densely populated country of Belgium, for example, the average size of contiguous land units not fragmented by major transport routes has been reduced to just 20 km2 (EEA 2011). Within the built environment, nature can be valued as providing refugia for biodiversity, a bridge between fragmented landscapes, important for the extension of environmental management regimes outside of protected areas, parks and sites (CEC 2013), and as providing beneficial health and wellbeing effects for local populations (Lee and Maheswaran 2011). On the other hand, nature within the builtscape also remains encased, such as in culverted and canalized rivers, and is the product of planning systems that disregard or disallow both nature’s intrinsic value and ecosystem services (so-called nature’s benefits to people)—in this case protection of human settlements by riparian zones that provide natural flood plain. In a single decade in the late 20th century, around 5% of EU territory was covered with concrete or otherwise converted into artificial areas (EEA 2011), to take an example. Trashed nature, as in

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deforestation, is also the result of prioritization of forms of economic activity that unsustainably harvests natural resources. Finally, we have dead or hypoxia zones in large bodies of ocean, lakes and rivers, where pollution has depleted oxygen concentrations to levels that are too low to support life (Diaz and Rosenberg 2008). Adding novel ecosystems to this wider view paints a picture of a ragamuffin Earth (Marris 2009). This view is very different from the neatly divided image of the wild, on the one hand, and the managed landscape on the other, a binary that emerges when too sharp a distinction is posited between nature and society. Nature, rather than being one side of a binary, existing in opposition to the built, is better seen as a patchwork of scapes, emerging in the mingling of nature and society: ranging from the wild, to the enclosed, cultivated, through to the restored, encased and finished. As recognized, such variety and complexity challenges societal understanding of ‘the natural’. However, novel ecosystems do not merely add another feature to the complexity of our view of nature. They move us beyond the overarching narrative of the Anthropocene, which foregrounds the social construction of nature. Instead, novel ecosystems must be seen to have their own dynamic—and therein lies their significance.

Beyond Anthropogenic nature The importance of novel ecosystems is that they reinforce the claims that we have entered the Anthropocene (Steffen, Crutzen, and McNeill 2007). Their existence strengthens the view that it is no longer valid to treat natural systems as separate from human systems (Martin et al. 2014; Murcia et al. 2014). However, while the Anthropocene focuses on human activity, and how it has profoundly altered geologically significant conditions and processes, novel ecosystems are humbling because they put human agency back into wider perspective. The ‘end of nature’ debate, though positive in that it makes any nature-society dichotomy redundant, has morphed into a misleading belief that we have entered the ‘post-natural’ (Castree 2004; Swyngedouw 2011). The emergence of novel ecosystems is evidence of the continued evolutionary dynamics of the system of non-human nature at work. While humans are the ‘external’ drivers of ecosystem change leading to novelty, the emergence of novel ecosystems shows that humans are not the ultimate or even most important determinants of the outcomes of these changes. While arising from human intervention into nature, they subsequently exhibit the full autonomy of nature. Rather than revealing humanity as a rival to the great forces of nature, the Anthropocene shows the ongoing processes of nature as it has always been at work. In short, novel ecosystems defy simple dichotomies between nature and society, and related claims that one (nature) has be subsumed into the other (society), because ‘they are diverse but invaded, neglected but resilient, new but natural, anthropogenic but wild’ (Yung et al. 2013: 248). Alongside returning nature alive into the Anthropocene, novel ecosystems throw into doubt our understanding of wilderness, traditionally understood as that part of nature that has been ‘untouched’ by human hand. Novel ecosystems share key

Novel ecosystems in the Anthropocene 57

characteristics of wilderness, ‘including on-going change, uninhibited growth and free-flowing evolutionary processes’ (Light et al. 2013). Furthermore, these systems behave just as natural systems do when viewed in terms of ecological productivity, such as nutrient cycling and biomass production (Marris 2009). This, in turn, calls us to think again about the grounds upon which intrinsic value is ascribed to non-anthropogenic ecosystems. If ‘wild nature’ has some kind of intrinsic value, and novel ecosystems have some form of wildness, do we ascribe intrinsic value to novel ecosystems? If the ascription of intrinsic value lies ultimately in nature having autonomy from humans (Higgs et al. 2006), are novel ecosystems to be denied this value because they originated in human agency, despite the fact that they also exhibit autonomy from the human sphere over time? In answering these questions, there remains nevertheless a sense in which novel ecosystems lack intrinsic value possessed by unaltered, historical ecosystems (Standish et al. 2013). In this case then is the suggestion that some form of hierarchy of intrinsic value be ascribed, with parts of ‘nature’ having ‘more or less’ intrinsic value, depending on factors such as time or distance from human agency—an idea that appears rather contradictory? Ecologically, novel systems influence underlying ecological characteristics, such as resilience, competition, extinction and speciation, and thus make significant contribution to the Earth’s system. Thus, for biologists and ecologists who value such processes novel ecosystems ‘are great hubs of active evolution’ (Marris 2009). From a biodiversity perspective, the value of such systems is mixed. On a positive note, they can actually facilitate the regrowth of native species—by building soil, altering hydrology, and providing structure and habitat for native species, such as through providing canopy cover (Morse et al. 2013). They can also bridge fragmented landscapes, ensuring important ecosystem properties, such as connectivity, that enhance species survival and thus diversity (Yung et al. 2013). They can also act as buffer zones between enclosed parks and managed ecosystems, for example, in the agricultural landscape (Light et al. 2013). Some contribute to biodiversity by providing habitats for native species, such as the monarch butterfly in California, which is now dependent on non-native plants for food. However, they can also drive particular species to extinction by crowding out their habitat, out-competing native species for recourses. A more instrumental way to ascribe value to novel ecosystems is to link their value to what it is we seek from nature. However, even if the concern is more anthropocentric, such as valuing the delivery of ecosystems services to society, the evidence is also mixed: a novel ecosystem can be better or worse than what came before, depending on how they operate (Marris 2009). For those that are concerned with historic fidelity, such as ensuring continuity in the structure of ecosystems, particularly their species composition, as discussed above, they are negative indeed. They are also negative when viewed from the point of view of cultural identity, associated with disruption to landscapes managed over long periods of human history and for which society has attachment and affinity.

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TABLE 3.2 Novel Ecosystems: Interests and Value

Interest

Value

Functioning Ecosystems Provision of Ecosystem Services Maintenance of Biodiversity Adherence to historic fidelity/authenticity Cultural identity Connecting with nature

Positive Mixed Mixed Negative Negative Positive

However, because they exist in areas close to human activity, especially urban areas, they open up spaces for people to engage with nature. This gives them value as places where people can connect with the natural world—rather than continuing to give value only to those interactions with some ‘rarefied’ nature (wilderness) that is typically beyond most people’s reach (Higgs et al. 2006). Recognition of novel ecosystems, and valuing them as part of nature, also gives us a more effective depiction of how much of the society interacts with nature in practice (Higgs, et al. 2006), especially given increased urbanization (see also Cronon 1995). Many such sites also serve roles that we traditionally associate with ‘being in nature’, such as places of relaxation and ‘healing’, not least because they can look and sound like ‘wild’ and ‘natural places’.

Rethinking conservation policy In addition to posing ethical questions, novel ecosystems also challenge conservation practices and indeed the purpose of environmental policy. Conservation policy is under stress, seen as rooted in outmoded notions of static, stable ecosystems. Global environmental change brings additional challenge to environmental management (Perring, Standish, and Hobbs 2013; Truitt et al. 2015), including a questioning of its foundational view that ecosystems consist of a particular assemblage of species in particular places (Cole and Yung 2010). Novel ecosystems add fuel to this debate. Their emergence questions whether conservation policy is out of touch, targeting some general perception of a desirable system that is either impossible in some cases or unaware of the dynamics of change in the Anthropocene (Corlett 2015). Invasive alien species—long the target of conservation action—are already being considered in a more positive light in the context of novel ecosystems, and as exemplars of opportunistic survival patterns (Fox 2007). Recognition of novel ecosystems speaks to those who argue that conservation policy should focus on ecosystems where management is feasible and where it is possible to promote resilience, rather than those that conform to historic, pre-climate change conditions. The emergence of novel ecosystems also calls for a re-think of the traditional goals of maintenance of native ecosystems, goals embedded for example in EU conservation policy and in the biodiversity governance regime established under

Novel ecosystems in the Anthropocene 59

the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. To this is added an instrumental argument, in that precious resources should not be wasted trying to ‘fix’ ecosystems by returning them back to their pre-existing states, not least on the pragmatic grounds that there is limited chance of success (Hobbs et al. 2006). Instead, conservationists should be strategic, and move away from futile attempts to ‘beat back the unceasing tide of change’ (Marris 2010: 3). This ‘new ecological world order’ (Hobbs et al. 2013) requires us to think more pragmatically and flexibly about how to manage for conservation needs in an increasingly uncertain future. As such, embracing the reality of novel ecosystems could form part of a societal reconciliation with the consequences of environmental change (Hobbs et al. 2013), as opposed to continued denial. Developing new policies to tackle novel systems raises a number of other uncertainties (Bridgewater and Yung 2013), including the need to find new ways to manage new species composition or function (Hulvey et al. 2013). There is also recognition of the risk involved, not least in terms of the endurance and evolution of these new systems and their resilience in the face of future disturbances and in the context of a warmer world. Their capacity to deliver ecosystem services, their biodiversity value, and their social acceptance is not fully understood. Given these uncertainties, some argue for the use of the precautionary principle and urge against seeing them as the ‘new normal’ (Murica et al. 2014). Could the recognition of novel ecosystems act as a moral hazard, legitimizing the tendency of society to ignore long-term environmental and ecologically impacts of its actions? (Murica et al. 2014: 551). If nature can endure, nay even ‘return to the wild’, is there not a danger that embracing novelty becomes simultaneously a ‘licence to trash’? Why bother, one may ask, investing in ecological restoration as part of planning mitigation and compensation, when nature herself can do that job without investment from us? Lacking certainty as to their value, intrinsic or otherwise, without clear conservation or management plans, and surrounding by both disciplinary and policy uncertainty about the future of conservation under climate change, novel ecosystems are in danger of becoming embroiled in current and very acrimonious debates about the purpose of conservation activities in a world characterized by human altered biophysical conditions. It may add fuel to the increasingly acrimonious debate within Conservation Ecology by supporting those within so-called ‘new conservation’, and in particular its Ecomodernist variant, who argue that nature should be saved to help ourselves (Caro et al. 2012; Lennon 2016; McShane et al. 2011; see Miller et al. 2014 for a critique). In counterbalance, those who argue that nature should be protected in light of its intrinsic value, retain the traditional conservation concerns for preserving minimally modified natural ecosystems (Corlett 2015), arguing that ‘conservationists and citizens alike ought to be alarmed by a scheme that replaces wild places and national parks with domesticated landscapes containing only nonthreatening, convenient plants and animals’ (Soulé 2013: 896).

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Conclusion Recognition of the interconnections between human society and natural systems is at the heart of the concept of the Anthropocene. While it is important to recognize this interconnectedness, the danger of this naming is that it may herald not simply a process of recognition, but new efforts to humanize nature, to render nature ever more domesticated, technologized, and capitalized. Herein nature ceases to be seen as ‘natural’. For some, witness the new conservationism, the advent of the Anthropocene means that humans now decide what nature is to be and how it is to be managed. In focusing upon novel ecosystems, this chapter speaks to the need to develop a more sophisticated view of nature in the Anthropocene. Novel ecosystems are a defining feature of the Anthropocene, as most of the ecosystems of the world are now shaped to some extent by human actions and, in addition, humans now play an important role in modifying or regulating the types and rates of ecosystem change. However, recognition that nature is ‘dead,’ that is, it cannot be understood as external to human society, does not mean that humans have become the agents exclusively in charge of the future production of nature. The Anthropocene, when viewed from the point of view of novel ecosystems, invites a return to humility through recognition that we are not even the central agent at play here. While the product of human interventions, novel ecosystems retain their own evolutionary trajectory. The idea of human agency we find creeping into the Anthropocene discourses, and which finds its most extreme expression in the Ecomodernist literature, in favour of ‘intensifying many human activities—particularly farming, energy extraction, forestry, and settlement’ by means of socioeconomic and technological processes as a solution to the environmental crisis (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2016) concentrates too much power in the hands of humans, while constructing nonhuman elements as always external and secondary (Nash 2005). Ecology explicitly acknowledges change as a fundamental process that occurs in all ecological systems. While the concept of the Anthropocene takes account of change over time, it would appear that views of nature within the Anthropocene are somewhat static, not fully recognizing the dynamics at play in nature itself. Recognizing this evolutionary dynamic, as seen clearly in the case of novel ecosystems, dislodges the view that nature is static. This calls us to think about the links between societal development and nonhuman evolutionary trajectories. This speaks to the resilience literature and its emphasis on the non-linear dynamics of nature, which we barely understand and over which we have no control. With a nature characterized by regime shifts, thresholds, and tipping points, we risk all if we embrace a vision of a tamed nature and strive for a future premised upon a domesticated Earth. Instead, in developing sustainable interactions between nature and society in the Anthropocene, humans must work in tandem with nature, where nature is understood as both persistent and evolving and ultimately not under our control.

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References Asafu-Adjaye, J. et al. (2015). ‘The Ecomodernist Manifesto.’ Available at: http://www. ecomodernism.org/. Baker, S. (2016). ‘Social Engagement in Ecological Restoration.’ In Routledge Handbook of Ecological Restoration, edited by S. Allison and S. Murphy. London: Routledge, 76–89. Baker, S. (2015). Sustainable Development, 2nd edition. London & New York: Routledge. Baker, S. and Durance, I. (2018). ‘Resilience and Adaptation in Coupled Natural-Social Systems: A Place-Based Perspective.’ In The Sage Handbook of Nature, edited by T. Marsden. London: Sage Publications. Baker, S., Eckerberg, K. and Zachrisson, A. (2013). ‘Political Science and Ecological Restoration.’ Environmental Politics, 23(3): 509–524. Bridgewater, P. and Yung, L. (2013). ‘The Policy Context: Building laws and rules the embrace novelty.’ InNovel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 271–283. Brockington, D. and Igoe, J. (2006). ‘Eviction for Conservation: A Global View. ’Conservation and Society, 20: 250–252. Caro, T., Darwin, J., Forrester, T., Ledoux-Bloom, C. and Wells, C. (2012). ‘Conservation in the Anthropocene.’ Conservation Biology, 26: 185–188. Castree, N. (2004). ‘Commentary: Nature is dead! Long live nature!’ Environmental and Planning A, 36, 191–194. CEC (Commission of the European Communities) (2013). ‘Building a Green Infrastructure for Europe.’ Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/ecosystems/docs/ green_infrastructure_broc.pdf. Chapin, F. S. III and Starfield, A. M. (1997). ‘Time lags and novel ecosystems in response to transient climate change in arctic Alaska.’ Climate Change, 35: 449–461. Cock, J. and Fig, D. (2000). ‘From colonial to community based conservation: Environmental justice and the national parks of South Africa.’ Society in Transition, 31(1): 22–35. Cole, D. N. and Yung, L. (Eds.) (2010). Beyond Naturalness: Rethinking Parks and Wilderness Stewardship in an Era of Rapid Change. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Corlett, R. T. (2015). ‘The Anthropocene concept in ecology and conservation.’ Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 30(1): 36–41. Cronon, W. (1995). ‘The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.’ In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 69–90. Diaz, R. J. and Rosenberg, R. (2008). ‘Spreading Dead Zones and Consequences for Marine Ecosystems.’ Science, 321(5891): 926–929. Dudley, N. (2012). Authenticity in Nature: Making Choices about the Naturalness of Ecosystems. London: Routledge. EEA (European Environment Agency) (2011). ‘Landscape Fragmentation in Europe.’ EEA Report No 2/2011. Elliot, R. (1982). ‘Faking Nature.’ Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 25: 81–93. Ellis, E. C. (2011). ‘Anthropogenic transformation of the terrestrial biosphere.’ Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A, 369(1938): 1010–1035. Ellis, E. C., Klein Goldewijk, K., Siebert, S., Lightman, D. and Ramankutty, N. (2010). ‘Anthropogenic transformation of the biomes, 1700 to 2000.’ Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(5): 589–606. Ellis, E. C. and Ramankutty, N. (2008). Putting people in the map: anthropogenic biomes of the world. Frontiers in Ecological and the Environment. 6, 439–447.

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FAO (2014). World Reference Base for Soil Resources World 2014 International soil classification system for naming soils and creating legends for soil maps Update 2015. Available at: http:// www.fao.org/3/a-i3794e.pdf. Folke, C., Carpenter, S. R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Chaplin, T. and Rockström, J. (2010). ‘Resilience Thinking: Integrating Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability.’ Ecology and Society, 14(4). Fox, D. (2007). ‘Back to the no-Analog Future?’ Science, 316: 823–825. Gabrielson, T., Hall, C., Meyer, J. M. and Schlosberg, D. (Eds.) (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: OUP. Gunderson, L. and Holling, C. S. (Eds.) (2001). Panarchy: understanding transformations in human and natural ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press. Hambrey Consulting (2013). The Management of Roadside Verges for Biodiversity, (Scottish Natural Heritage Commissioned Report No. 551). Available at: http://www.snh.org. uk/pdfs/publications/commissioned_reports/551.pdf. Higgs, E. (2006). ‘Perspective: A tale of two natures.’ InNovel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 293. Higgs, E. (2003). Nature by Design: People, Natural Processes, and Ecological Restoration. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press. Hobbs, R. J., Higgs, E. and Hall, C. (2013). ‘Introduction: Why novel ecosystems?’ In Novel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 3–10. Hobbs, R. J., Higgs, E. and Harris, J. A. (2009). ‘Novel ecosystems: implications for conservation and restoration.’ Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 24(11): 599–605. Hobbs, R. J. et al. (2006). ‘Novel ecosystems: theoretical and management aspects of the new ecological world order. ’Global Ecology and Biogeography, 15: 1–7. Hoegh-Guldberg et al. (2008). ‘Assisted colonization and rapid climate change.’ Science, 321: 345–346. Holling, C. S. (1973). ‘Resilience and stability of ecological systems.’ Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4: 1–23. Holling, C. S. (2001). ‘Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological, and social systems.’ Ecosystems, 4: 390–405. Hulvey et al. (2013). ‘Incorporating novel ecosystems into management frameworks.’ In Novel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 157–171. Jackson, S. T. (2013). ‘Perspective: Ecological Novelty is not New.’ InNovel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 63–65. Lee, A.C.K. and MaheswaranR. (2011). ‘The health benefits of urban green spaces: a review of the evidence.’ Journal of Public Health, 33(2): 212–222. Lennon, M. (2016). ‘Moral-Material Ontologies of Nat Conserv: Exploring the Discord between Ecological Restoration and Novel Ecosystems.’ Environmental Values, 26(1): 5–29. Light, A., Thompson, A. and Higgs, E. S. (2013). ‘Valuing novel ecosystems.’ In Novel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 257–268. Lister, N-M. (2016). ‘TRASHED SPACE: Nina-Marie Lister photographs urban waste spaces and makes the case for their reinvention.’ Available at: http://ecologicaldesignlab. ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Trashed_Space_Reclaiming_Urban_Junkscape.pdf. Lövbrand, E., Beck, S., Chilvers, J., Forsyth, T., Hedrén, J., Hulme, M., Lidskog, R. and Vasileiadou, E. (2015). ‘Who speaks for the future of Earth?: how critical social science

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can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene.’ Global Environmental Change, 32: 211–218. Martin, L. J. et al.. (2014). ‘Conservation opportunities across the world’s anthromes.’ Diversity and Distributions, 20: 745–755. Marris, E. (2011). Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-wild World. Bloomsbury: New York. Marris, E. (2010). ‘The New Normal.’ Conservation, 4: 1–7. Marris, E. (2009). ‘Ragamuffin Earth.’ Nature, 460: 450–453. MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) (2005a). Current State & Trends Assessment. Available at: http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Condition.html#download. MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis. Available at: http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf. McShane, T. O., Hirsch, P. D., Trung, T. C., Songorwa, A. N., Kinzig, A., Monteferri, B. and O’Connor, S. (2011). ‘Hard choices: Making trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and human well-being.’ Biological Conservation, 144(3): 966–972. Miller, B., Soulé, M. E. and Terborgh, J. (2014). ‘“New Conservation” or surrender to development?’ Animal Conservation, 17: 509–515. Morse, N. B. et al. (2013). ‘Novel Ecosystems in the Anthropocene: a revision of the novel ecosystem concept for pragmatic applications.’ Ecology and Society, 19(2): 12. Murcia, C., Aronson, J., Kattan, G-H., Moreno-Mateos, D., Dixon, K. and Simberloff, D. (2014). ‘A critique of the “novel ecosystem” concept.’ Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29 (10): 548–553. Nash, L. (2005). ‘The agency of nature or the nature of agency?’ Environmental History, 10 (1): 67–69. Navarro, L. and Pereira, H. M. (2012). ‘Rewilding abandoned landscapes in Europe Ecosystems.’ Ecosystems, 15: 900–912. Perring, M. P., Standish, R. J. and Hobbs, R. J. (2013). ‘Incorporating novelty and novel ecosystems into restoration planning and practice in the 21st century.’ Ecological Processes, 2 (18). Perring, M. P. and Ellis, E. C. (2013). ‘The Extent of Novel Ecosystems: Long in Time and Broad in Space.’ In Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological world Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 66–80. Redclift, M. R. and Woodgate, G. (Eds.) (2011). International Handbook of Environmental Sociology, 2nd edition. London: Edward Elgar. Root, T. L. and Schneider, S. H. (2006). ‘Conservation and climate change: the challenges ahead. ’Conservation Biology, 20: 706–708. Seastedt, T. R., Hobbs, R. J. and Suding, K. N. (2008). ‘Management of novel ecosystems: are novel approaches required?’ Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, doi:10.1890/ 070046. Schlosberg, D. (2013). ‘Theorising environmental justice: the expanding sphere of a discourse.’ Environmental Politics, 22(1). Soulé, M. (2013). ‘The “New Conservation”’. Conservation Biology, 27(5): 895–897. Standish, et al. (2013). ‘Concerns about novel ecosystems.’ In Novel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological World Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 296–309. Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. J. and McNeill, J. R. (2007). ‘The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?’ Ambio, 36(8): 614–621. Steffen, W. et al. (2015). ‘Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet.’ Science, 347(6223).

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Svenninga, J.-C. et al..(2016). ‘Science for a wilder Anthropocene: Synthesis and future directions for trophic rewilding research.’ PNAS, 113(4). Swyngedouw, E. (2011). ‘Depoliticized Environments: The End of Nature, Climate Change and the Post-Political Condition.’ Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 69: 253–274. Truitt, A. M., Granek, E. F., Duveneck, M. J., Goldsmith, K. A., Jordan, M. P. and Yazzie, K. C. (2015). ‘What is Novel about Novel Ecosystems: Managing Change in an EverChanging World.’ Environmental Management, 55: 1217. Vitousek, P. M., MooneyH.A., LubchencoJ. and Melillo, J.M. (1997). ‘Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems.’ Science, 277: 494–499. Yung et al. (2013). ‘Engaging the public in novel ecosystems.’ In Novel Ecosystems: Intervening the New Ecological World Order, edited by R. J. Hobbs, E. Higgs and C. M. Hall. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 247–256. Zalasiewicz, J. et al. (2016). ‘Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere: A geological perspective.’ The Anthropocene Review, 4(1): 9–22. Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Steffan, W. and Crutzen, P. (2010). ‘The new world of the Anthropocene.’ Environmental Science and Technology, 44(7): 2228–2231.

PART II

Environmental political theory and the Anthropocene

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4 VOCATIONS OF (ENVIRONMENTAL) POLITICAL THEORY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE1 John M. Meyer

This chapter is an exploration of the role that political theorists might play in interdisciplinary research projects about planetary futures. As such, it is not an attempt to interrogate the discourse of the Anthropocene itself, nor to evaluate whether or how the Anthropocene might reshape our political theories. Instead, this analysis builds upon geographer Noel Castree’s reflections on the role of ‘environmental humanities’ in Anthropocene research. Castree characterizes the Anthropocene as an alwaysunconventional scientific concept whose emergence reflected a desire of (some) Earth system scientists to foster interdisciplinarity and public awareness. He calls for more active engagement by environmental humanists in projects of this sort. In part, environmental political theorists can be appropriately folded into this call for engagement, along with historians, ethicists, literary critics, and other humanists. Yet here I pursue a more fine-grained analysis, exploring the distinctive questions, roles, and insights political theorists can contribute. These contributions stem from the fact that we are positioned to build bridges across the ‘two cultures’ divide in interdisciplinary environmental research, that political theory offers broader insights into the concept of ‘the political,’ and that political theorists’ nuanced engagement with contested concepts of representation, democracy, sovereignty, and justice can open conceptual space that fosters a more expansive political imagination. This chapter explores the possibilities for broadly interdisciplinary knowledge about planetary futures, with a particular eye on the role that political theorists might play. I reflect upon two interrelated questions: first, what sorts of scholars are and should be collaborating in the generation of Anthropocene knowledge? Second, what type of contribution can political theorists make and what challenges do these entail? The Anthropocene idea, as I understand it, is inherently Janus-faced. On the one side, it highlights the impact of human power so great that it transforms not only landscapes or ecosystems but the Earth system itself – from Holocene conditions to the Anthropocene. On the other, it draws attention to the limits of intentional

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human action, given our inescapable embeddedness in planetary processes beyond human control and that transcend human time-scales. Consequently, the Anthropocene cannot be understood based upon a hierarchical model of knowledge in which we simply learn from the natural sciences, but instead requires that we find egalitarian ways to engage with disciplines rooted in very different ways of knowing the world. Given this, it should be unsurprising that while the concept of the Anthropocene has garnered much attention and debate among geoscientists, in the past decade it has generated as much or more interest among humanists and social scientists. Castree has argued that “clearly, this was more than a ‘pure’ science concept—unlike, say, ‘black holes’ or ‘quarks;’ just as clearly, it significantly amplified the socio-economic, cultural and political implications of the climate change idea” (2014, 239). Thus, the Anthropocene has been an unconventional concept from the start; a geophysical hypothesis that could not be contained within that field and that reflected a desire of some natural scientists to foster interdisciplinarity and public awareness. In this sense, it might allow for the cultivation of broad interdisciplinary insight and new formations of knowledge production, even as the idea of the Anthropocene itself remains contested as both an empirical hypothesis and a normative claim. The promise of the Anthropocene idea, here, is that it might lower the barriers to meaningful collaborations between natural scientists, social scientists, and humanists, precisely because the terrain of study has been understood as inherently interdisciplinary. Future Earth is the largest and best-funded initiative fostering Anthropocene research. Here’s how its website describes their mission: Future Earth is a major international research platform providing the knowledge and support to accelerate our transformations to a sustainable world… Future Earth is an international hub to coordinate new, interdisciplinary approaches to research … It also aims to be a platform for international engagement to ensure that knowledge is generated in partnership with society and users of science. It is open to scientists of all disciplines, natural and social, as well as engineering, the humanities and law. (Future Earth 2016, emphasis added) Recently, scholars have sketched the contours of a new formation sometimes labeled the “environmental social sciences and humanities” (ESSH) and have issued calls for its greater participation in these projects. At the same time, they note that, despite its mission statement, the conception of interdisciplinarity currently embodied by Future Earth and similar initiatives is far from inclusive (Castree et al. 2014; Lövbrand et al. 2015; Palsson et al. 2013). Despite a several decades of scholarship, they note that ESSH disciplines often remain on the margins. In one sense, environmental political theorists should participate in these calls for engagement and inclusion, along with historians, human geographers, communication scholars, ethicists, literary critics, and others. Yet in the final section of this chapter, I argue

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that political theory retains a degree of invisibility even within ESSH. There, I seek a more fine-grained analysis, exploring some of the distinctive questions, roles, and insights political theorists might contribute in these contexts.

The “two cultures” in Anthropocene scholarship Castree has gone to considerable lengths to examine humanist writings on the Anthropocene, characterizing most as playing at least one of two time-honored roles: ‘inventor-discloser’ or ‘deconstructor-critic’…The former entails scholars using their academic freedom and the time a university career affords to conjure-up new (or revisit old and neglected) concepts, ideas and arguments intended to enrich humanity’s understanding of its place in the world. The latter entails scholars challenging existing (or new) patterns of thought in the academy or the world at large. (Castree 2014, 243) He concludes that “despite their importance and their differences, as currently performed these roles hold environmental humanists at a distance from those geoscientists currently trying to popularise the Anthropocene proposition and a set of related grand ideas (like ‘planetary boundaries’)” (Castree 2014, 233). Some would argue that the distance created by these roles is a good thing and that we should be wary of interdisciplinarity that compromises the forms that scholarship takes in different disciplines. There are insights that require independence of thought and the mutual intelligibility that results from conversation with colleagues in closely related fields. Nonetheless, the possibilities for broader interdisciplinary collaboration deserve serious consideration. In fact, Castree, along with other scholars in both the environmental humanities and social sciences (including political theorists) issued a call for just such a collaboration in Nature Climate Change (Castree et al. 2014). The venue – a premier journal read by natural scientists and that seeks to foster interdisciplinarity – is significant. As they argue, interdisciplinarity is evident in work that addresses climate change and the Anthropocene, but it is of limited scope, dominated by the natural sciences and those “social science approaches to human dimensions that share an elective affinity” with the natural sciences (Castree et al. 2014, 764). While university structures often frame three academic realms or “three cultures” – natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities – the tendencies in interdisciplinary collaboration and communication suggest that these three often collapse back into two cultures, with the social sciences divided between them (cf., Castree 2015; Snow 1998). On the one hand, we find scholars in the humanities and critical/interpretive social sciences often positioned to communicate about problem-driven research across disciplinary and sub-disciplinary boundaries. Political theorists take part in this sort of interdisciplinarity. The commonality is what Joshua Dienstag recently described as a “discipline of questioning,” which places

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political theory at the core of this enterprise (2015). On the other hand, we find what Castree et al. describe as the “elective affinity” between physical scientists, economists, behavioral psychologists, certain political scientists, and scholars of business and management. The social scientists in this configuration are among those typically identified with research on the “human dimensions” of environmental change. This configuration has developed the increasingly prominent field of “sustainability science,” and is often assumed as the core fields for “interdisciplinary” journals such as Nature Climate Change and for generously funded research collaborations like Future Earth, positioning them to drive the research agenda on global sustainability (2014, 764). For broad interdisciplinary work that crosses this “two cultures” divide to have a chance of success, a substantial degree of openness, introspection, and change will be necessary on both sides. From the “science” side, bringing critical social scientists and humanists to the table will lead to disappointment if the expectation is that these scholars will act as junior partners assigned the task of translating scientific knowledge to a lay audience. This sort of role fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the insights offered by these scholars (even those involved in “climate change communication” who come closest). More to the point, an explicit or implicit hierarchy, with physical scientists at the top and their forms of knowledge regarded as primary, must be toppled in order to grapple with the social dynamics and normative implications of global environmental change. Importantly, however, a reconceived role is also required on the other side of this divide. The very nature of collaborative work alters the professional identity of many in these humanistic fields, which – at least in a North American context – is typically rooted in notions of solitary reflection and individual authorship.2 Castree argues that an “engaged analyst” role is needed here, requiring a different way of thinking about our vocation than the “inventor-discloser” and “deconstructor-critic.” These roles are shaped in part by training and habit – about the publications we read, conferences we attend, and intellectual conversations we participate in (Castree 2014, 251– 255). For many ESSH scholars, including political theorists, to be an engaged analyst would require adjustments to one’s vocational identity and practice. In the next section, I focus on what it might look like to envision such a role for political theorists.

Vocations of political theory The question of what political theory is and hence what political theorists do – and ought to do – is a well-established form of introspection (e.g., Wolin 1969; Isaac 1995; Frank and Tambornino 2000; Stears 2005). If the question emerges more frequently among political theorists than among scholars in many other fields, this may be the result of the liminal space political theorists occupy: most commonly “in” the discipline of political science but not “of” it; oscillating between historicist and presentist approaches; between empirical and normative emphases; between the humanities and social sciences. Michael Walzer has argued persuasively that – at

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its most promising – the ambiguities of this position have allowed political theorists an unusual degree of freedom to transgress disciplinary boundaries and schools of thought, something he characterizes as a “political theory license” (2013). There is a case to be made that fundamental disagreement about the goals or even the nature of the vocation itself is characteristic of political theory today. Moreover, those of us who identify our work as environmental political theory can appear to be in a liminal space in an additional sense, with one foot in the ambiguous, contested space known as “political theory” and another in something like “environmental studies” or “environmental concerns.” Yet I wish to take a step back in order to notice some shared practices and implicit understandings of the vocation of political theory – including environmental political theory – as it is commonly practiced today, despite the more visible disagreements. I do so in the form of two models, a dominant “scholarship” model and a “public intellectual” model. In drawing out characteristics of these, my aim is neither to condemn these understandings of the vocation nor to promote either alternative as preferable. It is at once more modest and more ambitious: to delineate the contours of a third model for the vocation of political theory, and particularly environmental political theory. This model, too, comes with its strengths and weaknesses, dangers and opportunities. I propose it as another model for the vocation of political theory, rather than an alternative model. Yet in the end, I argue that it is a model of a way to do political theory, rather than doing something else – say, a form of service to the broader community or a form of interdisciplinary scholarship that is not also a form of political theorizing. Considering several dimensions of the vocation of political theory can provide us with some sense of the two extant models and of this additional one. The first dimension addresses questions of audience; the second raises questions of the style, form, and venue of communication; the third considers the goal of good political theoretical work. My aim is only to sketch very general contours of each model along these dimensions – enough that we are sensitized to their differences, but surely not enough to make an iron-clad case for the details.

Scholarship model Despite all the other differences, there is a dominant model for the vocation of political theory today. It is typically practiced by a solitary theorist. It assumes that the primary audience for political theoretical work is fellow practitioners of this enterprise – academic political theorists and students of political theory – and (sometimes to a lesser extent) practitioners of closely related academic enterprises. This audience is found in conferences at which we present our work and learn from others in our field and in academic journals in which we present our findings and follow the work of our colleagues. Of course, just how tightly the boundaries of audience are drawn varies; a highly specialized conference or publication is different than, say, the political science “public sphere” cultivated by the journal Perspectives on Politics (Isaac 2015) or what might be labeled as an environmental studies

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“public sphere” in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. The latter journals envision a broader audience that transcends sub-field and even disciplinary boundaries. Yet even within these journals, the style of acceptable communication falls within a fairly narrow range. Few would expect to publish a list of aphorisms, an essay without any citations, a dialogue, or a eulogy as a work of political theory today, though we recognize these as important forms of political thinking in the past. All of this is integral to our understanding of the goals of political theoretical work as well. A central goal is to formulate perspectives or arguments that might influence our colleagues with similar interests to think differently or to influence other colleagues to share our concerns or perspectives about the matter under consideration. In doing so, we are often pressing the limits of our own understanding, seeking to develop insights at the “cutting edge” of ongoing discussions in the field. Understood in this manner, political theory is clearly a “metapractice” in John Gunnell’s terms – a “second-order,” and sometimes “third-order” way of engaging with political phenomena (1998, 20–27). To be clear, this chapter itself fits neatly within this dominant model.

Public intellectual model Not everything does fit, of course. A less commonplace, but nonetheless familiar, model for the vocation is one in which the theorist aspires to act as a social critic or public intellectual. The norm of the solitary theorist remains dominant, yet the audience, the style of communication, and the goal are all constituted differently than above. The audience might be construed – at least aspirationally – as “the educated public,” or as activists, policymakers, journalists, and (non-political theory) students with an interest in the subject matter. Ideas may be conveyed through magazines or blogs, trade books written for a broader audience, public talks, or even curated as museum exhibitions (e.g., Making Things Public | 200503-20 | ZKM 2016). The goal, here, might also be understood differently. While influencing others to think in a new way or to share our concerns or perspectives may still be central, a more explicit appeal for social action or social change may also be the aim (I discuss models of social criticism at greater length in Meyer 2015, 1–21; see also Wissenburg 2013). This is consistent with Sheldon Wolin’s heroic conception of the vocation of political theory: “by an act of thought, the theorist seeks to reassemble the whole political world.” (Wolin 1969, 1078). While the “act of thought” is one that might be shared narrowly with one’s fellow theorists, the goal of “reassembl[ing] the whole political world” is one that demands “first order” participation in the political discourse of the wider community. Alternately, a political theorist might act as a public intellectual strictly with the aim of enriching the quality of public discourse by transmitting their insights about political thinking in general. Michael Sandel’s book and massive online course on “Justice” seem to reflect this latter goal (Sandel 2010; Justice with Michael Sandel – Online Harvard Course Exploring Justice, Equality, Democracy, and Citizenship 2016).

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It is relevant to acknowledge that many works by political theorists seeking to cultivate this sort of public intellectualism nonetheless fit within the dominant scholarship model. For example, although a major work like James Tully’s twovolume, 700+page Public Philosophy in a New Key is a clearly-written call for a more publicly-engaged form of theorizing and forms of citizenship, and although it addresses a number of pressing contemporary political concerns, it is hard to imagine many outside of political theory and its cognate disciplines taking up the volumes in the serious or sustained manner that they warrant.3

Broad interdisciplinary engagement model The models of the vocation sketched to this point are no doubt familiar to political theorists. This third one identifies some of the characteristics of a vocational model in which theorists engage in projects like the Anthropocene research described in the previous section. In this model, knowledge is generated in (often large) teams. The audience is interdisciplinary, but not just in the relatively limited sense of communicating with cognate disciplines. In the context of environmental political theory, cognate fields could include those in the (already interdisciplinary) environmental humanities, science and technology studies, environmental sociology and communication. But here, the interdisciplinary audience is broad in the sense that it crosses the “two cultures” divide and also includes those in the natural sciences: in this case, Earth system scientists, climatologists, ecologists, and epidemiologists, among others. As discussed in the previous section, it crosses a related and powerful divide within social science disciplines: between social sciences that rely heavily upon quantitative analysis and formal models and the critical or interpretive social sciences (c.f., Kagan 2009). The forms of communication appropriate to these broadly interdisciplinary academic collaborations and audiences must also be different from either those of the individual scholar writing for colleagues in their field or the public intellectual writing for a more general public. A new audience is generated here, one with problemspecific knowledge and expertise, but often little familiarity with the literatures, ways of knowing, or forms of evidence and argumentation commonplace among theorists pursuing other vocational models. Finally, the goals of working as a political theorist in such venues must also be distinct. One justification for such work has been to serve as a “translator.” This translational role can be manifest in two distinct senses: first, as political theorists we might be asked to “translate” complex ideas from our field into easily digestible principles or guidelines accessible to others. For example, natural scientists might find it valuable for a theorist to distill key claims about justice that are at play in international climate negotiations. Such a goal is important and consistent with recognizing these scientists as a relevant audience. But it is also constraining and problematic, especially to the degree that it is premised upon a notion that it might identify “the” conception of justice at play. A different translational role is also familiar, in which the relationship is reversed, with those of us in “social” or “people” disciplines called upon to translate (or, communicate) scientific findings

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TABLE 4.1 Models of the Vocation of Political Theory

Model of Political Theory Vocation

Audience/Publics

Communication Style and Venue

Goal

Dominant Scholarship (single author)

Colleagues: fellow political theorists and graduate students; critical scholars in cognate disciplines

Public Intellectual; Social Critic (single author)

“educated public”; activists; policymakers; journalists; undergraduate students

Books and journal articles with arguments closely engaged with established literature in the field; disciplinary and sub-disciplinary academic journals; disciplinary and other specialized conferences Articles and commentary in semi-popular blogs, magazines, and related publications; trade books; public talks; curating museum exhibitions

Broad Interdisciplinary Engagement (collaborative authorship)

natural scientists; positivist social scientists; policymakers; activists

Influence colleagues to think differently and/or share concerns and perspectives; develop “cutting edge” insights into political phenomena; “metapractice” Appeal for social action or social change on contemporary concerns; enrich public understanding; participate in “first-order” political discourse Appeal for action and change – both in society and in academic scholarship; foster new forms of knowledge; challenge “linear model” of decision-making; participate in “first order” knowledge production

Collaboration with academics with fundamentally different assumptions about what counts as knowledge production; broadly interdisciplinary reports and conferences. New venues may also be envisioned.

to a lay public in a comprehensible or persuasive manner. This reflects what science studies scholars have critiqued as a “linear model” of decision-making based on scientific findings (Pielke 2011; Brown 2016). In sum, the service implied by the former represents a very limited vision of interdisciplinarity, while the transmission function prescribed in the latter represents a misunderstanding of the contribution that political theorists and others are positioned to make. *** To be clear, I am not arguing that the dominant model of scholarship can only influence colleagues in our own field, but that this is its characteristic aim. I am also not offering an analysis of the professional pressures and incentives that influence the vocation of political theory, though it seems clear that – at least up to the present – these weight the scales heavily toward the dominant model. Further, I make no claim that this typology is exhaustive nor that these categories are mutually exclusive. Finally, I am not intending to trivialize one or more of these

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models, to suggest that one is always preferable, nor that one is sufficient. I do wish to suggest the value of cultivating a plurality of vocational models. This can provide encouragement for theorists to move among these models as well as to promote greater self-awareness about one’s work. In the table above, I summarize these models.

(Environmental) political theory in the Anthropocene In the first section of this chapter, I drew heavily upon three essays authored or coauthored by Noel Castree. These were a source of inspiration and I am convinced that a great deal of his analysis of the environmental humanities and social sciences resonates with the practices and experiences of environmental political theorists. And yet, in reading all three, I can’t help but notice a lacuna: despite frequent references to specific disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, there isn’t a single explicit mention of political theory itself.4 This is not distinctive to Castree. It suggests that as political theorists, our relative invisibility may be twofold: first, and most importantly, it is that of the environmental humanities and social sciences writ large but second, it is that of political theory itself within this academic configuration. This second sort of invisibility is the subject of this section. It is not a lament. My aim, instead, is to sketch some ways in which environmental political theory is positioned to contribute to broadly interdisciplinary conversations. In doing so, I seek to enrich the conversation, not to reify or reinforce the boundaries of (environmental) political theory. My suggestions are preliminary and meant to invite dialogue. They are influenced by my reading of fellow environmental political theorists in general and by the many terrific contributions to the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory in particular (Gabrielson et al. 2016).

Bridging-building and the “two cultures” divide The context and location for one’s academic training and professional life matters. In the US, at least, we see evidence of this in differences between political theorists – trained and usually situated in political science departments – and political philosophers – trained and usually situated in philosophy departments. While we may read and engage the same literatures, the way questions are formulated and evidence is provided are not identical (Levy 2016). There are many reasons for this, but one seems to be a matter of intellectual context. Political theorists often fill out their graduate training with the study of constitutional law, or comparative political systems, for instance, and count among their colleagues scholars in those fields. By contrast, political philosophers likely studied, and have colleagues who work in, logic, epistemology, or ethics. These differences make a difference. Castree and others make clear that one challenge to the meaningful inclusion of ESSH scholars in Anthropocene research is the “cultural” divide within the academy. Those on each side ask different sorts of questions and look for different sorts

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of evidence. While ESSH – like the “science” side of the divide – generates findings, what counts as a finding differs (Holm 2014, 59). Fostering mutual intelligibility across this divide can be especially challenging if neither side has a context for making sense of the other in good faith. Similarly, while some in the humanities have extensive experience in bringing their findings to broader publics via documentary film, museum exhibitions, etc., they are less familiar with the politics of policy-making than political theorists might be. In this context, one potential strength that many political theorists can bring to the table is an ability to serve a bridge-building role that is necessary to facilitate meaningful conversation. I noted above – building on Dienstag’s notion of a “discipline of questioning” – that the work of political theorists can be understood at the very center of the ESSH configuration of interpretive and critical social sciences and humanities. This is no small thing. But here I wish to suggest that we might also have an ability to communicate across the gulf that so often separates the so-called “two cultures.” I’ll offer one personal anecdote, which occurred during a set of conversations on the nature of “interdisciplinarity” itself. Many of us – from history, political science, anthropology, gender studies, sociology – found that despite differences in disciplinary conventions and substantive interests, we were able to share work in a way that was mutually comprehensible and constructive. Yet there were also economists – formal modelers – in the group (some were originally trained in mathematics). The chasm between their work, methods, and framing of a research question and ours often proved insurmountable. We all tried. One memorable exchange took place at the end of a lengthy roundtable discussion. The non-economists had been arguing – one after another and at length – for the necessity of rich contextual knowledge as an alternative to (or at least a pre-requisite for) the sort of social and political decision-making models that the economists were pursuing. Finally, one of the economists erupted – visibly shaking with anger, he held his hands to his ears and cried, “words, words, words, it’s just a blizzard of words!” From his perspective, parsimonious models were vital to our ability to gain insight into real-world problems, while our many words posed obstacles to such efficacy. (Meyer 2014, 16) For many colleagues from history, gender studies, and anthropology, the evident frustration of our colleagues in economics in the situation described here was largely incomprehensible. They had little professional training upon which to draw that would allow them to make any sense of the emphatic positivism of the economic modelers and so they could do little more than simply dismiss their claims. The latter lacked resources that allowed them to do more than express their exasperation. It seemed to fall upon the political theorists and some others from sociology and political science (where game-theoretic and other positivist approaches were familiar even though we contested them deeply) to initiate mutually

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intelligible conversations. There were no grand successes here. But it was enough to offer me reason to believe that our academic positionality might at times allow political theorists to make a contribution in this regard.

Offer broad(er) insight into the “post-political” Eva Lövbrand and her colleagues investigate the possibilities for critical social sciences in Anthropocene research, and in Future Earth in particular. Their conclusions extend and reinforce themes that I drew from Castree above. Perhaps most importantly, Lövbrand and her colleagues urge that scholars in these fields not compromise on the necessity of offering critical insights in order to collaborate with others. They argue that a short-term “quest for solutions” fosters a meansends rationality that marginalizes vital “questions of meaning, value, responsibility and purpose in a time of rapid and escalating change” (Lövbrand et al. 2015, 212). Dienstag’s notion of a “discipline of questioning” again suggests that political theory’s contribution here is central. Lövbrand et al. organize their analysis around three claims that they attribute to the ontology of the Anthropocene: that it is “post-natural,” “post-social,” and “post-political.” The claim that the Anthropocene promotes “post-naturalism” is rooted in the recognition that human power is now not merely transforming landscapes but the Earth system itself. Consequently, a nature/culture dualism cannot cohere. Environmental political theorists, as well as other ESSH scholars, have more than two decades of work exploring the implications of challenging and re-thinking this dualism (Gabrielson et al. 2016, see especially Part III: Rethinking Nature and Political Subjects). Yet as Lövbrand et al. observe, the scientists promoting this point often fail to carry it through to its logical conclusion: scientific knowledge of the “natural” world cannot be uniquely privileged in Anthropocene research agendas. They argue that the “post-social” premise of the Anthropocene idea misleadingly promotes discussion in species terms. The problem is that “Anthropos” is regarded as a universal agent, often foreclosing a differentiated discourse in which the individuals, classes, or systems of power and privilege that have generated the Anthropocene are called out (Lövbrand et al. 2015, 217). Again, environmental political theorists have been consistent in highlighting this critique (e.g., Luke 2015), as have many other ESSH scholars. Recognizing this deeply unequal distribution of agency leads to the conclusion that no fixed or determined social order can emerge from a consideration of the Anthropocene as such. The Anthropocene will – as always – be refracted through diverse human experiences, positions, affects, cultures, and views of justice and injustice (Meyer 2016, 50). This recognition of inescapable pluralism, interpretation, and power brings us to the final point in Lövbrand et al.’s formulation: the “post-political” presumption embedded in the Anthropocene idea. Echoing geographer Erik Swyngedouw and others, their argument is that the conceptualization of climate change as a global crisis often reinforces a technocratic managerialism that suppresses evidence of

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plurality and power rather than making them visible (Kenis and Lievens 2014, 535). As a result, Lövbrand et al. argue that “environmental scholars need to demonstrate that the Anthropocene is not the end of politics” and thereby to “challenge the managerial impulse” (2015, 216; see also: Swyngedouw 2010; Neimanis, Asberg, and Hedren 2015; Macgregor 2014). Despite its insights, one problematic consequence of the language of the “postpolitical” has been to treat it as a temporal claim. Political theorists familiar with the longer lineage of laments about the decline of the political will recognize that the suggestion that it is something new or distinctive is suspect (Hauptmann 2004; Wiley 2016). Depoliticization is a recurring phenomenon; it is the eruption of spaces for politics in this sense that seems fleeting – “fugitive” in Wolin’s later writing – rather than a long-standing norm (1994). Political theorists are well positioned to correct this nostalgic reading, which can contribute to a misdiagnosis of our contemporary condition. Rather than the consequence of a distinctively post-political dynamic of our age, the phenomenon seems better described as a consequence of the mainstreaming or co-optation of environmental concerns by elites who assume that they must be addressed with the economic, technocratic, and administrative tools at hand. To challenge such the reliance upon these available tools necessarily politicizes them and opens space to consider alternatives. The point is not simply that political theorists have much to say about conceptions of politics. A philosopher attending a political theory conference once observed that the most commonplace and yet distinctive question posed there was “what are the politics of that?” That is, political theorists seem particularly attuned to exploring the practical implications of normative or critical claims, a seemingly vital element of Anthropocene research, which promises more substantive insight than a nostalgic call for a return to “the political.”

Open up conceptual space It shouldn’t be surprising that political theorists have much to offer when the conversation turns to the need to open up political space for challenges to dominant “solutions.” Yet our most characteristic contribution – the real raison d’être of political theory – in this context is to open up conceptual space. Others often take concepts including justice, freedom, democracy, or sustainability for granted, acting as though they possess a singular correct meaning (see Gabrielson et al. 2016, Part IV). This is true even where they lament that this meaning has been lost – as in much recent consternation about “sustainability.” In such cases, we often see proposals for new words or ideas (e.g., resilience, thrivability, even the Anthropocene). This reflects a supposition that concepts ought to have a singular meaning and when they do not – or no longer seem to – they ought somehow be replaced with others that do. Political theorists can help us see that essentially contested concepts don’t reflect a failure of words, but a struggle over meaning and value. Those who fail to grasp this are destined for recurring disappointment. The goal of political theoretical work can never be simply explaining or translating what concepts of

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justice or freedom “mean,” but must always engage in critical questioning of such concepts that opens spaces for them to be imagined otherwise. Politics in its broadest sense is a struggle over what constitutes a good life and how political communities ought to be ordered to promote this. Politics in the Anthropocene will not only continue but most likely heighten this struggle. Interdisciplinary initiatives to make sense of life on an Anthropocenic planet ignore this at their – our – peril.

Conclusion My aim has been to explore some possibilities for political theory qua political theory to engage in broad interdisciplinary initiatives like Future Earth. Considering what skills and insights political theorists might contribute and what roles we might play is central. To the extent that I have sketched a model that can add value to these initiatives, then I maintain that this is an appropriate vocation for political theorists, rather than being construed as something else – say, “service” when it is part of our academic identity, “citizenship” when it is not.

Notes 1 Thanks to Teena Gabrielson, Justin Williams, Zev Trachtenberg, Manuel Arias Maldonado, and the participants in the ECPR Workshop for critical feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter. 2 Humanities scholars in Europe seem more accustomed to engaging in large-scale collaborations. 3 This could be said of my own recent book too (Meyer 2015). 4 The only mention is a quotation in one from “English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott” regarding an appeal for a new “conversation of humankind” (Castree 2014, 256).

References Brown, M. (2016). “Environmental Science and Politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall, David Schlosberg, and John M. Meyer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Castree, N. (2014). “The Anthropocene and the Environmental Humanities: Extending the Conversation.” Environmental Humanities 5, 233–260. http://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/1389/. Castree, N. (2015). “The ‘Three Cultures’ Problem in Global Change Research.” #EnviroSociety. March 9. http://www.envirosociety.org/2015/03/the-three-cultures-p roblem-in-global-change-research/. Castree, N., Adams, W., Barry, J., Brockington, D., Büscher, B., Corbera, E., Demeritt, D., et al. (2014). “Changing the Intellectual Climate.” Nature Climate Change 4(9): 763–768. Chakrabarty, D. (2009). “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35(2): 197–222. Di Chiro, G. (2016). “Environmental Justice and the Anthropocene Meme.” In Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, edited by Teena Gabrielson, Cheryl Hall, John M. Meyer, and David Schlosberg, 362–381. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Dienstag, J. F. (2015). “Political Theory and the Humanities: Remarks at the APT Plenary.” APT Plenary, October. https://www.academia.edu/17534491/Political_Theory_and_ the_Humanities_Remarks_at_the_APT_Plenary. Emmett, R., and Lekan, T., eds. (2016). Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “Four Theses.” Vol. 2. RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society. [Accessed 16th March 2016] http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/ 2015_new_final.pdf. Frank, J. A., and Tambornino, J., eds. (2000). Vocations of Political Theory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Future Earth. 2016. http://www.futureearth.org/. Gabrielson, T., Hall, C., Meyer, J. M., and Schlosberg, D., eds. (2016). Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gunnell, J. G. (1998). The Orders of Discourse: Philosophy, Social Science, and Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hauptmann, E. (2004). “A Local History of ‘The Political.’” Political Theory 32(1): 34–60. Holm, P. (2014). “Can Environmental Humanities Help Make a Better World?” In Mind the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies, edited by Rob Emmett and Thomas Lekan, 57–60. RCC Perspectives. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/ default/files/2014_i2_web.pdf. Isaac, J. C. (1995). “The Strange Silence of Political Theory.” Political Theory 23 (November): 636–652. Isaac, J. C. (2015). “For a More Public Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics 13(02): 269– 283. Justice with Michael Sandel – Online Harvard Course Exploring Justice, Equality, Democracy, and Citizenship. (2016). http://www.justiceharvard.org/. Kagan, J. (2009). The Three Cultures: Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kenis, A., and Lievens, M. (2014). “Searching for ‘the Political’ in Environmental Politics.” Environmental Politics 23(4): 531–548. Levy, J. T. (2016). “Political Theory and Political Philosophy.” http://profs-polisci.mcgill. ca/levy/theory-philosophy.html. Lövbrand, E., Beck, S.Chilvers, J., Forsyth, T., Hedrén, J., Hulme, M., Lidskog, R., and Vasileiadou, E., (2015). “Who Speaks for the Future of Earth? How Critical Social Science Can Extend the Conversation on the Anthropocene.” Global Environmental Change 32(May): 211–218. Luke, T. W., ed. (2015). “Political Critiques of the Anthropocene.” Telos 172(Special Issue). Macgregor, S. (2014). “Only Resist: Feminist Ecological Citizenship and the Post-Politics of Climate Change.” Hypatia 29(3): 617–633. Making Things Public | 2005-03-20 | ZKM. (2016). http://zkm.de/en/media/video/ma king-things-public. Meyer, J. M. (2014). “Less Is More.” In Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies, edited by Rob Emmett and Frank Zelko, 2:15–18. RCC Perspectives. Meyer, J. M. (2015). Engaging the Everyday: Environmental Social Criticism and the Resonance Dilemma. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meyer, J. M. (2016). “Politics in – but Not of –- the Anthropocene.” In Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “Four Theses.” Vol. 2. RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/ default/files/2015_new_final.pdf.

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Neimanis, A., Asberg, C. and HedrenJ. (2015). “Four Problems, Four Directions For Environmental Humanities.” Ethics and the Environment 20(1): 67–97. Palsson, G., Szerszynski, B., Sörlin, S., Marks, J., Avril, B., Crumley, C., Hackmann, H. et al. (2013). “Reconceptualizing the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene: Integrating the Social Sciences and Humanities in Global Environmental Change Research.” Environmental Science & Policy 28(April): 3–13. Pielke, R. A. (2011). The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sandel, Michael J. (2010). Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? Reprint edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Snow, C. P. (1998). The Two Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stears, M. (2005). “The Vocation of Political Theory Principles, Empirical Inquiry and the Politics of Opportunity.” European Journal of Political Theory 4(4): 325–350. Swyngedouw, E. (2010). “Apocalypse Forever? Post-Political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change.” Theory, Culture & Society 27(2–3): 213–232. Walzer, M. (2013). “The Political Theory License.” Annual Review of Political Science 16(1): 1–9. Wiley, J. (2016). Politics and the Concept of the Political: The Political Imagination. New York: Routledge. Wissenburg, M. (2013). “Political Appeasement and Academic Critique: The Case of Environmentalism.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 39(7): 675–691. Wolin, S. S. (1969). “Political Theory as a Vocation.” The American Political Science Review 63 (4): 1062–1082. Wolin, S. S. (1994). “Fugitive Democracy”. Constellations 1(1): 11–25. doi:10.1111/j.14678675.1994.tb00002.x.

5 THE ECOLOGICAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF POLITICS Zev Trachtenberg

The Anthropocene enters our thinking clothed in the trappings of Geology. By suggesting that the record of human presence on the Earth is being inscribed in layers of rock, hence will be detectable eons into the future, the Anthropocene proposal casts human beings as geological agents, and humanity broadly as a great “force of nature” (c.f. Steffen, Crutzen & McNeill 2007). That geological language has political potency: it indicates the profound importance of the choices societies make—more or less deliberately, more or less openly—that affect their interactions with the global environment (Davies 2016). The great power of a force of nature must be wielded with great responsibility; it seems incumbent on political theory to recognize and internalize this new reality. However, though thinking of the geological implications of political choices certainly brings home how much is at stake for politics in a time of heightened technological capability and global interconnectedness, it does not help us understand much about those factors themselves. In my view the geological language obscures something crucial about politics. That crucial fact is that politics is rooted in people’s pursuit of organic survival. That recognition, I believe, should animate political theory, especially theory that focuses on the environmental dimension of political life. Thus in this chapter I will try to develop a biological language to characterize political life.1 But adopting a biological stance does not require abandoning the Anthropocene as a prompt to political theorizing; there are ways of understanding the Anthropocene that place biology in the foreground. In what follows I draw out the biological dimensions of the Anthropocene by examining the debates over when the new period began. I suggest that attending to biology directs our attention to the ecological and evolutionary notion of “niche construction”—the idea that organisms reorganize their surroundings to fashion an environment that provides for their metabolic needs, and in so doing influence their developmental and even

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evolutionary trajectories. I then offer an abstract interpretation of politics as the regulation of human society’s efforts to construct a niche. I conclude by considering the conceptual challenges that can arise from using descriptions of a natural phenomenon to ground claims in normative political theory.

The “early Anthropocene” In general, as the relationship between environmentalism and the science of Ecology illustrates, environmental thought should attend carefully to rigorous empirical studies of the workings of nature. Let us begin, then, by considering the scientific debate over when the Anthropocene began. A variety of start dates have been proposed, and a formal process is underway to resolve the question from a strictly geological point of view (Ellis 2018: ch. 3; Zalasiewicz et al. 2017). Discussion of what brought upon the Anthropocene has yielded ideas that are significant to environmental political theory. For the alternative start dates under consideration each carry with them some more or less explicitly acknowledged political connotations—ideas which theorists should examine, and critique, in order to inform robustly political interpretations of the Anthropocene. Tracking the debate is valuable because it is an entry point into a broad understanding of the human interaction with nature. That entry-point is discerned most clearly in the “early Anthropocene” hypothesis. The “early Anthropocene” proposal contrasts with the notion, born with the coining of the term, that the Anthropocene began relatively recently (Crutzen & Stoermer 2000: 17). Paul Crutzen, to whom the term is attributed, dated the Anthropocene to the late 18th century, due to the sharp increase in the burning of coal for use in the newly invented steam engine. Will Steffen and colleagues agree that the advent of steam power is crucial to the onset of the Anthropocene—but they emphasize the “Great Acceleration,” where environmental impacts can be seen growing virtually in lockstep with post-World War II globalized economic development (Steffen, Crutzen & McNeill 2007: 616 ff.; Steffen et al. 2011: 849). For Jan Zalasiewicz and colleagues, it is possible to identify the precise time when the Anthropocene began: the moment on July 16, 1945 of the first atomic bomb blast (Zalasiewicz et al. 2015: 200). Note that this dramatic claim is linked to the geologically precise way Zalasiewicz uses the term—as a proposed unit in the Geological Time Scale (GTS)—the system for organizing the chronology of Earth’s geological history. He holds that the globally distributed fallout from the Trinity test will serve as the distinct boundary in the strata of rock that meets the science of geology’s precise and rigorous criteria for the designation of divisions in the GTS. There are familiar political critiques of the recent start dates just mentioned. Perhaps the broadest is that in conceiving of a “human epoch” the outlooks underlying these proposed dates seem to treat humanity as a single, undifferentiated agent— ignoring crucial differences in power and vulnerability among people across the globe. Thus, they do not incorporate accounts of the particular social systems and economic institutions, among other factors, that have generated the environmental

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impacts gathered up under the Anthropocene rubric (see, e.g., Malm & Hornborg 2014; Moore 2015: ch. 7).2 Further, it is argued, as the products of a scientific vision of the Earth as a “system,” they seem to imagine a technocratic response to the Anthropocene based in scientific management rather than democratic deliberation (see, e.g., Bonneuil & Fressoz 2016: ch. 4). But there is another critique of the recent start dates that is based on scientific rather than political considerations. This critique stems from the “early Anthropocene” hypothesis, that global scale anthropogenic environmental change began millennia before the industrial age. The initial statement of this idea came from William Ruddiman, who, soon after the Anthropocene concept was introduced, argued that from 8,000 to 5,000 years ago forest clearance and rice cultivation led to changes in carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere sufficient to alter climate patterns (Ruddiman 2003). More recently Ruddiman has suggested “a two-phase Anthropocene,” encompassing an early phase where anthropogenic effects began slowly but accumulated over several millennia, and a later “explosive” phase that encompasses the dramatic changes associated with industrialization and the Great Acceleration (Ruddiman 2013: 65; see also Foley et al. 2013, referring to the initial phase as the “palaeoanthropocene”). The scientific body charged with determining the Anthropocene’s start date in formal geological terms (the “Anthropocene Working Group” within the International Commission on Stratigraphy) seems to be moving toward the 1945 start date, and the International Geological Congress may settle the question in 2020 (Ellis 2018: 146). But finally, in my view, what is relevant to environmental political theory in this debate is not its resolution, but rather a broad question it raises, as to whether or not the Anthropocene is a continuation (perhaps a culmination) of processes that are linked to fundamental characteristics of human beings (to invoke Marx’s term, if not his concept exactly, their “species-being”). The later dates suggest that the Anthropocene is something radically new—a rupture in Earth history, as Clive Hamilton describes it (2016). I will not take up the details of Hamilton’s argument here; I believe they can be sidestepped by stipulating, as Ruddiman and colleagues suggest, to an informal, “small ‘a’” use of the term, not bound by rigorous scientific criteria (Ruddiman et al. 2015: 39). The early Anthropocene hypothesis, by contrast, suggests continuity. And this, I believe, is a source of its value: it provides a basis for a causal explanation of the Anthropocene that is informed by biological as well as social and economic accounts of human life. It offers the prospect, I think, of placing the Anthropocene into the context of the deep history of human beings’ presence on Earth. Now Hamilton seems to associate viewing the Anthropocene as continuous with past human activity on the planet with a kind of moral quietism, if not outright blindness. “If humans have been transforming the Earth for many thousands of years then it is in our nature to do so. The Anthropocene is therefore a natural event rather than the result of certain forms of social organisation and technoindustrial hubris. It does not reflect human failure, despite its dire consequences” (2016: 96). I will confess to a failure—I fail to see how this follows. For surely

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there is no deep contradiction between attending to “our nature,” in particular how humans’ nature as social creatures influences their activities within the natural environment, and developing a critical normative perspective on those activities. Indeed, I think those two enquiries ought to be deeply intertwined—a belief I apply below. In the next section I will use an empirically grounded approach to the human presence in the environment, drawing on ideas associated with the early Anthropocene hypothesis (synthesized in Ellis 2015), to articulate an abstract conception of politics. In the final section, I will consider how this broad understanding of human interaction with nature bears on the normative dimension of environmental political theory.

The ecological circumstances of the circumstances of politics The core of my argument is that we can abstractly conceptualize politics in terms of humans’ transformation of their physical surroundings. I will develop my view with reference to Jeremy Waldon’s notion of the “circumstances of politics.” The circumstances of politics are present when a group of people feel the need for “a common framework or decision or course of action on some matter, even in the face of disagreement about what the framework, decision or action should be” (Waldron 1999: 76). The circumstances frame what politics are at the most basic level, thereby grounding a normative vision by which political institutions and individual participants in them can be evaluated. In this section I want to propose that we must recognize “ecological circumstances” of the circumstances of politics; this is the material context within which the political circumstances obtain. In general, the ecological circumstances stem from the need of human beings to transform their environment in order to gain from it material support for their survival, in light of distinctively human needs and capacities. Just as we can abstractly characterize political interaction in terms of the need to cooperate despite disagreement over what to do, I hold that we can abstractly characterize that requirement in terms of the requirement of making a living from the environment. Thus I propose a generalized model of politics in which the ecological circumstances provide the content of the problem referenced by the political circumstances. (For convenience, going forward I will speak of the ecological circumstances of politics, or simply the ecological circumstances.) My understanding of the ecological circumstances of politics is based on the concept of “niche construction.” I will describe the general phenomenon first, then return to consider the human case. A “niche” is the set of environmental conditions an organism requires to survive. But rather than, so to speak, seeking out environments marked by the proper suite of conditions whereby a location would function as a niche, animal species (and indeed plants) typically modify their existing surroundings to make them more suited to their metabolic needs; this modification is referred to as “ecological engineering” (Jones, Lawton & Shachak 1994).

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Niche Construction Theory (“NCT”) views ecological engineering as a potential contributor to evolution (Matthews at al. 2014: 248). Of course the standard picture of evolution holds that over many generations the physical traits that enable organisms to survive are passed along, making those organisms’ descendants more adapted to their environmental conditions. Through ecological engineering organisms themselves use their traits to help create their own niches, by adapting environmental conditions to their metabolic needs. NCT points to the offspring of those organisms. In addition to the genes they inherit from their parents, they also inherit a transformed environment (referred to as their “ecological inheritance” (Odling-Smee 2010: 180))—a niche that has been constructed to suit those genes. Those offspring grow up in an environment that is favorable to them, and so are better able to develop and reproduce; thus the traits used to engage in niche construction get passed on, and indeed are reinforced, over the ensuing generations. The phenomenon of niche construction leads us to the idea of the ecological circumstances of politics. For it suggests that survival is typically not simply a matter of being equipped by evolution to passively receive what is needed. Obviously animals have to work: herbivores have to forage, predators have to hunt. But the organism’s relationship with its environment involves more than having the proper physiognomy to take in certain resources, and the good luck to be in a place where those resources are present. As Eva Jablonka puts it, “All living organisms are active agents, altering through their activities the living conditions in which they and their descendants develop, act and are selected” (2011: 784). The pervasiveness of niche construction indicates that a general feature of life is that organisms modify their surroundings to yield what they require. The beaver is the classic example: by building dams and lodges they create conditions suited to their metabolic needs. Being “adapted to an environment,” therefore, is not simply a matter of members of a species having traits that allow their needs to be met by a given environment, but of those organisms having the capacity to transform their environment so that it meets their needs. This fact of animal life (which applies to plants and microbes as well) is obvious in the case of human beings, for whom nature is particularly not forthcoming. A trenchant statement of the human situation is given by Adam Smith. Smith, I should note, did not understand that non-human animals engage in niche construction; he took them to be in a relationship with their surroundings unmediated by their own efforts, so that the environment simply affords them what they require. Though this idea is mistaken it helps Smith identify the situation of human beings, as we see when he draws the following contrast: The natural temperature of the air is altogether adapted to the condition of the other animals, who seem to feel very little inconvenience from the several vicissitudes of the weather. But even this soft and subtl(e) fluid is too severe for [Man’s] tender and delicate frame. One should imagine that this subtle and fleeting element would not submit to any change from his hands, but he even forms to himself around his body a sort of new atmosphere, more soft, warm

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and comfortable than that of the common circumambient air. For this purpose he furnishes himself with cloaths which he wraps round his body, and builds himself a house to extend this atmosphere to some greater distance around him. These are contrivances which none of the other animals perceive the need of, but men can hardly subsist without them. (1978: lect. of 3/28/1763, pp. 10–11, my emphasis) To survive, Smith understands, human beings are required to engage in niche construction. This is humanity’s ecological circumstance. The key feature of our situation on Earth is therefore not that we are reliant on ecological processes. Of course we are. But the more salient fact is that, in general, ecological processes will not support our survival unless we harness them to that end by modifying our surroundings.3 Humanity is not in Eden; the effect of God’s curse on the ground at Genesis 3:17–19 is that it no longer sustains us spontaneously, but only after we have transformed it through strenuous labor. Let us further examine the niche concept, in order to better understand the concept of the specifically human niche. The niche should not be understood primarily in physical terms, as the surroundings of a given animal, containing its food. Rather an animal’s niche should be understood in functional terms: for example, what, in its surroundings, its particular capabilities render available to it to eat. An animal’s niche, that is, is a function of its capabilities—its niche is constituted by the features of its surroundings that, through its behavior, it is able to take advantage of to survive (Lewontin 2002: 49). Say now that a new physical trait appeared in a species—e.g. by a mutation yielding the ability to run faster, hence to capture a new type of prey. This would unlock a previously unavailable possibility for gaining survival, thereby adding a new dimension to the species’ niche. As Stephen Pinker observes, this same pattern can work with a non-physical trait. He argues that we should consider humans’ cognitive abilities in this light. “In any ecosystem, the possibility exists for an organism to overtake other organisms’ fixed defenses by cause-and-effect reasoning and cooperative action … [thereby] to extract resources from other organisms” (2010: 8993– 94). Pinker therefore identifies the collection of resources human beings gained access to in virtue of their cognitive abilities as their “cognitive niche.” But, as Pinker observes, the capacities humans deploy to sustain themselves involve cooperation as well as cognition—which, of course, are closely associated through the medium of language. As with other social species, human beings survive as members of a group, whose capabilities—including the capabilities to coordinate the capabilities of individuals to common ends—constructs the ecological space from which the group draws the resources it uses to survive. In this sense we can say that human beings occupy not just a cognitive but also a socialized niche, in the sense that their ecological niche is created by their society and reflects its structure.4 The idea of a socialized niche sets the stage for the idea of the ecological circumstances of politics. The human ecological circumstance is that, like other forms

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of life, human beings must transform the environment in order to survive. But more specifically, as a result of their evolution, for human beings that transformation is a social enterprise. More specifically still, human beings more than other social species construct their socialized niche by using their cognitive and collaborative capacities. In constructing their ecological environment they simultaneously construct a social environment of language and shared knowledge, which is promulgated across a group and transmitted from one generation to the next. Their shared knowledge—the group’s culture—in effect constitutes instructions on how to “operate” the ecological niche they have constructed, i.e. what to do to maintain the transformed environment so that it continues to yield what they need. Human beings’ ecological circumstances thus place them in political circumstances. The ecological circumstances dictate that human beings must cooperate in an on-going social project of niche construction. But, it must be emphasized, those material circumstances by no means determine how that cooperation must go. The detailed character of the niche a group creates, although certainly constrained by what is available in the environment, will plausibly be influenced by the individual choices (indeed tastes) of the group’s individual members—and therefore be the subject of disagreement and deliberation. Even more plausibly, the way the group goes about constructing its niche, and the way resources the niche yields are shared, will stem from some process of social decision-making. Human niche construction is thus not simply social, but fundamentally political, precisely because the specific details of a society’s ecological circumstances do not determine, but leave open, the specific details of the niche it constructs. That openness can be said to make up the space of politics—a space structured no doubt by the material affordances of the physical environment—but no less by differences in social and political power. In sum, the circumstances of politics abstractly characterize the function of politics: to resolve disagreements over common action when common action is necessary and disagreements are inevitable. The ecological circumstances of politics abstractly characterize what is at issue in the circumstances of politics: how to engage in niche construction. This is a necessity for human beings, necessarily a common effort, and as such likely to be a matter of disagreement, if not open conflict, in particular over the just distribution of benefits and burdens of the social project of constructing a niche. I therefore take niche construction to be a conceptual starting point for environmental political theory: it is, I believe, a way of understanding why and how humans’ relationship to their environment is essentially political.

Niche construction: directive or constitutive? And therefore niche construction is of central importance to a normative outlook within environmental political theory. The normative meaning of the ecological circumstances of politics is that normative judgments must flow from an acknowledgment of the necessity of niche construction. But is this an instance of a more general, quite enormous, question: what is the moral significance of nature? In his 2001 book Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Thought,

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John Meyer considers this general question; I will use his ideas to structure my exploration of how a normative position in environmental political theory should take up the idea of niche construction. Meyer distinguishes between two roles nature can play in normative political theory. On the one hand, views on the proper way to order political affairs, including the proper relationship between society and the environment, might appeal to an abstract conception of “Nature” which serves as “a source of authority that can direct human affairs” (Meyer 2001: 6, my emphasis). This is the “directive” role, closely linked to the idea that political norms ought to be “derived” from the natural order (Meyer 2001: 2, see also 44 ff.). Obviously the content of those norms has historically been a matter of disagreement; Meyer observes ways normative views with quite different content nonetheless share a form of justification by reference to what “Nature demands” of human beings. On the other hand, Meyer identifies a “constitutive” role that nature can play in views regarding its relationship with society. This role, he suggests, emphasizes “the ways in which humans are inescapably natural beings, whose thought, actions, and potentialities are inextricably interdependent with and embedded in the world” (Meyer 2001: 6). However, he insists, “The role played by this constitutive conception of nature is … quite distinct from a natural standard” (2001: 51). We clearly have no obligation to accept hunger and disease, just because they are features of the natural environment. Thus, the constitutive role is more neutral toward a particular normative stance than the directive role. Unlike with the latter, which sees Nature as providing people specific normative direction, the former sees the nature in which humans are embedded as normatively indifferent: nature is just the way things are. How then shall we think of niche construction—as providing authoritative normative direction to politics, or as a constitutive but normatively neutral condition of it? Let us look at each alternative in turn. The pervasiveness of niche construction in the natural world might be taken to suggest that Nature directs human beings to engage in it. Consider the following case. In 1941 Woody Guthrie was hired to write songs for a documentary about the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam (Vandy & Person 2016). In a memorable lyric he has Uncle Sam say “Roll along, Columbia, you can ramble to the sea, But river, while you’re rambling, you can do some work for me” (Guthrie 1941). As we noted, dam building by beavers is the paradigm of niche construction; the efforts celebrated in the song are appropriately seen as niche construction on a massive scale, characteristic of what members of the human species can accomplish. It is easy to imagine a normative justification for the Grand Coulee Dam that framed it as an instance of a ubiquitous natural process, evidence that Nature directs us to engage in precisely this kind of environmental transformation. But it is just as easy to imagine an exaggerated version of this ethos, which would justify virtually any intervention in the natural world, no matter how destructive. The naturalness of niche construction seems to offer a secular version of God’s grant of dominion over nature to humanity; it might be taken to direct human beings to exercise that dominion by turning every natural process possible

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to their own purposes. It might seem that, in the words of the notorious slogan made famous during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, the directive issued by niche construction is to “drill, baby, drill.” This kind of appeal to a “directive” understanding of niche construction might look like a reductio ad absurdum of the view. If the claim is that human beings are directed by their nature as niche constructors to transform their surroundings however they want, that claim must be false. But there are other reasons to question the directive character of niche construction. Most basically, the argument that human beings are directed to construct their niche is reductive: it selects one particular respect in which human beings can be said to be natural, and justifies some given activity (e.g. dam building) on that specific basis. But human beings are natural in many respects—and it is likely that in terms of some of those other respects an activity like damming a river could be challenged as running counter to those directives of nature. But more specifically, even if we accept that human beings must engage in some form of niche construction or another, it doesn’t follow that they must engage in any particular form of it: as noted above, material circumstances do not determine human behavior, however much they may constrain it. Even if we thought that human beings are directed to construct their niche, it does not follow that they are directed to build dams in particular locations, to particular designs. Even if, for example, we thought we could justify harvesting energy from the environment in general by characterizing it as niche construction, it does not follow that that characterization itself justifies the particularities of a given energy project—a dam, an oil rig, or anything else. Those particularities must be justified by other normative considerations and constraints, specifically relevant to the specific circumstances. And those additional normative factors typically will not involve appeals to putative directives from nature. For a more general challenge to the directive view is that it commits what is called the “naturalistic fallacy” of deriving an “ought” from an “is”. As Meyer notes, the form of justification employed by the directive view keeps extremely unsavory company: “claims to derive politics from nature can provide justification for such evils as Social Darwinism or even Nazism” (2001: 22). This might be taken as a reductio of the directive view altogether, even beyond the specific case of niche construction. But to further discredit the directive view we need only observe that nature would no more “direct” human beings to engage in niche construction than it would “direct” a person to move downward toward the floor after jumping off a chair. In both cases the outcome is necessary—but the source of the necessity is not morality, but physics. The physical necessity is morally relevant, but not morally determinative; the meaning of the naturalistic fallacy is that moral content must come from something more than a bare physical description of the situation. Thus the moral injunction that before jumping from chairs we must look to see whether anyone is lying on the floor nearby arises precisely because of the physical necessity that we will be headed that way—but it is a moral injunction because of the moral principle that we ought not harm people. Likewise, niche construction enters into normative thinking not because

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it is, as it is, physically necessary that human beings engage in it. Rather, niche construction is a normative matter because what can happen due to that physical necessity—the effect of that cause—might be morally significant. Therefore, niche construction ought not to be construed as a moral direction to human beings from Nature. Instead, we should construe niche construction in terms of Meyer’s “constitutive conception of nature,” which “reminds us that humans are natural beings, subject to the same physical laws as the rest of nature”(Meyer 2001: 51). Niche construction is an instance of the way human beings are subject to the same physical (specifically, biological) law as other organisms; my statement of the ecological circumstances is a way of stating that nature is constitutive of politics. But I think of “constitution” in the context of the human relationship with nature somewhat differently from Meyer. He seems to suggest that the recognition of human embeddedness in nature ought to be humbling to human beings: insofar as “nature constitutes who and what we are” (2001: 123) it has a kind of metaphysical priority—and exercises a kind of agency—over us, that we are wrong to ignore. That recognition is meant to put us in our place, which is not at the center of things. However, the phenomenon of niche construction seems to reveal that nature, in the sense of the physical environment, is in a crucial way actually constituted by its inhabitants. In the human case it might make as much sense to say that politics are constitutive of nature as vice versa.5 I do not want to overstate this point. In a literal sense, as a material process, niche construction takes place—is embedded within—a natural setting. It is thus perhaps more accurate to describe the relationship between human beings and nature in a more dialectical idiom: human beings (further) embed themselves (since they were always already embedded) in nature through their efforts, in niche construction, to transform it in ways that suit them. That is, in a quite literal way, the nature—the physical landscape—in which human beings are embedded is something they have themselves constituted through their niche construction. And of course that process of constitution is reflexive, because their surroundings influence their own development and evolution. Thus we can invoke the idea of niche construction to substantiate the constitutive understanding of the relationship between nature and politics—i.e. to articulate specific material interactions through which human embeddedness is realized. This difference notwithstanding, I strongly agree with Meyer that seeing “nature as constitutive of politics can prompt us to see that addressing the challenges posed by our relationship to the physical world is central to what politics is” (2001: 125). This both “allows us to place questions related to nature at the center of our political agenda” and “allows us to recognize that all questions on the political agenda are related to nature, directly or indirectly” (ibid.). And these questions have normative dimensions, to which our understanding of nature is relevant. That relevance, however, is not the product of moral directives that determine what we ought to do. Rather, as noted above, our understanding of nature reveals constraints on our normative thinking. The fact of gravity constrains our decisions about jumping off chairs: our understanding of that fact allows us to understand that (and how) our decisions can have morally significant results. In general,

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understanding precisely how we are “embedded in nature” deepens normative thinking by unveiling the physical necessities which both bound the possibilities of action, and establish the possibility that action is morally relevant—thereby allowing normative reflection to speak to our actual position in nature. In particular, it is a physical necessity that human beings engage in niche construction. But as we saw, there will almost certainly be disagreements over the precise aims and methods, not to mention the distribution of benefits and burdens associated with the inherently social process of constructing a human niche—disagreements intrinsically associated with normative considerations of social justice. Further, the ways in which a society engages in niche construction will almost certainly impinge on the rights or welfare of others, human and non-human alike. Thus people cannot evade, but must confront, the normative implications of their ecological circumstances. And, because for human beings niche construction is a social enterprise, those normative implications are at the center of politics. Hence they ought to be central to the content of environmental political theory.6

Notes 1 My effort here is conceptually related to, but not derived from either of two distinct modes of political theory that are both called “biopolitics.” One version of biopolitics stems from the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben; it is concerned with the way political institutions exercise governance over living beings (e.g. Foucault 1978: 135 ff.). The other version is found within empirically oriented Political Science; it aims to use biological concepts to explain political phenomena (see Peterson & Somit 2017). The approach I will suggest here is closer in spirit to the latter, but was developed independently. 2 Note that Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin’s proposal for a 1610 start date “implies that colonialism, global trade and coal brought about the Anthropocene. Broadly, this highlights social concerns, particularly the unequal power relationships between different groups of people, economic growth, the impacts of globalized trade, and our current reliance on fossil fuels” (Lewis & Maslin 2015: 177). 3 At least many of them—for simplicity, I am not considering un-managed “natural services”. 4 I noted at the end of Section 1 that I would draw on ideas in keeping with the “early Anthropocene” hypothesis; the foregoing account broadly follows Erle Ellis’ explanation of the pervasive human impact on the biosphere in terms of “sociocultural niche construction” (Ellis 2015: 300). 5 Meyer seems to acknowledge this point; he notes that “political decisions affect and shape the natural world in the most profound and consequential ways” (2001: 125). 6 My work on this chapter, and on the Introduction, was supported by a Senior Faculty Summer Fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Oklahoma.

References Bonneuil, C. & Fressoz, J. B. (2016). The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. Tr. D. Fernbach. London: Verso. Crutzen, P. J., & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). “The ‘Anthropocene’”. Global Change Newsletter, 41, 17–18. Davies, J. (2016). The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

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Ellis, E. C. (2015). “Ecology in an Anthropogenic Biosphere.” Ecological Monographs, 85(3), 287–331. Ellis, E. C. (2018). Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Foley, S.F. et al. (2013). “The Palaeoanthropocene – The Beginnings of Anthropogenic Environmental Change.” Anthropocene, 3, 83–88. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction. Tr. R. Hurley. New York: Random House. Guthrie, W. (1941). “Grand Coulee Dam. Woody Guthrie Publications, Inc. & TROLudlow Music, Inc.” Accessed at: http://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Grand_Coulee_ Dam.htm, May 17, 2018. Hamilton, C. (2016). “The Anthropocene as Rupture.” The Anthropocene Review, 3(2), 93–106. Jablonka, E. (2011). “The Entangled (and Constructed) Human Bank.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 366, 784. Jones, C.G., Lawton, J.H. & Shachak, M. (1994). “Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers.” Oikos, 69(3), 373–386. Lewis, S.L. & Maslin, M.A. (2015). “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature, 519, 171–180. Lewontin, R. (2002). The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Malm, A. & Hornborg, A. (2014). “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative.” The Anthropocene Review, 1(1) 62–69. Matthews, B. et al. (2014). “Under Niche Construction: An Operational Bridge Between Ecology, Evolution, and Ecosystem Science.” Ecological Monographs, 84(2), 245–263. Meyer, J. M. (2001). Political Nature: Environmentalism and the Interpretation of Western Political Thought . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Odling-Smee, J. (2010). “Niche Inheritence.” In M. Pigliucci & G. B. Müller, eds., Evolution: The Extended Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Peterson, S.A. & Somit, A. (2017). Handbook of Biology and Politics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Pinker, S. (2010). “The Cognitive Niche: Coevolution of Intelligence, Sociality, and Language.” PNAS, 107(suppl. 2), 8993–8999. Ruddiman, W. (2003). “The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands of Years Ago.” Climatic Change, 61, 261–293. Ruddiman, W. (2013). “The Anthropocene.” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 41, 45–68. Ruddiman, W. F. et al. (2015). “Defining the Epoch We Live In.” Science, 348(6230), 38–39. Smith, A. (1978). Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael & P.G. Stein. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Glasgow edition). Steffen, W., Crutzen, P.J. & McNeill, J.R. (2007). “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?” Ambio, 36(8), 614–621. Steffan, W. et al. (2011). “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives. ”Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 369, 842–867. Vandy, G. & Person, D. (2016). 26 songs in 30 days: Woody Guthrie’s Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, WA: Sasquatch Books. Waldron, J. (1999). Law and Disagreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zalasiewicz et al. (2015). “When Did the Anthropocene Begin? A Mid-twentieth Century Boundary Level is Stratigraphically Optimal.” Quaternary International, 383, 196–203. Zalasiewicz et al. (2017). “The Working Group on the Anthropocene: Summary of Evidence and Interim Recommendations. ”Anthropocene, 19, 55–60.

6 WHAT CITIES CAN TEACH US ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THEORY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE* Nir Barak

This chapter suggests that various aspects of environmental political theory (EPT) in the Anthropocene may be deduced from a comparison to environmental politics in cities. By manifesting the transformative power that humans exercise over nature, cities embody the notion of niche construction in the Anthropocene (Downey 2016). That impact on nature is not limited to the city’s location, but rather extends to the land and infrastructure that sustains it (Alberti et al. 2003, Ellis 2015, Boivin et al. 2016) thus leading to the understanding that we should view urbanization as a planetary process (Brenner & Schmid, 2015). The greatest tragedies associated with anthropogenic climate change frequently occur in cities due to their density and strategic locations (close to rivers and seacoasts). Lastly, cities are key sites of the consumption and production of commodities and transformative technologies associated with the Anthropocene. Given the fact that over half the world population now lives in cities, it may be argued that they are the human niche. A common thread running through issues of ‘sustainable urbanism’ and collective action problems associated with the Anthropocene is the focus on implementation and administration of technical and managerial solutions; while these aspects are essential, they come at the expense of addressing some of the major social and political aspects involved. A city’s transition towards sustainability should also focus on the way that environmental issues are framed, the values that drive the policies and their implications for social and environmental justice. The many challenges associated with the Anthropocene should also be addressed by focusing on the social and cultural norms, practices and power relations that drive environmental problems (Castree et al. 2014, Lövbrand et al. 2015). Most explicitly, it may be argued that while this depoliticizing is ‘clouded in rhetoric of the need for radical change in order to stave off imminent catastrophe’, in actual fact it serves a political goal and ‘a range of technical, social, managerial, physical and other measures have to be taken to make sure that things remain the same, that nothing

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really changes, that life (or at least our lives) can go on as before.’ (Cook and Swyngedouw 2012, p. 1973) Given these parallel characteristics, this chapter contributes to the reassessment of EPT in the Anthropocene by analyzing the social and political concerns involved in transitioning cities to a more desirable future. The analysis below focuses on these aspects by proposing and scrutinizing three City-Nature-Theses (CNTs).1 Each thesis analyzes a different aspect of the relationship between cities and nature. My general argument is that the relationship between cities and nature should be characterized as interrelated, interdependent yet experientially and qualitatively different. I conclude by analyzing the political and normative implications of the CNTs and their inferences for EPT in the Anthropocene.

The relationship between cities and nature Urban and environmental theorists alike have been discussing the extent to which cities are a part of nature and what differentiates them from nature. Scholars vary in their responses but share an opposition to city-nature dualism that sees the relationship as oppositional and antithetical. The city is not conceived of as being part of nature and vice versa. This incorporates two standpoints – one which regards cities as ‘bounded social containers’ in a non-social nature and another which sees urban parks, wildlife etc. as islands of ‘nature in cities’. One response opposes demarcating physical borders between cities and nature and emphasizes the embeddedness of cities in nature. A second opposes demarcating borders between the socio-economic processes of the city and the natural processes ‘outside’ of it. A third answer is found in monistic theories such as the ‘natural city’ which identifies the city as integral to nature and argues that it must be planned, organized and managed along those lines. The three responses are analyzed and discussed. Ultimately, the first two are accepted while the third answer is rejected. Subsequently, I suggest that the relationship between cities and nature may be characterized as interrelated, interdependent yet experientially and qualitatively different. Each of these characterizations is analyzed separately in three CNTs.

CNT 1 – Cities and nature are physically interrelated The notion of interrelatedness is the recognition that cities are embedded in nature and that nature is an important constituent of the city. This involves recognizing that nature does not end at the ‘city gates’ or municipal boundaries and that a city cannot be completely distinguished from nature. This relates to considerations that are associated with cities as built environments.2 An example of this is found in one of the principles of ‘green urbanism’ articulated by Timothy Beatley, who writes that green cities are ‘designed for and function in ways analogous to nature’ (2000, pp. 6–7) This analogy is limited to the natural processes that constantly occur in cities, or rather to the processes that were interrupted by the production of cities

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(like the flow of rivers or natural cleansing of water and air). The recognition of the embeddedness of cities in nature and the importance of the natural processes in those places give rise to planning approaches that include ecological restoration, replenishment and the nurturing of natural processes in cities. (Beatley, 2000, Chapters 7–10). Despite the simplicity of the observation in CNT1, it seems to work against intuition – that when we are in the city we are no longer in nature. This notion is prevalent in urban sociology and environmental philosophy and implies that cities and nature are two differentiated and antithetical entities.3 Anything within the confines of the ‘city gates’ is purely artificial; cities and urban life are portrayed as a radical split from nature. Accordingly, nature is the nonhuman entities found outside the city, depicted as its ‘ultimate other’. A deeper probe into city-nature dualism may highlight the inadequacies thereof and strengthen the idea of citynature interrelatedness. While the city gates no longer physically separate cities and nature, the logic of dualism is still very much in play. In her analysis of modern architecture and city planning, Kaika (2005) scrutinizes the logic of dualism that includes a double coding of both cities and nature. In one version, the city is considered humanity’s greatest achievement and hub of social and economic progress; in a second version, the city is considered a hostile human environment and urban life morally degraded and artificial. In the first version, nature is depicted as wild and dangerous, requiring taming and controlling, thus giving rise to modernist conceptions of city planning. In the second version, nature is considered noble, sacred and an ideal moral order capable of alleviating social and environmental pressures, giving rise either to garden cities and suburbanization or to the incorporation of natural elements into the city (like urban parks). The problem with dualistic conceptualizations, in addition to the fact that they are empirically wrong (i.e. nature and cities cannot be completely dissociated), is that they lead to normatively unwarranted conclusions. In both versions, the city is conceptualized as a ‘bounded social container’ that stands in isolation from the nonhuman world. Since it is a dualistic scheme, it necessarily implies that each of the two versions attributes moral superiority either to cities or nature, culture or nature. The first version necessitates nature being subordinated to social needs – a kind of human hubris; the second version creates anti-urban romantic utopias. The former approach gives rise to a managerialist attitude manifested in environmental reforms such as those promoted by ‘sustainable urbanism’. The latter approach gives rise to anti-urbanism or what has been defined as ‘ruralism’ which voids environmentalism of its social and political goals and is correlated with nativist and racist attitudes. (de Shalit, 1996) Urban parks, green belts, open spaces, and green spaces dent the dualism of the bounded social container; nonetheless, any form of nature in cities might be interpreted as inherent to the dualistic scheme in that it narrows the natural elements of the city to designated spaces of ‘urban nature’. In fact, we can distinguish between the ‘nature of cities’ which is prevalent anywhere, and ‘nature in cities’

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which is manifest in designated ‘green spaces’. As apparent in Figure 6.1, the notion of ‘nature in cities’ narrows the ‘nature of cities’ to controlled locations of ‘urban nature’. This reduces interaction between city and nature to these environment-friendly (or not) designated areas.4 Reducing the nature of cities to ‘nature in cities’ gives rise to the dialectic interplay of dualism, i.e. anything that escapes the designated green space is considered a ‘weed’, frequently entailing the use of herbicides. That is, urban nature is introduced in order to meet recreational, aesthetic and/or spiritual needs but is immediately subordinated and controlled since the goal is a natural landscape and not necessarily interaction with nature per se.5 An additional aspect of dualism involves demarcating borders between the social processes of the city and the natural processes ‘outside’ of it. This aspect is challenged by the next CNT.

CNT 2 – Cities and nature are socially, economically and politically interdependent Nature does not only permeate the city, as argued in CNT 1, but is also found in a nexus with its social, political and economic factors. For that reason, apolitical approaches to environmental sustainability projects are inadequate. This notion underlies a variety of theoretical frameworks such as ‘green political economy’ that critique orthodox ideologies of economic growth embedded in current sustainable development policies (e.g. Barry, 2012); critiques of conceptions of a ‘nature’

FIGURE 6.1 The dualism of ‘nature in cities’ (Central Park, NYC) Photo: Kayte Dolmatch6

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independent of socio-political realities (e.g. Vogel, 2015); and environmental justice theories that analyze the inequitable distribution of environmental ‘goods’ and ‘bads’ in the city according to political power, class, race and gender (e.g. Agyeman, 2005, Schlosberg, 2007). Additionally, the socio-economic and political interdependencies in city-nature relationships are addressed by proponents of urban political ecology (hereinafter UPE). While political ecology typically focuses on the political economy of environmental degradation and its nexus with socioeconomic inequalities ‘outside’ the city, UPE integrates this analysis with critical urban geography to include the socio-ecological production of urban spaces. In his analysis of non-urban political ecology Harvey claims: It is … inconsistent to hold that everything in the world relates to everything else, as ecologists tend to do, and then decide that the built environment and the urban structures that go with it are somehow outside of both theoretical and practical consideration. The effect has been to evade integrating understandings of the urbanizing process into environmental – ecological analysis. (Harvey, 1996, p. 427) Following up on this call, UPE emphasizes processes of urban metabolism and the unequal political and economic forces driving them and perpetuated within. (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015, Cook & Swyngedouw, 2012, Heynen, Kaika, & Swyngedouw, 2006). In this framework, cities and artifacts (buildings, pipes, urban parks) are understood as nature transformed (and commodified) through human processes of production. Urbanization is not limited to the city’s sociality (as understood by dualists)7 but rather a hybrid socio-natural metabolic process in which nature is transformed into new socio-spatial configurations (e.g. cities, dammed rivers, hydraulic conduits). Nature, therefore, is inconceivable as external to socio-economic dynamics and most explicitly without reference to processes of urbanization. Likewise, the socio-economic dynamic, and most explicitly the inequalities enshrined in urban life, are inconceivable regardless of the production of these socio-natures. Perceiving the relationship between cities and nature in this manner breaks the dualistic schism and has led some authors to extend Haraway’s (1991) concept of the cyborg and to regard the city as the outcome of a cyborg urbanization in which nature, artifacts, technology, capital and socioeconomic relations are assembled and transformed. (Gandy, 2005, Luke, 2014, Swyngedouw, 2006). As a theoretical framework, UPE is not necessarily a cityist theory or even citycentered (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015). Rather, it focuses on urban and nonurban socio-natures and analyzes the metabolisms that enable and condition urban life. It focuses on the political economy of produced environments such as dammed rivers and hydraulic conduits, air pollution, urban parks and wildlife (‘nature in cities’), irrigated fields etc., all of which involve transformative social processes for their production and yield uneven socio-environmental consequences based on uneven socio-economic power relations (Heynen, 2014).

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In relation to city-based environmental policies, the conjunction of UPE and environmental justice indicates the inadequacies of promoting environmental projects regardless of their socio-economic and political realities. For instance, a neighborhood or district that has undergone ‘green’ retrofits (e.g. urban park, bike lane, access to public transport), or a city that subscribes to environmental sustainability, may lead to increased demands, higher costs and eventually to the displacement of disempowered and disadvantaged populations (green gentrification). While public policy can adequately address this matter by implementing rent control, public housing, and more equitable development policies, these factors are often excluded from the planning process as a result of the uneven political and economic power of private investors, real-estate firms and economic elites in comparison with the local populations. (Checker, 2011, Gould & Lewis, 2016, Wolch, Byrne, & Newell, 2014).

The need for an environmental-political framework Before addressing the normative and political implications of CNTs 1 and 2 for city-based politics of sustainability, an aspect of the political character of cities needs to be assessed in a counter-argument to the ‘natural city’ vision (Stefanovic & Scharper, 2012). This utopian vision suggests an additional anti-dualistic critique whereby cities are conceived as natural entities in which nature represents a higher moral order. In his critique of dualistic thinking, Callicott argues that: Nature as Other is over… Bluntly put, we are animals ourselves, large omnivorous primates, very precocious to be sure, but just big monkeys, nevertheless. We are therefore a part of nature, not set apart from it. Hence, human works are no less natural than those of termites or elephants. Chicago is no less a phenomenon of nature than is the Great Barrier Reef (a vast undersea coral polyp condominium) or limestone sediments formed by countless generations of calciferous marine organisms. (Callicott, 1992, pp. 17–8) The common thread associated with the ‘natural city’ is that the city blends harmoniously with the natural world since it is part of the larger biotic community. In this vision, the non-artificial (natural) features of the cityscape are recognized as foundational to the lives of the human community that inhabits the city. This understanding arises from a paradigm shift that results in a vision of a city that is ‘authentic or true to itself.’ In the quest for a city of this type, Stefanovic asks: ‘Is the building of a “natural city” simply a matter of integrating more parks into urban spaces? …. Moving forward will require more than assembling a compendium of such discrete initiatives. More important will be to consider a repositioning of fundamental values, paradigms, and world views that sustain these efforts in the long term.’ (2012, p. 18) The notion of authenticity referred to is the nondualistic understanding that ‘calls us to find ways to live within the context given

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us by nature, destroying as little as possible. In this view, human life adjusts to its natural context. It seeks way to improve its condition that also benefit its natural environment.’ (Cobb Jr., 2012, p. 191, my emphasis). The framework of the ‘natural city’ goes one step further than the ‘naturalness of the city’ discussed in CNT 1 or the socio-natural hybrid discussed in CNT 2 by implicitly suggesting that we derive our urban-political models from nature. This line of reasoning overlooks a very simple fact: while the naturalness of nature may be questioned (as indicated in CNT 2 and highlighted in the Anthropocene), the social-political character of cities cannot. This does not imply that cities are not part of nature in the aspects analyzed above (embeddedness in nature or socio-natural hybrid), nor is it a retreat into dualism; it merely makes the point that a qualitative difference exists between the two despite their interrelatedness and interdependence. This point and its implications are elaborated in the third CNT.

CNT 3 – Cities and nature are qualitatively and experientially different In direct response to Callicott’s ‘Chicago’ argument, Rolston writes: ‘It is only philosophical confusion to remark that both geese in flight, landing on Yellowstone Lake, and humans in flight, landing at O’Hare in Chicago, are equally natural, and let it go at that… Geese fly naturally; humans fly in artifacts ’ (2001, p. 268). The qualitative difference between cities and nature is that nature, even when produced and manipulated, exhibits complexities that result from spontaneous processes, self-organization and autopoiesis; cities, in addition to their limited natural characteristics, also involve planning, deliberation, premeditation, and politics, none of which are natural. They are embedded in the natural world and are natural to the extent analyzed in CNTs 1 and 2 but are not natural in the way the Great Barrier Reef is. Moreover, noticing the experiential difference between the ‘urban jungle’ of New York City and the ‘natural’ Amazon jungle does not imply a retreat into dualism, but rather calls for a more comprehensive political framework. The most concerning inadequacy of ‘naturalizing’ the city in this sense is that the city is valued almost exclusively in terms of its interrelatedness with nature and not for its human component. It seems to rest on one of several interpretations of nonanthropocentrism – as giving precedence to Nature/the biotic community over the needs and rights of human beings if these two are considered in isolation. While this approach emphasizes ‘the integrity, beauty, and stability of the urban community, in communion with all the subjects [(i.e. human and nonhumans alike)] that dwell within and beyond city limits’ (Scharper, 2012, p. 100) it ascribes only minor significance to human affairs. This line of reasoning is unwarranted. Cities could be valued according to their degree of interrelatedness with nature but also, and primarily, for their cultural offerings, promotion of human rights, ability to provide educational opportunities, social heterogeneity, proximity to social and political institutions or simply for being more liberal than rural settlements etc. In the (direct) environmental context, cities should be valued for their density, ability to promote

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environmental policies better than other political entities (Barber, 2013, Glaeser, 2011, Owen, 2010) and for their ability to foster a (human) community and political identity in times of a homogenizing global culture (Bell & de Shalit, 2011). Prescribing guidelines for the ‘natural city’ instrumentalizes the concept of nature promoting an ecocentric political agenda which is disguised as apolitical and acultural.8 This attitude ignores the diversity of existing urban political cultures and identities. To elaborate, Cunningham (2012), for example, argues that the ‘natural city’ is the antithesis of and antidote to contemporary ‘global cities’ that are interpreted as cities designed ultimately and almost exclusively for the ‘global class’. Accordingly, the ‘natural city’ is supposed to alleviate social and economic impoverishment resulting from global urbanization. However, just as Cunningham criticizes the global city for being exclusive to the global class, her vision/utopia of the ‘natural city’ seems to be exclusive to the ‘naturalistic group’ – a social group that may be characterized as having ecocentric attitudes. It may be argued in turn that this group is inclusive, though this is true only to the extent of accepting the ‘repositioning of fundamental values, paradigms, and worldviews’ (Stefanovic, 2012, p. 18) suggested by the proponents of this model, i.e. ecocentrism. It proposes transcending contemporary (political) culture by following a form of critique that promotes an alternative worldview by questioning the values that are external to existing practices. This is achieved by instrumentalizing the ‘natural context,’ thereby short-circuiting a less appealing and tougher political process. Since the suggested political model focuses on cities, the particular culture and political identity of each city should be addressed and not a brute ‘natural context’. If this is not an attempt to short-circuit politics by instrumentalizing nature, then it assumes that urban political models can be derived from nature. This attitude was characterized by Meyer (2001, pp. 2–5, 47–50) as a derivative view of the relationship between nature and politics. This approach is methodologically wrong. Unlike natural processes that are spontaneous, largely deterministic and involuntary (i.e. gravity, magnetism, thermodynamics, photosynthesis), city politics can take many forms. This is evident in the diverse and mutating urban political cultures throughout the world. The methodological error results from the fact that the nature of nature is constantly questioned. The type of questioning I refer to is not the scientific study of nature but rather the debatable and contested social and political implications of these scientific findings. Is nature harmonious or hostile? Is it hierarchical or egalitarian? The answer to these questions reflects the values that a person already holds. In other words, even if we agree that we ought to derive our political models and theories from nature (committing the naturalistic fallacy of deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’), we would still argue over what nature actually is which takes us back to politics. This methodological error is accompanied by a normative and pragmatic problem. Even if we somehow derive political guidance from a ‘correct’ conception of nature, there is no guarantee that it will lead to environmentally beneficial policies. Certain interpretations of nature can be disastrous for humans (e.g. social Darwinism) or lead to ecologically disastrous behavior (e.g. suburbanization) or a fortuitous mix of both (e.g. ruralism) (Meyer, 2001; de Shalit, 1996, 2000, pp. 99–103).

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Finally, naturalizing politics in the implicit manner suggested by proponents of ‘natural city’ implies the impossibility of politics. Attributing naturalness to a certain political order implies not only that this order is morally superior, but also that it is permanent or subjected exclusively to those ‘natural’ pre-given ‘laws of politics’. That is, if politics were natural, and assuming nature follows immutable principles, it implies that a person or a society has practically no ability to deliberately influence, reform or change anything about the political structures according to which they live.9 To conclude, this sub-section argued that politics is unavoidable. The nondualism of proponents of the ‘natural city’ seems to ignore the fact that the relationship between cities and nature is constituted by concrete political institutions and that a political process cannot be short-circuited or replaced by metaphysical conceptions. In the subsequent section I analyze the normative and political aspects of the CNTs above and their inferences for EPT in the Anthropocene.

Cities and the Anthropocene: new framing for enduring political questions Each of the CNTs above holds normative and political implications regarding the transitioning of cities into a more desirable future.10 The interrelatedness of cities and nature (CNT 1) implies that considerations of environmental ethics are neither limited to the landscape ‘exterior’ to the city’s built environment, nor to ‘nature in cities’. In addition to their instrumental benefits to ecosystem services, the policies of urban greening and environmental restoration call into question the city’s socio-environmental norms and values. Problematizing a city’s urban culture by challenging dualistic intuitions (that we are no longer in nature when in the city) is valuable for three main reasons. It gives rise to reflection on the relationships between built environment and the natural world; it allows one to evaluate nature from the experience of the built environment; and it may provide moral justifications for fostering environmentalfriendly attitudes in cities that extend beyond ‘nature in cities’. This urban environmental ethics agenda, however, cannot be held independently of the city’s socio-economic and political realities. The example noted above of displacements that occur in projects promoting environmental sustainability (i.e. green gentrification) indicates the nexus of issues of social equity and environmental policies (CNT 2). Social stratification and uneven distribution of political power are integral to the process of transforming the city into a more desirable future. Reducing questions of sustainable urbanism to techno-managerialism, or to an urban environmental ethics centered on ‘nature in cities’, is at best inadequate and at worst intentionally misleading. More explicitly, disassociating social and political realities from the practice and general orientation of urban sustainability depoliticizes environmentalism, by emptying it of its aspirations to equality, democracy and human rights. It is thus crucial to recognizing the socio-environmental consequences of supposedly value-neutral and pragmatic policies of environmental sustainability, and it calls into question not only those policy goals, but also their methods of implementation. Moreover, it indicates the critical need for more civic-political engagement in the process.11

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Taken together, CNT 1 and 2 suggest that transitioning a city into a more desirable future is not only a techno-managerial challenge, or merely an environmental issue, but also a challenge to the civic community’s shared values and norms manifested in its policies, regulations and public space. Given the qualitative and experiential difference between cities and nature (CNT 3) and the normative and political inadequacies of deriving social and political structures from nature implies that a city-based political process is unavoidable, even desirable. The analysis above showed that politics is either narrowed to implementation of techno-managerial reforms (e.g. sustainable urbanism) or short-circuited in the name of ‘alternative cosmologies’ (the natural city). The former is conservative in its relationship to existing social and political values; the latter utilizes a revolutionary rhetoric though it tries to transcend existing social and political structures. This denotes that neither a universal and depoliticized notion of sustainable urbanism nor a shortcircuited vision of a ‘natural city’ is adequate. Instead, accepting the social and political implications of CNTs 1 and 2 requires acknowledging the need for the critical civic engagement with existing urban practices and the socio-environmental and political values ascribed to them. The role of this critical engagement is not to find a unified vision of the sustainable city, but rather to encourage active debate while sharing a commitment to more environment-friendly policies within their economic, political and social contexts. Such civic debates would give rise to different desired urban futures in different cities in accordance with their particular political identities and socio-spatial structures, thus enabling the community to formulate more suitable environment-friendly policies within a more profound urban-environmental politics. Accepting the parallel characteristics pertaining to the depoliticizing of ‘sustainable urbanism’ and Anthropocene-related concerns by focusing, almost exclusively, on techno-managerialism leads to important conclusions regarding EPT in the Anthropocene. By indicating the social and political concerns involved in transitioning cities into a more desirable future, this chapter touched on enduring TABLE 6.1 Summary of City-Nature Theses

CNT

Meaning of CNT

Implications

Domain of implications

Interrelatedness

Embeddedness in nature

Interdependence

Cities are materially conditioned by nature; nature is affected by the production of cities. Experiential and qualitative characteristics

Philosophical and normative introspection Political autonomy, self-determination and ‘right to the city’i

Urban culture; socio-environmental norms and values Political economy; urban metabolism; political values and norms

Politics is unavoidable

Urban democracy, civic ecological citizenship

Difference

i

The notion of the right to the city was coined by Henri Lefebvre (1996); it stands for the collective rights of city-inhabitants (city-zens) to participate in shaping the institutions and identity of their cities. For elaboration, see (Purcell 2002, Harvey 2008, Brenner et al. 2012).

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normative and political questions that have been analyzed in EPT since the emergence of this field. The notion of the Anthropocene accentuates these social and political concerns; however, it does not imply a radically new task for EPT, which should maintain its role of indicating the inseparability of environmental, political, economic, social and cultural issues and the analysis of the political institutions and processes to address them.

Notes * A previous version of this chapter appears, with a number of changes and a different approach, in the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment under the title ‘Civic Ecologism: Environmental Politics in Cities’ (forthcoming, 2019). 1 This idea is inspired by: Light (2003). 2 For example, Light’s (2001) claim that an ‘urban blind spot’ is prevalent in environmental ethics and King (2000, 2003) that the built environment should be integrated into wider considerations of environmental ethics. Fox’s edited volume (2002) introduces ethical considerations of the built environment and his (2006) book extends this analysis. Landscape architects and urban designers address environmental considerations in built environments, e.g. Beatley (2000, 2017), Benton-Short and Short (2013), Farr (2008), Lehmann (2010). 3 For a comprehensive overview and critique of city-nature dualism in urban sociology, see Wachsmuth (2012) and in environmental ethics and philosophy, see Light (2001). 4 Please note that this argument does not imply that ‘urban nature’ is not an environmentfriendly policy. Moreover, it has been suggested that these locations hold educational opportunities for restoration projects and that projects of this type may contribute to environmental citizenship in cities. (Light, 2003) However, distinguishing the ‘nature of cities’ from ‘nature in cities’ is important in delineating dualistic reasoning. 5 Would mice be welcome as well? Possibly, but would poisonous spiders and coyotes pass? 6 With the written permission of the photographer Kayte Dolmatch. For further photos by KD see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaytedolmatch/. 7 Cf. Wachsmuth’s (2012) analysis of society-nature oppositions in urban sociology. 8 Conceptual instrumentalism is the use of one concept, nature in this case, to promote political ideas that are not necessarily related to nature. It results from a hybrid of environmental philosophy and metaphysics (or alternative cosmology) with political theory (i.e. the natural city), using a single mode of reasoning. For an elaboration of conceptual instrumentalism, see (de Shalit, 2000, Chapter 2). 9 Please note that this argument is not against any specific political order. 10 See Table 6.1: Summary of City-Nature Theses. 11 This notion coincides with Agyeman’s recent works on Just Sustainabilities (2013) and his collaboration with McLaren on its implementation in cities (2015).

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Angelo, H. and Wachsmuth, D. (2015). ‘Urbanizing Urban Political Ecology: A Critique of Methodological Cityism: Urbanizing urban political ecology.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16–27. Barber, B.R. (2013). If mayors ruled the world: dysfunctional nations, rising cities. Cambridge: Yale University Press. Barry, J. (2012). The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability: Human Flourishing in a Climate-Changed, Carbon Constrained World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beatley, T. (2000). Green urbanism: learning from European cities. Washington, DC: Island Press. Beatley, T. (2017). Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design (None edition). Washington, DC: Island Press. Bell, D.A. and de Shalit, A. (2011). The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Benton-Short, L., & Short, J.R. (2013). Cities and Nature (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Boivin, N.L., Zeder, M.A., Fuller, D.Q., Crowther, A., Larson, G., Erlandson, J.M., Denham, T., and Petraglia, M.D. (2016). ‘Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(23), 6388–6396. Brenner, N., Marcuse, P., and Mayer, M. (eds.). (2012). Cities for People, Not for Profit: Critical Urban Theory and The Right To The City. New York: Routledge. Brenner, N., & Schmid, C. (2015). ‘Towards a new epistemology of the urban?’ City, 19 (2–3), 151–182. Callicott, J.B. (1992). ‘La Nature est morte, vive la nature!’ Hastings Center Report, 22(5), 16–23. Castree, N.Adams, W.M., Barry, J., Brockington, D., Büscher, B., Corbera, E., Demeritt, D., Duffy, R., Felt, U., Neves, K., Newell, P., Pellizzoni, L., Rigby, K., Robbins, P., Robin, L., Rose, D.B., Ross, A., Schlosberg, D., Sörlin, S., West, P., Whitehead, M., and Wynne, B. (2014). ‘Changing the intellectual climate.’ Nature Climate Change, 4(9), 763–768. Checker, M. (2011). ‘Wiped Out by the “Greenwave”: Environmental Gentrification and the Paradoxical Politics of Urban Sustainability.’ City & Society, 23(2), 210–229. Cobb Jr., J.B. (2012). ‘Sustainable Urbanization.’ In: I.L. Stefanovic and S.B. Scharper, eds. The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Toronto; Buffalo N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 191–202. Cook, I.R. and Swyngedouw, E. (2012). ‘Cities, Social Cohesion and the Environment: Towards a Future Research Agenda.’ Urban Studies, 49(9), 1959–1979. Cunningham, H. (2012). ‘Gated Ecologies and “Possible Uran Worlds”.’ In: I.L. Stefanovic and S.B. Scharper, eds. The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Toronto; Buffalo N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 149–160. de Shalit, A. (1996). ‘Ruralism or environmentalism?’ Environmental Values, 5(1), 47–58. de Shalit, A. (2000). The Environment: Between Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Downey, G. (2016). ‘Being Human in Cities: Phenotypic Bias from Urban Niche Construction. ’Current Anthropology, 57(S13), S52–S64. Ellis, E.C. (2015). ‘Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere.’ Ecological Monographs, 85(3), 287–331. Farr, D. (2008). Sustainable urbanism: urban design with nature. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Fox, W. (2002). Ethics and the Built Environment. London and New York: Routledge. Fox, W. (2006). A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press. Gandy, M. (2005). ‘Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City.’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(1), 26–49.

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Glaeser, E. (2011). Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. London: Pan Macmillan. Gould, K.A., & Lewis, T.L. (2016). Green Gentrification: Urban sustainability and the struggle for environmental justice. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. 1st edition. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell. Heynen, N. (2014). ‘Urban political ecology I: The urban century.’ Progress in Human Geography, 38(4), 598–604. Heynen, N., Kaika, M., and Swyngedouw, E. (2006). ‘Urban Political Ecology: Politicizing the Production of Urban Natures.’ In: N. Heynen, M. Kaika, and E. Swyngedouw, eds. In the nature of cities: urban political ecology and the politics of urban metabolism. London; New York: Routledge, 1–19. Kaika, M. (2005). City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City. 1st edition. New York: Routledge. King, R.J.H. (2000). ‘Environmental ethics and the built environment.’ Environmental Ethics, 22(2), 115–131. King, R.J.H. (2003). ‘Toward an ethics of the domesticated environment.’ Philosophy & Geography, 6(1), 3–14. Lehmann, S. (2010). The principles of green urbanism: transforming the city for sustainability. London; Washington, D.C.: Earthscan. Light, A. (2001). ‘The Urban Blind Spot in Environ Ethics.’ Environmental Politics, 10(1), 7–35. Light, A. (2003). ‘Urban Ecological Citizenship.’ Journal of Social Philosophy, 34(1), 44–63. Lövbrand, E., Beck, S., Chilvers, J., Forsyth, T., Hedrén, J., Hulme, M., Lidskog, R., and Vasileiadou, E. (2015). ‘Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene.’ Global Environmental Change, 32, 211–218. Luke, T.W. (2014). ‘Urbanism as Cyorganicity.’ In D. Ibañez & N. Katsikis eds. New Geographies 06: Grounding Metabolism. Cambridge: Harvard University School of Design, 39–53. McLaren, D. and Agyeman, J. (2015). Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Meyer, J.M. (2001). Political nature: environmentalism and the interpretation of Western thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Owen, D. (2010)- Green metropolis: why living smaller, living closer, and driving less are the keys to sustainability. New York: Riverhead Books. Rolston, III, H. (1994). Conserving Natural Value. New York: Columbia University Press. Rolston III, H. (2001). ‘Natural and unnatural; wild and cultural.’ Western North American Naturalist, 61(3), 267–276. Scharper, S.B. (2012). ‘From Community to Communion: The Natural City in Biotic and Cosmological Perspective.’ In: I.L. Stefanovic and S.B. Scharper, eds. The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Toronto, Buffalo N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 89–103. Schlosberg, D. (2007). Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stefanovic, I.L. (2012). ‘In Search of the Natural City.’ In: I.L. Stefanovic and S.B. Scharper, eds. The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Toronto, Buffalo N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 11–35. Stefanovic, I. L., & Scharper, S.B. (eds.). (2012). The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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Swyngedouw, E. (2006). ‘Circulations and metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) cities.’ Science as Culture, 15(2), 105–121. Vogel, S. (2015). Thinking Like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of Nature. Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press. Wachsmuth, D. (2012). ‘Three Ecologies: Urban Metabolism and the Society-Nature Opposition.’ The Sociological Quarterly, 53(4), 506–523. Wolch, J.R., Byrne, J., & Newell, J.P. (2014). ‘Urban green space, public health, and environmental justice: The challenge of making cities “just green enough.”’ Landscape and Urban Planning, 125, 234–244.

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PART III

The Anthropocene as a moral question

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7 ANTHROPOCENE: THE EMERGENCE OF THE FIGURE OF “GOVERNATOR” Yohan Ariffin

The term “Anthropocene” has emerged as an increasingly popular emotive trope used to suggest that the Earth may have entered a new epoch in which humans have become a global geophysical force. Opinions about its significance are characterized by an ambivalence highlighted by Arias-Maldonado (2015). Some refer to the notion to berate the fact that humans have exceeded their ecological limits, while others use it to advocate the necessity to pursue technological intervention. In this chapter, I begin by positing that the trope appears to be the latest manifestation of a recurrent, ambivalent attitude towards civilization viewed as a process liable concomitantly to ameliorate the conditions of human life and to bring about the destruction of humankind. I look briefly at the myth of Prometheus, which provides an eloquent example that can be multiplied several fold. We know that while the Sophists used the culture hero to praise the development of arts and techniques, others such as the Cynics – whose teachings were directed at living in accordance with nature understood as a state uncontaminated by human art – criticised the way human intelligence was used for purposes of luxury rather than to promote virtue and justice. Both views however used the symbol of Prometheus to extol their particular understanding of human foresight. I then go on to examine what distinguishes our contemporary ambivalence towards civilization. I argue that the term Anthropocene is suffused with emotive meanings that can be evinced in three types of ideas capable of influencing politics, namely worldviews understood here as dominant views of the world, normative ideas, and prescriptive ideas. As regards worldviews, the Anthropocene conveys the notion of a weak and impotent world nevertheless capable of raging back against humankind with forces of destruction all the more powerful as human activity has apparently transformed them into lawless actants. The normative ideas upon which the Anthropocene is founded appear to be torn between pity or indifference towards non-humans, suspicion, or hope towards intentionally created hybrids

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(such as GMOs), and fear or enmity towards unplanned hybrids (such as ozone depletion or global warming). As for causal ideas, they build mainly on a heuristic of hope, in the present case that the causes for negative outcomes can be altered in the future. The chapter concludes by suggesting that what emerges in our contemporary ambivalence towards civilization takes the form of a new promethean figure – Governator – half terminator of pristine nature, and half governor of a nature gone mad by his own labours. There is a need to work our way out of this perplexity. Simplicity should be aimed at. This would require focusing on terminating our unplanned hybrids while extending our alliances with the non-human world.

Framing the Anthropocene The term Anthropocene is marked by a profound ambivalence as it represents a source of both fascination for and condemnation of humanity. Equivocation is already apparent in atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and freshwater biologist Eugene Stoermer’s paper that first coined the term to suggest that the Earth is now moving out of its current geological epoch largely due to human activity (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). On the one hand, the two senior scientists provided a list of alarming consequences attributable to human influence alone: acid precipitation, photochemical smog, and climate warming. On the other hand, they ended their article with a humanistic statement alluding to the fact that “mankind will remain a major geological force for many millennia, maybe millions of years, to come. To develop a world-wide accepted strategy leading to sustainability of ecosystems against human induced stresses will be one of the great future tasks of mankind, requiring intensive research efforts and wise application of the knowledge thus acquired in the noösphere, better known as knowledge or information society” (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000, p. 18). Defined in these terms, the Anthropocene is a curious frame. Entman noted that “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. Typically frames diagnose, evaluate, and prescribe” (Entman 1993, p. 51). In the case of the Anthropocene, the diagnosis entertained is that humanity has become a telluric force capable of reshaping the planet on a geological scale. This activity however is evaluated as self-imperilling, which leads some Anthropocene proponents to prescribe the pursuit of grand scale technological projects in order to render human dominion sustainable. The idea that “le remède est dans le mal” – or that the remedy is in what appears to be the malady itself represented in this instance by the technoscientific-industrial complex whose products and processes have wrought many of the problematical changes at play – is conveyed in numerous subsequent discussions of the Anthropocene within the global change research community. As an example among many one may cite Will Steffen and colleagues who begin by diagnosing the dire

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predicament in which humanity now finds itself. After having identified the main destructive “drivers of the Anthropocene”1, the authors conclude their article with a moral judgment evaluating the effects of these trends, which they believe “may well threaten the viability of contemporary civilization and perhaps even the future existence of Homo sapiens” (Steffen et al. 2011, pp. 843, 862). As concerns the proposed remedies to abate this precarious condition, the article unambiguously advocates technoprogressive interventions such as: building early warning systems, gathering both biophysical and socio-economic data to model complex system dynamics, deploying various climate or geo-engineering approaches (though their possible adverse environmental side effects need also be fully researched) (Steffen et al. 2011, pp. 856–860). The high-profile academic networks that have been involved in framing and spreading the notion and in advocating its formal ratification by the geological community have been extraordinarily successful. In just one decade the term has become widely popular not only in academic circles – with three journals currently devoted to the topic and hundreds of published articles referring to it – but also in popular usage (Castree 2014, p. 171; Lewis and Maslin 2015). Counterframes have been few and far between. Eileen Crist on the one hand, Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg on the other, have proposed a critique of the Anthropocene narrative by calling attention to problematical aspects that the frame attempts to direct our attention away from. Crist argues that the Anthropocene excludes “the freedom to cultivate another kind of power—the power to let things be, the power of self-limitation, the power to celebrate the Creation” (Crist 2013, p. 139). Malm and Hornborg suggest that humanity is a notion far too inclusive to carry the “burden of causality”, that a significant part of humankind is “not party to the fossil economy at all”, and that the narrative of an entire species tends to omit “the potency of social relations of power”. It follows that the Anthropocene has introduced a divide between what Clive Hamilton calls the “Prometheans and Soterians, a technocratic rationalist worldview confident of humanity’s ability to control nature, against a more humble outlook suspicious of unnatural technological solutions and the hubris of mastery projects” (Hamilton 2013, p. 166).

Déja vu? A brief excursus to ancient times On closer examination, however, Hamilton’s nomenclature does not seem to be quite suitable. In many respects, prometheanism presents itself as a form of soteriology whose special concern is with the welfare of humankind perceived as being in some kind of unfortunate condition. The dispute is in fact a long-standing one pitting the modern heirs of the Sophists against those who profess Cynic views regarding the question of whether civilization has been a gain or a loss for the species responsible for it. To understand the issues involved, something must first be said about these two schools of thought that have expressed exactly opposite points of view on the matter.

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It is widely known that the Sophists in Ancient Greece were experts who had special skills to impart. Their knowledge was practical. It was intended to be applied particularly in the fields of politics and in the technical arts. It is no wonder that Plato made Protagoras – one of the most illustrious representatives of the Sophistic movement – use the myth of Prometheus, the patron of technology, to tell the story of humanity’s development. In his eponymous dialogue, Protagoras speaks about how Prometheus (Forethought) and Epimetheus (Afterthought,) were charged with the task of distributing among all mortal species the powers needed to preserve themselves from extinction. Epimetheus equipped animals with their distinctive qualities, but, in his absentmindedness, used up his stock of powers before taking care of humankind, thereby leaving humans defenceless. Prometheus, however, intervened to save them with the stolen gift of “wisdom in the arts, along with fire”. This enabled humans to rise to civilization from a state where they were “naked and unshod and unbedded and unarmed” (Plato 1996, p. 181). It is worthy of note that shortly before the emergence of the Sophistic movement, Aeschylus in his Prometheus bound makes Hermes address the Titan as “you, the sophist, who have sinned against the gods” (Aeschylus 2012, ln. 948; c.f. Guthrie 1971, p. 32), and emphasizes how Prometheus’ gifts of skills and knowledge – for which he was unjustly punished by Zeus – eventually combined to set apart human existence from that of animals.2 As Carol Dougherty notes, the Sophistic narrative of Prometheus celebrates “the uniquely human qualities of foresight, planning, strategy, and intelligence – characteristics that separate humans from animals and take us closer to the world of the divine” (Dougherty 2005, pp. 83–84). It highlights two opposing conditions: that of a primitive state when men lived like beasts, followed by the development of the arts and the creation of a civilized life in society. A full-blown expression of this opinion can be found many centuries later in the words put in the mouth of Balbus by Cicero. In a remarkable passage of De Natura Deorum, Cicero expounds the idea that humans have executed with their hands what their minds had discovered and their senses perceived and have as a result altered much of the world, creating in effect “a second world within the world of nature”. He writes: And beside these arts of recreation there are those of utility, I mean agriculture and building, the weaving and stitching of garments, and the various modes of working bronze and iron; hence we realize that it was by applying the hand of the artificer to the discoveries of thought and observations of the senses that all our conveniences were attained, and we were enabled to have shelter, clothing and protection, and possessed cities, fortifications, houses and temples. Moreover men’s industry, that is to say the work of their hands, procures us also our food in variety and abundance. It is the hand that gathers the divers products of the fields, whether to be consumed immediately or to be stored in repositories for the days to come; and our diet also includes flesh, fish and fowl, obtained partly by the chase and partly by breeding. We also tame the four-footed animals to carry us on their backs, their swiftness and strength bestowing strength and swiftness upon ourselves. We cause certain beasts to

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bear our burdens or to carry a yoke, we divert to our service the marvellously acute senses of elephants and the keen scent of hounds; we collect from the caves of the earth the iron which we need for tilling the land, we discover the deeply hidden veins of copper, silver and gold which serve us both for use and for adornment; we cut up a multitude of trees both wild and cultivated for timber which we employ partly by setting fire to it to warm our bodies and cook our food, partly for building so as to shelter ourselves with houses and banish heat and cold. Timber moreover is of great value for constructing ships, whose voyages supply an abundance of sustenance of all sorts from all parts of the earth; and we alone have the power of controlling the most violent of nature’s offspring, the sea and the winds, thanks to the science of navigation, and we use and enjoy many products of the sea. Likewise the entire command of the commodities produced on land is vested in mankind. We enjoy the fruits of the plains and of the mountains, the rivers and the lakes are ours, we sow corn, we plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we confine the rivers and straighten or divert their courses. In fine, by means of our hands we essay to create as it were a second world within the world of nature. (Cicero 1967, pp. 267–269; my emphasis) At the other end of the spectrum, the ancient Cynics advocated “a life in accordance with nature” (kata phusin). Following Diogenes, nature provided an ethical norm observable in animals. Wealth, fame and political power, conventionally deemed necessary for happiness, had no value in nature and should therefore be rejected. Human beings were enjoined to realize their nature by engaging in a rigorous discipline (askesis) consisting of living in poverty and satisfying their basic needs so as to attain self-sufficiency (autarkeia), which was perceived to be the source of all happiness. In his sixth oration, Dio Chrysostom provides a fascinating defence of humankind’s natural fitness for its environment. He argues that humans were not helpless or weak, and that Prometheus was not their benefactor, but rather their corrupter (see Branham and Goulet-Caze 1996, Desmond 2008). [Diogenes said that] Men crowded into the cities to escape wrong from those outside, only to wrong one another and commit all sorts of the most dreadful misdeeds as though that had been the object of their coming together. And the reason, in his opinion, why the myth says that Zeus punished Prometheus for his discovery and bestowal of fire was that therein lay the origin and beginning of man’s softness and love of luxury; for Zeus surely did not hate men or grudge them any good thing. When some people urged that it is impossible for man to live like the animals owing to the tenderness of his flesh and because he is naked and unprotected either by hair, as the majority of beasts are, or by feathers and has no covering of tough skin, he would say in reply that men are so very tender because of their mode of life, since, as a rule, they avoid the sun and also avoid the cold. It is not the nakedness of the body that causes the trouble. He would then call attention to the frogs and

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numerous other animals much more delicate than man and much less protected, and yet some of them not only withstand the cold air but are even able to live in the coldest water during the winter. He also pointed out that the eyes and the face of man himself have no need of protection. And, in general, no creature is born in any region that cannot live in it. Else how could the first human beings to be born have survived, there being no fire, or houses, or clothing, or any other food than that which grew wild? Nay, man’s ingenuity and his discovering and contriving so many helps to life had not been altogether advantageous to later generations, since men do not employ their cleverness to promote courage or justice, but to procure pleasure. And so, as they pursue the agreeable at any cost, their life becomes constantly less agreeable and more burdensome; and while they appear to be attending to their own needs, they perish most miserably, just because of excessive care and attention. And for these reasons Prometheus was justly said to have been bound to the rock and to have had his liver plucked by the eagle. (Chrysostom 1932) These contrasting attitudes towards Prometheus throw light upon the fact that both the Sophists and the Cynics used the myth to reflect on what Manuel AriasMaldonado calls the “socionatural entanglement”. As we have seen, both could at times reject the idea of a strict separation between the realms of the human and the natural. While Cicero echoed the Sophistic account of civilization by acknowledging that humankind created through its endeavours “a second world within the world of nature”, in other words “anthromes” to use Erle Ellis’ expression, the Cynics reintroduced what they considered to be “natural activity” into society where they chose to live like dogs to enlighten their contemporaries about the depravity of custom and convention.

Back to the Future: the emotive meanings of the Anthropocene Now that we have seen that as far back as classical Antiquity there have been two opposing views of the natural condition of humankind, let us examine what distinguishes our contemporary ambivalence towards civilization as it is expressed in the term Anthropocene. As I mentioned earlier, the notion involves some form of framing that seeks to guide attitudes and action. As such, it includes rational assessments as well as emotional evaluations, in other words ideas or judgments that are emotionally toned. I shall use the term emotives to refer to such evaluations (Ariffin 2015, pp. 207– 220). Introduced by William Reddy, the concept of emotives refers to emotional expressions that are analogous to performatives because they “alter the states of the speakers from whom they derive” (Reddy 1997, p. 327). Emotional statements such as “I am angry” attempt to describe a feeling but at the same time “alter what they ‘refer’ to” because the utterance itself changes the feeling either by intensifying it, contradicting it, or transforming it into another feeling (Reddy 2001, p.

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105). Reddy examines what these emotions claim to do to the speaker. My use of the concept here is different as I am concerned with attempts by the performer to get the addressee to do something or to refrain from doing something in a context in which the latter is not obligated to comply. My understanding of emotives draws perhaps more on Charles Leslie Stevenson’s notion than on William Reddy’s. Stevenson wrote that there is: a kind of meaning (…) which has an intimate relation to dynamic usage. I refer to “emotive” meaning (…). The emotive meaning of a word is a tendency of a word, arising through the history of its usage, to produce (result from) affective responses in people. It is the immediate aura of feeling which hovers about a word. Such tendencies to produce affective responses cling to words very tenaciously. (…) certain words, because of their emotive meaning, are suited to a certain kind of dynamic use – so well suited, in fact, that the hearer is likely to be misled when we use them in any other way. The more pronounced a word’s emotive meaning is, the less likely people are to use it purely descriptively. Some words are suited to encourage people, some to discourage them, some to quiet them, and so on. (…) there is an important contingent relation between emotive meaning and dynamic purpose: the former assists the latter. (Stevenson 1937, p. 23) Emotives are particular performatives, which following Austin’s (1962) classic analysis are distinct from constatives by seeking to perform all at once a locutionary act (to issue a specific meaning), an illocutionary act (to express an attitude) and a perlocutionary act (to produce consequential effects). I argue that they take the form of conditional or compound propositions. We know that in such propositions, one clause asserts something as true provided that the other clause is equally true. In the case of emotives, the first clause – the “if” clause or the antecedent – involves an emotion. The second clause – the “then” clause or the consequent – is a specific behaviour that is conditioned upon the emotion being evinced by the addressee. We may take as typical example President Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation on 8 December 1941 stating the following: “I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire”. In this instance, the consequent clause – that Congress should declare war against Japan – depends on members of Congress experiencing indignation as suggested in the use of the word “dastardly”. Emotives attempt to “do things to the world”. By signifying a particular emotion, they seek to alter, repress or displace alternative attitudes and lead their addressee to develop a favourable intention to perform a certain behaviour. When successfully used, they impart stimuli for action and can as a result be implemented in policies and eventually embedded in institutions.

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The term Anthropocene is suffused with emotive meanings that can be evinced in the three types of ideas described by Goldstein and Keohane capable of influencing politics, namely worldviews (understood here as dominant views of the world that establish the possibilities for action), normative ideas that provide criteria to distinguish right from wrong, and causal beliefs that determine how to achieve ends (Goldstein and Keohane 1993). As such, they constitute specific frames, defined by David Snow and Robert Benford as “interpretative schemata that [simplify and condense] the world out there by selectively punctuating objects, situations, events, and sequences of actions within one’s present or past environment” (Snow and Benford 1992, p. 137). Regarding worldviews, techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic opinions of the Anthropocene share a similar concern about nature perceived as weak in the face of human activity. These opinions differ significantly from the ones prevalent in classical Antiquity. As noted earlier, the Sophists underlined the comparative weakness of humankind in regard to the great forces of the Earth, while the Cynics were well aware of the rigors of nature, which they used as a training ground to develop physical and mental tolerance to pain and hardships. It is also worthwhile here to recall the views developed by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents to measure how far we are now removed from this understanding of nature: we are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. (Freud 1962, p. 24) Although communities are indeed periodically subjected to “the superior power of nature” (Freud 1962, p. 33), this is clearly not the concern of Anthropocene proponents, who deal with the negative effects of human activity in the natural world. The emotive meaning which hovers about the idea of an Earth undergoing epochal changes is obviously fear of the accruing consequences, in particular of a transformed nature rendered barren, or worse raging back against humankind with forces of destruction all the more powerful as human activity has transformed them into lawless actants. Views such as these are obviously liable to elicit support for remedying actions. The normative ideas upon which the Anthropocene is founded define what the appropriate relationship between the various agents involved in the process should look like. Agents can be split into three categories: humans, non-humans, and hybrids. Techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic conceptions of the Anthropocene take different views on this matter. The former tend to consider that humans have a duty to act inasmuch as their survival is at stake, that non-humans may be subject to conservation practices on the basis of their expected utility functions, and that intended hybrids should not be feared per se though unintended ones such as

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ozone depletion or global warming need to be dealt with. The principal emotive usually displayed by techno-optimists may be summed up as fortitude. Technopessimists, on the other hand, consider that humans have a duty to preserve nonhumans and to clean up their hybrid mess. Indignation is their central motif. Finally, causal ideas are, following Goldstein and Keohane, “beliefs about causeeffect relationships” (Goldstein and Keohane 1993, p. 10). As regards technooptimists, a recent article signed by no less than twenty six of the most influential researchers in the field attempts to consensually resolve disagreements over the terminus a quo of the Anthropocene. Did it begin “some thousands of years ago”? Was it ushered in with the Industrial Revolution? Or should it be dated back merely to the end of WWII marked by “enhanced population growth, global economic growth and associated environmental change”? (Zalasiewicz et al. 2015). Unsurprisingly, the authors retain the third hypothesis. Had they validated the first hypothesis, the miseries of the Anthropocene would have had to be attributed to human nature itself; and had they validated the second hypothesis, to capitalism. Neither can be remedied by technology alone. The views of the techno-pessimists, on the other hand, are a mirror image of those shared by the techno-optimists. Their diagnoses of the environmental crisis generally involve a critique of the values upon which capitalism is based, particularly the belief that well-being is achieved through the production of abundance by extractive, exploitative and technologically advanced economies. Techno-pessimists view the Anthropocene as an opportunity to overturn the anthropocentric and hierarchical attitudes at the root of the crisis. It follows that causal ideas pertaining to the Anthropocene build mainly on a heuristic of hope, in the present case that the causes can be altered in the future, which is only possible insofar as they are associated with factors presumed variable, either through the expansion or the reduction of technology. Analysis of the emotive framing of the Anthropocene by both techno-optimists and techno-pessimists furthers our understanding of how the idea that the remedy is in the malady may appear persuasive. The frame leads us to believe that we should find solace in the very roots of what we fear. Now, if we scrutinize the matter closely, we find that the argument gives expression to what Hegel named the “cunning of reason” (die List der Vernunft). In his lectures on the philosophy of history, Hegel contended that “it is what we may call the cunning of reason that it sets the passions to work in its service” (Hegel 1975, p. 89). Passions – which Hegel understood as emotions resulting from selfish pursuits – lead humans to become the instruments of an ultimately superior rational design of which they themselves are unaware. Hegel’s cunning of reason was in fact a secular reformulation of Christian theodicy that attempted to reconcile the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect God with the existence of evil. By cognizing evil as the condition of a superior good actuated in revelation, atonement and redemption, theodicists provided a teleology that fitted evil into the workings of divine providence. A moment’s thought shows that Hegel’s secularization of theodicy was yet another elaborate rationalization of a posture which has pursued a long and exciting career in the history of ideas since the early modern era. Indeed, a similar

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argument can be observed in Adam Smith who posited that material appetites that had hitherto been regarded as private vices indirectly promoted a beneficent outcome for society. The argument can likewise be observed in Marx who argued that a social evil – capitalist exploitation – was in fact the necessary condition for establishing a superior classless society. The Anthropocene may yet be a re-enactment of theodicy into an “anthropodicy,” or attempt to justify humanity on the grounds that mankind's overexploitation of nature has served a greater good by rendering necessary either technoprogressive remedies or a transvaluation of technoindustrial values.

The emergence of the figure of “Governator” I have argued that attitudes towards the Anthropocene are based on specific combinations of cognition and emotional dispositions. These ideational and emotional preferences predefine not only the materialization of outcomes in the future on the basis of particular worldviews, normative and causal ideas, but also the affect – in terms of desirability or undesirability – that ought to be experienced with these outcomes. What emerges in our contemporary ambivalence towards civilization is perplexity, which takes the form of a new promethean figure – the Governator – half terminator of nature energized by fossil fuels, and half governor of a nature gone mad by his own labours. Techno-pessimists tend to highlight its dangerous aspects (terminator) while techno-optimists give prominence to its beneficent potential (governor). There is a need to work our way out of this perplexity. Techno-optimistic views will undoubtedly prevail over those espoused by techno-pessimists, not only because they yield more influence, but also because they purport to take their addressees on a satisfactory emotional roller-coaster ride, beginning with fear, proceeding with fortitude rather than indignation, and concluding with hope rather than despair. However technopessimists are indispensible because they alert us to a number of structural determinations that set limits on the possible. Instead of choosing one way over the other, there is a need to cross the two viewpoints. This would require focusing on terminating our unplanned hybrids, while extending our alliances with the non-human world, which no doubt will necessitate a number of “sweet lemon” elevations of initially unattractive outcomes by both techno-optimists and techno-pessimists.

Notes 1 “In addition to the carbon cycle, humans are (i) significantly altering several other biogeochemical, or element cycles, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur, that are fundamental to life on the Earth; (ii) strongly modifying the terrestrial water cycle by intercepting river flow from uplands to the sea and, through land-cover change, altering the water vapour flow from the land to the atmosphere; and (iii) likely driving the sixth major extinction event in Earth history. Taken together, these trends are strong evidence that humankind, our own species, has become so large and active that it now rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system” (Steffen et al. 2011, p. 843). 2 “But listen to the miseries of mortals, / childish until I made them intelligent / and capable of thought. I tell you this / not to cast any blame on human beings, / but to show the kind intent in what I gave. / At first, they saw but seeing was no use; / they

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heard but didn’t hear. Like shapes in dreams, / they passed long lives in purposeless confusion. / They knew no homes of sun warmed brick or wood / but lived like swarming ants in lightless caves / beneath the ground / They had no way of telling / when winter would arrive, or flowery spring, / or summer with its fruits; in everything / they acted without thought, till I explained / the risings and the settings of the stars, / so hard to read. And I did more for them. / I invented number, cleverest of devices, and writing, hard at work to help recall / all things to memory, the Muses’ mother. / I was the first to yoke wild animals / as slaves of pack and collar, so they might / take on the weightiest of mortals’ burdens; / I harnessed horses to the chariot, / delight of the extravagantly rich. / No one else but me invented sailing ships, / that roam the sea with linen wings outspread. / I found all these contrivances for mortals, / but to my sorrow I have no device / by which to escape my present misery” (Aeschylus 2012).

References Aeschylus. (2012) Prometheus Bound, Trans. Deborah Roberts, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company. Arias-Maldonado, M. (2015). Environment and Society. Socionatural Relations in the Anthropocene, Heidelberg: Springer. Ariffin, Y. (2015). ‘Assessing the Role of Emotives in International Relations.’ In: Y. Ariffin, J-M. Coicaud and V. Popovski, eds., Emotions in International Politics: Beyond Mainstream International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 207–220. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Branham, B., Goulet-Cazé, M. ed. (1996). The Cynics. The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Castree, N. (2014). “The Anthropocene and the Environmental Humanities: Extending the Conversation. ”Environmental Humanities 5, 233–260. Cicero (1967). De Natura Deorum II. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Crist, E. (2013). “On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature.” Environmental Humanities 3, 129–147. Chrysostom, D. (1932). Discourses 1–11 (Loeb Classical Library No. 257), Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Crutzen, P. J. & Stoermer, E. F. (2000). “The Anthropocene.” IGBP Global Change Newsletter 41, 17–18. Desmond, W. (2008). Cynics. Abingdon & New York: Routledge. Dougherty, C. (2005). Prometheus. London: Routledge. Entman, Robert M. (1993). “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43(4), 51–58. Freud, S. (1962). Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: Norton. Goldstein, J. and KeohaneR., eds. (1993). Ideas and Foreign Policy. Cornell: Cornell University Press. Guthrie, W. (1971). The Sophists, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hamilton, C. (2013). Earthmasters. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. Hegel, G. W. F. (1975). Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Introduction: Reason in History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, S. & Maslin, M. (2015). “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519, March, 171–180. Plato (1996). The dialogues of Plato. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Reddy, W. (1997). “Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of Emotions.” Current Anthropology 38, 327–351.

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Reddy, W. (2001). The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snow, D. and Benford, R. (1992). “Master frames and cycles of protest.” In: A. Morris and C. McClurg, eds., Frontiers in social movement theory. New Haven & London: University of Yale Press. Steffen, W. et al. (2011). “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and historical perspectives. ”Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369, 842–867. Stevenson, C. (1937). “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms.” Mind 46(181), 14–31. Zalasiewicz, J. et al. (2015). “When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal.” Quaternary International 383, 196–203.

8 REAL ANTHROPOCENE POLITICS Simon Hailwood

This chapter discusses parallels between the Anthropocene discourse and the realism v moralism debate in political theory. Central to realism is the claim that political philosophy should not be viewed simply as a form of ‘applied ethics’. Different versions of realism vary in plausibility but the central insight seems correct: politics is not well understood as simple conformity to a prior, independently defined moral standpoint. This is something of a strawman however. When put too strongly realism overstates the dichotomy between morality and politics and the extent to which ‘moralists’ define moral standpoints independently of politics, and obscures the way ethics and politics may be intertwined without reducing to each other. The Anthropocene discourse also emphasises something true: the degree of human impact on the earth makes it impossible to view nonhuman nature as fully independent of humanity. But this can involve a strawman too: not all ‘traditional’ environmental thought and practice has that view of nature. Analogously to strong forms of political realism very strong forms of Anthropocene advocacy obscure the intertwining of humanity and nonhumanity. Yet such Anthropocene advocacy is also vulnerable to ‘realist’ critique of the ideological ramifications of its homogenising framework and recourse to strawmen.

Political realism, strong and weak Over recent decades a critique of the allegedly excessive moralism of much Anglophone political philosophy has developed under the heading of ‘political realism’. This comes in different forms with different points of emphasis. It is useful to distinguish four interrelated components of the critique.1 Firstly, much political philosophy distorts our understanding of politics by focusing on specific moral values (often justice) to the detriment of a range of ‘political’ values, such as legitimacy, order and stability. Secondly, moralistic political philosophy under-

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appreciates the extent to which the values it asserts as fundamental may be ideological. Thirdly, it under-appreciates the importance of strongly contextual forms of political judgement sensitive to concrete political conditions. This is badly served by abstract ‘grand theories’ apparently supposed to generate prescriptions for all political situations. I will be touching on each of these issues, and especially, towards the end of the chapter, the matter of ideology. But I take the central charge to be this fourth one: much political philosophy proceeds with little or no regard to the concerns of politics as a realm more or less autonomous from morality. It presents itself as applied moral philosophy, adopting a moral standpoint prior to politics that is then expected simply to conform to that standpoint. Bernard Williams, for example, criticises ‘political moralism’ for either regarding the political as a mere instrument of the moral, or for taking morality to constrain what politics ‘…can rightfully do. In both cases, political theory is something like applied morality’ (Williams 2005, p.2). In full moralist mode, then, political philosophy proceeds ‘unrealistically’ by ignoring features internal to ‘the political’ that aren’t a matter simply of ‘doing the right thing’ as defined by an independent moral standard. The dichotomy here between morality and politics can be drawn more or less strictly, depending on the degree of autonomy the political is given from the moral or ethical2 (Rossi & Sleat 2014, pp.690–93). Thus we can think of a ‘realism’ dimension at one end of which the logically strongest political realism (hereafter SPR) asserts full autonomy: moral normativity is unsuitable to politics, where specifically political forms of normativity hold sway. At the opposite end is pure political moralism, which regards politics as ideally a domain entirely of moral enactment or constraint. Lying between these two extremes weaker forms of realism don’t deny a place for morality in politics, but claim that political philosophy should give greater weight than it often does to the autonomy of distinctively political concerns and constraints. This is probably Williams’ view. I think weaker versions are the most defensible and their definitive central claim plausible: morality is hardly unimportant in politics, but political philosophy shouldn’t proceed simply as applied moral philosophy without regard to distinctively political concerns. I will shortly offer some reasons in favour of weaker political realism and argue that the figure of the political moralist is at least often a strawman. I will then go on to discuss parallels with analogously strong forms of Anthropocene advocacy; analogous that is to SPR. Firstly though, it might be thought that I am myself setting up a strawman in talking about the strongest form of political realism as if it was actually held by anyone. Surely no one thinks that politics ought to be thought a completely autonomous domain where morality is altogether out of place? Maybe not. I am not committed to claiming that anyone does hold SPR in a fully unqualified form;3 I am taking it as an ideal limit defining the end of a spectrum of views. There are clearly strong and familiar reasons for preferring weaker forms of realism over SPR. One is motivated by sensitivity to our historical context as one of value pluralism and disagreement. The fact of pluralism and disagreement is a definitive problem of modernity and this is a reason for us not to identify political

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philosophy with a comprehensive ethical standpoint. Many are bound to disagree, and it is pointless to posit a merely theoretical consensus and derive normative political conclusions from that. On the other hand, although political thought is needed to consider how to accommodate pervasive disagreement and secure the legitimacy of coercive institutions despite it, it is difficult not to see this as a moral question as well as a political question. Charles Larmore has usefully developed this point to suggest we move beyond realism versus moralism as an either/or contest (Larmore 2013, pp.279–80). Realists have part of the truth exactly because deep and widespread moral disagreement is a central feature of empirical politics. The import of this as a historical lesson, unavailable to the inhabitants of an ethically and culturally homogenous Aristotelian polis, for example, is that political philosophy must be significantly autonomous from moral philosophy (p.300). Matters of justice or the right are no less contentious than claims about the good, Larmore points out; consequently, a political philosophy focused only on conditions of legitimate authority in the face of moral conflict and disagreement is superior to one focused on ‘mapping the structure of the ideal society’ (p.289). Yet such central features of political life cannot be addressed without appealing to moral principles taken to be ‘antecedently valid’. To secure the (perception of the) legitimacy of a political system it is necessary to refer to principles (of whatever form) taken to be ‘right’ independently of the system itself. Thus the moralist also has part of the truth: the realist must take ‘some bearings from elements of morality’ (p.290) and so cannot adopt SPR. Although significantly autonomous from one another there is interplay between morality and politics, an intertwining in which neither side is ultimately fundamental. Keeping the moral in play like this does not imply a view of political philosophy as merely applied morality. It does not necessitate reference ‘to justice as a purely moral ideal in the sense of defined in advance of any concern for how its requirements are to be made authoritative’ (Larmore 2013, p.292, his emphasis). Nor indeed is thinking about justice as a ‘purely moral ideal’ mistaken. Consideration of who ideally is owed what, regardless of issues of legitimate coercion, is an important part of moral philosophy. What transforms it into political philosophy, for Larmore, is explicit explanation of the conditions under which moral ideals can be legitimately enforced (Larmore 2013, p.295). That is, the moral questions are viewed as interacting with paradigmatically political questions. Take also Adam Swift’s (2008) defence of ‘pure, context-free philosophical analysis’ of concepts such as justice. This, he says, has a crucial role in clarifying the values involved, their relations and relative weight, so as to inform the evaluation of options whose feasibility and methods of realisation are to be determined by the social sciences (pp.369ff). In Larmore’s terms the philosophical component of this division of labour looks like (non-political) moral philosophy. It might be interpreted as pure political moralism: philosophers analyse values as they are ‘in themselves’ and then social scientists determine if and how they can be realized in a given concrete political situation. Politics then looks like applied moral philosophy.

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But, as Swift points out, one can take the analysis of ‘fundamental’ principles of justice to be logically independent of issues of ‘feasibility’ and also think that normative theorising in the light of those principles should be ‘integrated with an appreciation of the empirical realities of one’s own society’ (p.371). This latter also informs ‘what ought to be done’, not simply the analyses and principles arrived at in de-contextualised abstraction. Thus even someone who emphasises the role of political philosophy as contextfree analysis need not think that the way to go is to formulate abstract principles and then ‘apply’ them to political reality regardless of the extent to which the latter matches the idealizing assumptions (compliance, ideal rationality and so on) employed in the former. Swift’s division of labour between abstract philosophising and empirical investigation may be drawn too sharply to be fully convincing. Still, the overall enterprise encompassing that division of labour embodies the belief that, in reality, the moral and political are intertwined. This is the point I want to emphasise. Notice two things about it. Firstly, it is not merely a matter of stipulative definitions of the moral and the political (or of political, as against moral, philosophy). We don’t want to reduce politics to morality understood as an account of normative relations minus any considerations of power, coercion and so on. Nor do we want to reduce morality to politics understood as power relations minus any moral considerations. The moral and political are intertwined, each informing the other without being fully reducible to it. Secondly, purity is an important issue here. Consider again strong versus weak forms of the claim that politics is autonomous. SPR sees politics as altogether autonomous from morality, suggesting a picture of separation rather than intertwining. It posits a cleavage between ethics and politics by defining morality as independent from (even if not normatively prior to) politics no less than does the putative pure moralist. The weaker version of realism remains consistent with the intertwining of ethics and politics whereas the strong form serves this badly and obscures it. My larger point though, to which I will return shortly, is that there is a parallel between the latter and the strongest form of Anthropocene advocacy, which, I argue, does not well serve the non-reductive intertwining of humanity (society, culture) and nonhuman nature.

Strawman political moralism Notice also that insofar as political realism presents the strongest form of moralism as a mainstream view in political philosophy it sets up a strawman. The picture of purely moralistic political philosophy is unconvincing.4 For example, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, whose views and methods have done much to shape Anglophone political philosophy since the 1970s, might be supposed to count as archmoralists, but neither of them does define a purely ethical standpoint entirely prior to any characteristically political considerations. One might argue that politics enters the starting points of their theories in the wrong way – say as something to be finally ‘fixed’ through a universalised normative framework that arbitrarily

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prioritises particular moral values. Nevertheless, political considerations are still there. Nozick’s infamous opening declaration in Anarchy, State and Utopia looks both deeply ethical and deeply political: ‘Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, that state and its officials may do’ (Nozick 1974, p. ix). It might be deeply mistaken too of course; but this is hardly because it posits a ‘purely ethical’ perspective, entirely divorced from issues of political power and legitimacy, and then applies that to politics. If it is mistaken then this is perhaps partly because both its moral and political content are too ahistorical, abstracted too far from any actual intertwining of the ethical and political. At least in ‘political’ liberal mode Rawls is less vulnerable to the charge of ahistorical universalism because he emphasises the historical contingency of his central commitments, as in his claim that centuries of political experience, especially of religious conflict and disagreement, make his ‘non-comprehensive’ conception of justice appropriate for modern liberal democracies, and capable of stability through time (Rawls 1996). His earlier work lacked that ‘political’ focus. Even so its guiding notions (including the ‘basic structure’ of interlocking social institutions considered as a structure of force that enables or constrains life chances) are not purely ethical notions lacking contact with political reality. Rawlsian political philosophy may well be vulnerable to other realist objections, for example in giving justice permanent priority and in being insufficiently aware of its own potentially ideological status. Perhaps it is indeed excessively moralistic. But the picture of Rawls as a philosopher who first works out a moral theory independently of any political considerations and only then turns to politics as the field of application of that theory, is a strawman.

Strong Anthropocene advocacy What has any of this to do with the Anthropocene? In my view there are interesting parallels, both in terms of matters of autonomy and the setting up of strawmen. Advocates of the Anthropocene idea claim that the scale, complexity and ubiquity of the anthropogenic impacts on terrestrial nonhuman nature are such that we should take ourselves to be living in a new geological era – the Anthropocene. Moreover, this means that insofar as environmental thought and practice are underpinned by respect for or positive valuation of nonhuman nature taken to be autonomous from humanity then it needs to be re-thought. There is something in this, of course; just as there is in political realism. Everywhere on Earth is affected by human activity, such that our environmental situation is one of profound ‘socio-nature entanglement’ (Arias-Maldonado 2015). However, the degree of anthropogenic impact and the extent of the resulting human/nonhuman entanglement might be taken to negate the autonomy of nonhuman nature more or less completely as a defensible, or even intelligible, element of environmental concern. As in the case of political realism I will take the

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strongest or purest form of Anthropocene advocacy, which denies nonhuman autonomy altogether, to define the ideal end of a dimension. ‘Strong Anthropocene advocacy’ (SAA) approaches this. At the opposite end of the dimension is belief in the full autonomy of nonhuman (in the guise of ‘pure wilderness’, for example). There are important differences between the realism/moralism debate and debates about the Anthropocene, of course, including regarding issues of autonomy. Where SPR stresses the autonomy of the political from the moral, the strongest SAA denies the autonomy of nature from humanity. But underlying this difference there is an important shared commitment. Neither has any truck with impure, relative or qualified autonomy: autonomy is pure or it is nothing.5 As with SPR, I am not committed to claiming that anyone holds SAA in a fully unqualified form, though here more seem to come close, perhaps because of earlier groundclearing by constructionist nature scepticism and the ‘end of nature’ debate6. Thus, according to ecologist and Anthropocene advocate Erle Ellis, ‘[f]rom a philosophical point of view, nature is now human nature; there is no more wild nature to be found, just ecosystems in different states of human interaction, differing in wildness and humanness’ (Ellis 2011a, p.1027). Assuming that ‘human nature’ here is intended as a contrast to nonhuman nature, the first part of this statement conforms to unqualified SAA and the second part then qualifies it somewhat. There are of course very strong grounds for keeping relatively autonomous nonhuman nature in view. Certainly, concern for (relatively) nonhuman nature, and associated environmental ideas and practices do not require us to deny that the protection of remaining relatively wild nature and the protection of human interests are themselves profoundly entangled. Consider this principle: if x and y are entangled, and the preservation of the entanglement is important, then so is the preservation of both x and y also important, even though being wrapped up together in a complex entanglement neither x nor y are pure versions of themselves. Preservation of the intertwining of nonhuman nature and humanity is important; at least because of the dependence of humanity on the nonhuman elements of the entanglement. Therefore, the preservation of the (relatively) nonhuman nature component of the entanglement is also important. But now one might be tempted to put all the weight on the fact of humanity’s dependence here as a purely anthropocentric agenda-setting thought: forget the preservation of (relatively) nonhuman nature as a traditional goal in its own right and think instead of managing the environment in a mode at least closely approaching SAA, with environmental imperatives reduced to that of building a sustainable human(ised) nature: ‘We most certainly can create a better Anthropocene… The first step will be in our own minds. The Holocene is gone. In the Anthropocene we are the creators, engineers and permanent global stewards of a sustainable human nature’ (Ellis 2011b). Here we see a parallel with SPR as insufficiently sensitive to a non-reductive picture of the intertwining of x and y: in the environmental case the aim to reduce all environmental imperatives to anthropocentric imperatives focused on retaining

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nature’s instrumental importance to humanity. Here sensitivity is badly served by a perspective that takes itself to be ‘realistic’ and yet is, to a significant extent, predicated on knocking down a strawman so as to present itself as the only real option, a matter simply of facts it would be irrational to deny and to which conformity is required.

Anthropocene advocacy and strawman environmentalism For associated with stronger forms of Anthropocene advocacy is an apparently paradigm-shifting programme of environmentalism. Some of those most enthusiastic about the Anthropocene idea have commitments, well summarised by Piers Stephens in a review of a recent collection of papers by opponents of SAA (Wuerthner et al 2014). Such Anthropocene advocates:7 attack traditional environmentalists as woolly-minded misanthropic Romantics obsessed with mythically pure wilderness, embrace the idea of humans as de facto planetary managers, repudiate the notion of nature’s fragility, support anthropocentrism and economic growth, and advocate partnerships with corporate capitalist institutions to maintain ecosystem services and human-managed landscapes so as to serve human aspirations. (Stephens 2016, p.121) Some of these commitments pertain to the issue of ideology, to which I return below. For now, the point is that insofar as SAA is constituted by critique of ‘traditional environmentalism’ premised on concern for pure nonhuman nature (rather than, or as well as, constituted by a denial of nonhuman autonomy), then it is based on knocking down a strawman. I should emphasise again that not everyone caught up in the Anthropocene discourse holds these views and so counts as committed to SAA so constituted.8 My concern here is with parallels between such SAA and SPR’s claim that political moralism misunderstands the real character of the political. For SAA, when partly constituted by this critique of traditional environmentalism, such environmentalism is out of touch with the anthropogenic character of our real environmental situation. As the political moralist polishes her moral standpoint in the hope that real politics will somehow conform to it, so the ethical environmentalist – the respecter and conserver of nature - polishes her idea of pure wilderness or the like, as an external source of value free of human influence that is supposed to shape environmental practice. Yet this is hopeless: there is no such thing in the Anthropocene. It is pointless and counterproductive then to try to respect or conserve it.9 However, as Stephens goes on to say, ‘…it is hard to deny that [such] attacks on traditional environmentalism have overwhelmingly operated by setting up more strawmen than an international scarecrow-making contest’ (p.122). Indeed, the picture of traditional environmentalism as committed to the notion of pure nature (lacking any interference by or entanglement with the human) is no

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less of a strawman than that of the pure political moralist. The moralistic environmentalist who takes untouched wilderness as something to be saved in its pure state and regarded as a fully autonomous source of normative imperatives with which to shape human endeavours is a very rare animal.10 Wilderness conservation is consistent with a view of wilderness and nonhuman nature generally as a matter of degree, and of humanity and nonhuman nature as intertwined within the earthly environment. Things can be strongly affected by human action and still be significantly autonomous from humanity. Although talk of our environmental situation as one of ‘socio-natural entanglements’ seems right, the picture of traditional environmental preoccupations with respecting nature, wilderness conservation and so on as inconsistent with this is at least largely mistaken. This point is worth emphasising, even to the extent of hammering it home. Here are some grounds for it (see also Fremaux, this volume): The totemic 1964 U.S. Wilderness Act does not define wilderness as untouched nature. Thus: ‘[t]he authors of the Wilderness Act wisely recognised that, even in 1964, there were no remaining landscapes that had completely escaped the imprint of humanity… That’s why they defined wilderness as “generally appearing to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable”.’ (Wolke 2014, p.199, his emphasis) Similarly, David Johns says: [t]he U.S. Wilderness Act… does not use the term pristine but instead deliberately uses the term untrammelled, a term very close to the original meaning of wildlands as undomesticated or self-willed land but not necessarily pristine. Many conservation groups… are not concerned with purity, any more than civil libertarians cease defending the U.S. Bill of Rights just because they are routinely ignored by governments. (Johns 2014, pp.34–5, his emphasis) Nor was Aldo Leopold, hero of ‘traditional’ conservationism, concerned with pure untouched wilderness (Meine 2014, p.47). More recently environmental philosophers have discussed how the ‘nonhumanity’ or ‘autonomy’ of wilderness and nonhuman nature in general is both greatly important and a matter of degree.11 Indeed, Ned Hettinger has argued, plausibly enough, that the more nature is humanised the more precious is the remaining relatively autonomous nature (Hettinger 2014, p.178). This is an obvious position available to ‘traditional’ environmental ethicists committed to respecting relatively autonomous nature in the context of the comprehensive anthropogenic impacts associated with the Anthropocene. Rejecting that position requires rejecting that commitment. But on what grounds should that commitment be rejected? Obviously, particular accounts of what it is (that makes it right) to

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respect relatively autonomous nonhuman nature vary in plausibility, as do accounts of respect for humanity. I am referring to grounds for ruling out the very idea of such nature’s ethical significance in general. Are they a matter simply of a given, prior commitment to unqualified ethical anthropocentrism with which to structure environmental decision-making; a piece of pure anthropocentric moralism shielded by repeated reference to how the Anthropocene dramatically demonstrates the untenability of its supposed rival: the strawman pure wilderness fanatic? This raises the matter of SAA as ideology, to which I return shortly. Before that though it might be argued that the Anthropocene brings reasons to reject traditional environmentalism that don’t involve recourse to strawmen. I will briefly consider two such possible reasons. Firstly, it might be claimed that the complexity and scale of anthropogenic impacts, such as those involved in climate change, make traditional environmental goals unfeasible even if not taken to be motivated by concern for pure nature. Things are so far gone, now that we are in the Anthropocene, that traditional preservationist and conservationist goals are practically equivalent to attempts to restore or preserve untouched nature, even if these are not their theoretical or declared motivations. This is mistaken, at least as a universalised claim. Notice, for example, that the complex entanglement of humanity with nonhuman entities and processes does not rule out what Ned Hettinger calls ‘the potential for humanization to flush out of human-impacted natural systems and the real possibility for greater degrees of naturalness to return’ (Hettinger 2014, p.179). Projects of restoration, rewilding or ‘just letting naturalness come back on its own’ need not involve an impossible attempt to ‘return’ things to ‘some original baseline state or trajectory’ before any human involvement (ibid.). We might add that the impossibility of restoring an ecosystem (E) to its earlier state, because of anthropogenic climate change, say, does not preclude ‘restoring nature’ there. To think it does is to confuse a type (nature) with an occurrence of that type (E). Anthropogenic impacts might rule out the restoration of (E), yet not the encouragement of another, relatively wild, ecosystem (F). Restoration is itself a matter of degree, whether focused on 1) restoring overall naturalness, or 2) restoring the historical occurrence of naturalness, as embodied in (E). Depending on the situation 2) might not be possible at all; but this would not show that 1) is impossible, even if the ecosystems involved are more or less ‘novel’ (compare Baker, this volume).12 Secondly, it might be argued that decisions to pursue such projects (or not) are human management decisions, and not only does the Anthropocene make plain that we are now in a new era of de facto human management of terrestrial ‘nature’, but de facto human management negates nonhuman autonomy by definition. This argument is also mistaken. Consider a couple of examples. If having held you captive in my cellar for a decade I come to my senses and free you, that it is my decision to release you and me who removes the chains and unlocks the door does not mean that upon release you remain no less subject to my will than before. On the contrary, you now have significantly more autonomy (with respect to me), even supposing you will always remain profoundly affected by the experience and

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will never be the person you would have been had it never happened. Similarly, there may be overwhelmingly powerful reasons not to abandon a particular city and ‘let nature take its course’ there. But if the decision is made to do that then the following considerations do nothing to preclude a significant increase in wildness: the decision is a human decision; there is a managed re-location of the human population and introduction of some (relatively) wild species; what develops there will still be significantly affected by human activity elsewhere; there can be no ‘reversion’ (even on geological timescales) to the state that would have obtained had there never been a human presence there at all. Thus de facto human management does not preclude concern for (relatively) nonhuman nature, and associated conservation and restoration of wilderness ideas and policies.

Strong Anthropocene advocacy and ideology Let us now consider matters of ideology and the realist complaint that moralistic political philosophy is insufficiently aware of its own ideological status; how its prized values might embody historical power relations, rather than intuitions of a morality prior to politics. ‘Crystallised power can pass itself off as morality and so even as a critique of power’, as Rossi and Sleat put it (2014, p.692). The suspicion is that putatively independent, ‘pure’ moral perspectives may really be politics by underhand means: concerns of the powerful presented as the simple, normatively fundamental truth or deliverance of pure reason. Clearly, though, this ideology critique can be a dangerously double-edged sword, especially when deployed in a context populated with strawmen. Moralist political philosophy may often be ideological but, insofar as SPR is constituted by opposition to pure moralism (i.e. by opposition to what is mostly a strawman) it risks the ideology charge too. This is because equating moral critique of political conditions and actions with an indefensibly pure, yet rarely instantiated, political moralism is itself a way of shielding the powerful from such critique. Pure political moralism and SPR, defined now in terms of setting up such moralism as a (strawman) ubiquitous presence, rather than (or as well as) in terms of declaring politics to be fully autonomous from morality, are in the same boat regarding ideology. In this respect they are made for each other. This situation is paralleled in the Anthropocene discourse. It might be thought that traditional environmentalism is ideological. Perhaps some is, and doubtless some wilderness conservation projects have merited the criticism that they represent a form of cultural imperialism by the rich and powerful (see e.g. Guha 1989). But insofar as SAA is constituted by opposition to pure wilderness advocacy it too risks the ideology charge. The view of traditional environmentalism as typically committed to imposing pure-nature-loving ways, based on the unexamined value commitments of the powerful, is wide of the mark (see Meine 2014, pp.51–2). Take for example the following principles of the Earth Charter quoted by ecologist Brendan Mackey:

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(1a) Recognise that all beings are interdependent and every form of life has value regardless of its worth to human beings; (16f) Recognise that peace is the wholeness created by right relationships with oneself, other persons, other cultures, other life, Earth and the larger whole of which all are a part. (Mackey 2014, p.134) It is difficult to interpret these principles as the interests of the powerful dressed up as moral truths. The perspective they embody doesn’t seem all that powerful. Given also that its advocates recognise a range of important values (including political legitimacy and anthropocentric environmental values), it seems better interpreted as intended to inform the ethical dimensions of ethical/political entanglements as these relate to nature/human entanglements.13 The fundamental point here is that even if the traditional environmental ethical input can be or has sometimes been ideological camouflage for imperialism, say, SAA is also vulnerable to the ideology critique insofar as it is constituted by opposition to strawman wilderness fanaticism. Equating respect for nature ‘for its own sake’ as an important value consideration with a preoccupation with pure wilderness is a way of embedding a purely anthropocentric moralism that serves the interests of the powerful and embeds domination. It suggests that environmental politics is to conform to an unqualified anthropocentrism as the simple normatively fundamental truth asserted in the name of scientific reason. Alternatives are put out of play through association with the ‘irrelevant’ strawman pure wilderness advocate. It is difficult not to see this as ‘crystallised power passing itself off as morality and so even as a critique of power’, where the ‘morality’ is what Meine calls the ‘dominant assumption of human social and economic development that humans are the sole source of meaning and value in the universe and that … nature exist[s] to be exploited for maximum individual and corporate economic development’ (Meine 2014, p.521 my emphasis). Pure wilderness advocacy (even if taken to ride roughshod over indigenous peoples’ relationship to nature in the interests of colonial domination) and the strongest SAA, understood in terms of opposition to ubiquitous (strawman) wilderness fanaticism, are in the same boat regarding ideology. In this respect they too are made for one another. Thus Anthropocene advocacy needs to distance itself from such ideological moralism if it is to play a constructive role in the ethical/political entanglement that is the environmental cause. But there is a further, related, problem here. Anthropocene advocacy is in a difficult position conceptually if the Anthropocene is taken to have normative significance over and above a technical ‘value free’ revision of a natural scientific classification. If it designates a reality wider than (or not already reduced to) the geological, biological and ecological bases of the proposal to reclassify the current age, then what the Anthropocene designates is largely an exercise in power, and so is indeed keyed to the political element in the ethics/ politics entanglement. As Geuss says, to think in terms of that element is to think

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largely ‘about agency, power and interests and the relations amongst these’ (2008, p.25), and such thinking can be organised around an expanded version of Lenin’s ‘who whom’ question: who is doing what to whom for whose benefit (pp.22ff). But the abstract term ‘Anthropocene’ smooths over these questions, presenting power as exercised by unified Anthropos – ‘Mankind’ – as such (Malm & Hornberg 2014); and, for ideologically moralistic forms of SAA, exercised for the benefit of that same abstraction. This obscures the actual inequalities in power of different groups and classes of humans, all of whom are equally subsumed under the Anthropocene enterprise. If the Anthropocene is indeed more than simply a classificatory label and denotes agency, then we might say that the Anthropocene is something that is ‘being done’. This can be understood in different ways. In one sense, presumably, the Anthropocene is ‘being done’ by some humans to nature and via that to themselves and to other humans. For whose benefit? This is unclear. A full answer would need to step down from these abstractions – Humanity, Nature – and refer to particular groups of relatively powerful and powerless people, and also to concrete populations, processes and systems that are relatively nonhuman. But then insofar as it is invoked within a normative political discourse, as opposed to merely naming a technical revision within a narrowly scientific discourse, the Anthropocene looks like a highly suspicious notion precisely because it serves to smooth away those differences in power and obscures those questions. Of course, it is open to those who talk of the Anthropocene to emphasise that the notion is not intended to smooth away those differences or imply that all of humanity is equally responsible for the situation it portrays or equally vulnerable to the resulting environmental dangers. If it is taken that way, then it is being misinterpreted or misused (see e.g. Angus 2016, pp. 224ff).14 But then why should it be retained through the transition from the technical scientific domain to the political domain? Given the risk of smoothing away differences in power and obscuring issues pertinent to ideology it seems better to replace it during that transition either with talk of more specific anthropogenic environmental crises or with one of the alternatives suggested in the critical literature on the Anthropocene (such as ‘Capitalocene’ or ‘Econocene’; see, for example, Baskin 2015). At the very least talk of the Anthropocene within normative political contexts needs to be careful not to slide into what we might think of as another sense in which the Anthropocene is (or could be) ‘being done’. In this sense, ‘doing the Anthropocene’ is a matter of adopting very strong forms of SAA constituted by denial of the autonomy of nonhuman nature and/or critique of strawman pure wilderness fanaticism. Here, ‘doing the Anthropocene’ amounts to the ideological boosting of a certain anthropocentric and techno-managerial socioeconomic picture for which it is only too convenient that traditional environmentalism be muscled out of the way, rather than renewed in the light of developing and darkening environmental circumstances.

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Notes 1 See especially Rossi & Sleat (2014). For discussion of further realist themes, see Galston (2010), 2 I take these to be synonymous for the purposes of this chapter. 3 Raymond Geuss sometimes seems to come close, for example when he excludes all but ‘anodyne’ ethics from politics (Geuss 2008). 4 Perhaps G. A. Cohen’s (2009) defence of ‘fact-independent’ principles is a counterexample here. In which case realist criticism of him as a pure moralist doesn’t set him up as a strawman. See Larmore for critical discussion of Cohen’s position. 5 One wonders then how autonomy is supposed to apply in the case of persons, where, if it has any application at all, it must be in a relational form dependent on an array of interpersonal and institutional conditions. See Heyd (2005, p.5). 6 See McKibben (1990) for the end of nature; for nature scepticism see for example Vogel (2002). 7 Also known as ‘neo-greens’, ‘pragmatic environmentalists’, ‘new conservationists’, ‘Anthropocene boosters’, ‘postmodern greens’ (see Butler 2014, p.x). There are variations between them, but they include, for example, Ellis (2011a, 2011b), Norhaus & Shellenberger (2007), and others associated with the Breakthrough Institute and journal. 8 For example, Dale Jamieson refers to the Anthropocene to underscore the ways our environmental situation calls for a new ethic, but also argues that ‘respect for nature’ ought to be a virtue of such an ethic (Jamieson 2014, pp.188ff). 9 See for example, Ellis (2011a, p.1027): ‘Environmentalist traditions have long called for a halt to human interference in ecology and the Earth system. In the Anthropocene the anthropogenic biosphere is permanent… making the call to avoid human interference in the biosphere irrelevant’ (Ellis 2011a, p.1027). 10 Perhaps not completely absent. For example, some forms of primitivism might be interpreted this way, as might positions, such as Peter Reed’s (1989) ‘Man Apart’ account, that express an excessively strong sense of nature’s otherness. 11 For example, Heyd (2005), Hailwood (2015). 12 See also Hettinger’s (2012) arguments against mutually exclusive conceptions of restoration and preservation. Both can be called for, though restoration should not be thought of as an ideal or paradigm of human-nature relations. Rather it is sometimes a ‘fundamentally regrettable’ necessity given the ‘past abuse of nature’ (Hettinger 2012, p.41). 13 The issue here is not simply whether a given doctrine can be used to serve the interests of the powerful (presumably many, if not all, benign doctrines can be used that way, against the intentions behind them), but whether those committed to them are aware of the possibility and locate the doctrine in a framework of moral and political values that militate against, for example, crass universalisation and imposition regardless of variations in local, concrete cultural, political – and environmental – conditions. The same applies to conceptions of human rights and democracy, for example. 14 Compare note 13 above.

References Angus, I. (2016). Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System. New York: Monthly Review Press. Arias-Maldonado, M. (2015). Environment & Society. Socionatural Relations in the Anthropocene. Heidelberg: Springer. Baskin, J. (2015). ‘Paradigm dressed as epoch: the ideology of the Anthropocene.’ Environmental Values 24(1), 9–29. Butler, T. (2014). ‘Lives not our own.’ In: Wuerthner et al 2014 (eds.), ix–xv.

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Cohen, G. A. (2009) Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ellis, E. C. (2011a). ‘Anthropogenic transformation of the terrestrial biosphere.’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 369, 1010–1035. Ellis, E. C. (2011b). ‘A world of our making.’ New Scientist 210(2816), 26–27. Galston, W. (2010). ‘Realism in political theory.’ European Journal of Political Theory 9(4), 385–411. Geuss, R. (2008). Philosophy and Real Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Guha, R. (1989). ‘Radical environmentalism and wilderness preservation: a third world critique.’ Environmental Ethics 11(1), 71–83. Hailwood, S. (2015). Alienation and Nature in Environmental Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hettinger, N. (2012). ‘Nature restoration as a paradigm for the human relationship with nature.’ In: Thompson, A., & Bendik-Keymer, J. (eds), Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 27–46. Hettinger, N. (2014). ‘Valuing naturalness in the “Anthropocene”: now more than ever.’ In: Wuerthner et al 2014 (eds), 174–179. Heyd, T. (ed.) (2005). Recognizing the Autonomy of Nature, Theory and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press. Jamieson, D. (2014). Reason in a Dark Time: why the Struggle against Climate Change Failed and what it Means for our Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johns, D. (2014). ‘With friends like these, wilderness and biodiversity do not need enemies.’ In: Wuerthner et al 2014 (eds), 31–44. Larmore, C. (2013). ‘What is political philosophy?’ Journal of Moral Philosophy 10, 276–306. Mackey, B. (2014). ‘The future of conservation: an Australian perspective.” In: Wuerthner et al 2014 (eds), 126–136. Malm, A. & Hornborg, A. (2014). ‘The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative.’ The Anthropocene Review 1(1), 62–69. McKibben, W. (1990 [1989]). The End of Nature. London: Viking. Meine, C. (2014). ‘What’s so new about the “New Conservation”?’ In: Wuerthner et al 2014 (eds), 45–54. Nordhaus, T. & Shellenberger, M. (2007). Break Through. From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Rawls, J. (1996). Political Liberalism. 2nd Edition. New York: Columbia University Press. Rossi, E. & Sleat, M. (2014). ‘Realism in normative political theory.’ Philosophy Compass 9 (10), 689–701. Reed, P. (1989). ‘Man apart: an alternative to the self-realization approach. ’Environmental Ethics 11, 53–69. Stephens, P.H.G. (2016). ‘Review of Keeping the Wild.’ Environmental Values 25(1), 121– 123. Swift, A. (2008). ‘The value of philosophy in nonideal circumstances.’ Social Theory and Practice, 34(3), 363–389. Vogel, S. (2002). ‘Environmental philosophy after the end of nature’. Environmental Ethics 24 (1), 23–39. Wuerthner, G., Crist, E. & Butler, T. (eds.) (2014). Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of the Earth. Washington DC: Island Press. Williams, B. (2005). In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument. (G. Hawthorn, (ed.)) Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wolke, H. (2014). ‘Wilderness, what and why’. In: Wuerthner et al 2014 (eds), 197–204.

9 TOWARDS A GOOD ANTHROPOCENE? Manuel Arias-Maldonado

Can there be any such thing as a “good” Anthropocene? Is it reasonable to claim that the new geological age might possess some positive features? Or rather, in view of the menacing features exhibited by the planetary alteration the concept tries to convey, is the Anthropocene inescapably “bad”? If so, should we only talk of it in negative, threatening terms, while perhaps trying to minimize its impact on humanity, so that a not-so-bad Anthropocene is the best outcome we can aim for? Or can we think of representing the Anthropocene in a more ambiguous fashion, as encompassing both good and bad things, of which the former are to be pursued and the latter avoided? On the other hand, is there even a way to foster social change without attaching a positive quality to the socionatural future? These are the kind of questions that spring up when the idea of a good Anthropocene is on the table. It cannot be otherwise: the concept of the Anthropocene is in itself as ambitious as it is ambiguous, and the more so in relation to normative concerns. Of course, a precondition for discussing the good life or the good society is that both life and society are possible. If the planet becomes uninhabitable, for instance due to a huge increase in global temperatures, then any talk of a good Anthropocene is certainly absurd, even self-delusional. Even if habitability is merely compromised by climate change or any other major ecological disruption, designing a good Anthropocene still involves the ability to influence planetary conditions or being able to adapt to them, i.e. the ability to choose one future among many. A precondition for the debate about the good Anthropocene, therefore, is human agency. Yet such agency is denied by those thinkers who emphasize the likelihood of a planetary collapse. Provided that enough human agency exists, a different problem comes up, namely the identification of the good Anthropocene with a certain kind of social arrangement wherein an intense use of technology—in the context of an extended liberal-capitalism—is the main tool for achieving sustainability. This pathway,

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advocated by so-called ecomodernists, is rejected by critics who equate capitalism with ecological degradation and unsustainability: nothing good is found in this “good” Anthropocene (see Moore 2015). Such rejection, in turn, can be grounded either on the unsustainability of this proposal or in the undesirability of the future that it portrays. These are separate considerations, and a meaningful conversation about the good Anthropocene can only take place if they are carefully distinguished. A different matter is whether the idea of the good Anthropocene must be necessarily associated with the ecomodernist vision. In this chapter, the idea of the “good Anthropocene” will be examined and discussed. Where does it come from, what is its meaning, how useful can it be in the search for a sustainable Anthropocene? To answer these questions, the chapter will be structured as follows. Firstly, a brief history of the concept will be presented, together with a critical discussion of the ecomodernist view that has come to be identified with the good Anthropocene notion. Secondly, an attempt to locate the good and the bad in the Anthropocene is offered, linked to a genealogical investigation into the origins of the planetary transformations embodied in the concept. This should facilitate, thirdly, a reframing of the good Anthropocene, so that it is separated from the ecomodernist vision and presented not only as sustainable but also as the result of a collective reflection about the way in which socionatural relations should be organized. To this end, the language of hope is defended as more becoming than the language of planetary doom, which runs the risk of perpetuating the mistakes of classical environmentalism and its frugal ecotopias.

The trouble with ecomodernism. So far, the conversation about the good Anthropocene has been mainly framed as an opposition between the rosy views presented by ecomodernists and the response offered by their critics, who see the new geological epoch as dramatically changing the way in which environmental sustainability can be framed. Thus the latter suggest that the problems created by modernity cannot be solved by using the tools provided by modernity. To a great extent, this is a continuation of war by other means: the war waged by radical environmentalism against ecomodernist deviationism. To such end, an emphasis on the dangerousness of the Anthropocene, mainly represented by climate change, is intended to suggest that this time really is different, and a thorough reorganization of socionatural relations must be implemented if the human species is to survive on a radically altered planet. However, there are reasons to question whether this is the best way to conduct this debate or even frame this complex issue. As Simon Dalby (2016) has explained, the conventional discussion about the good Anthropocene began—after Earl Ellis (2011) had used the term for the first time in a paper published in the ecomodernist-friendly Breakthrough Journal—when Andrew Revkin commented on the subject in his blog at the New York Times. On June 2014, he posted an entry about the paths to a good Anthropocene where he quite reasonably emphasized that values determines choices (Revkin 2014a),

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triggering a response from Clive Hamilton (2014) that in turn was answered by Revkin (2014b). Essentially, Hamilton suggests that although Revkin does not deny the science behind the Anthropocene, he reframes it in a way that allows him to speak of a “good” Anthropocene. In other words, Revkin chooses to see an opportunity where Hamilton can only see a disaster. In Dalby’s phrasing: Thus, the moral case against Revkin here is in terms of a geopolitical myopia that facilitates wishful thinking that has very obvious political consequences because it leads away from a priority on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and hence slowing the speed of transformation of the planet. (Dalby 2016: p. 38) The ecomodernist stance is not just self-delusional but outright dangerous and hence irresponsible, since pretending that bad can turn into good may prevent us from achieving a shift from very bad to less bad. During a dialogue that took place at The Breakthrough Institute (2015) on a later date, Hamilton pursued this argument by saying that the ecomodernist appeal to a good Anthropocene breeds complacency and masks the negative impacts we are currently experiencing, playing down the fact that Holocene conditions are gone forever. Worse still, the concept reproduces the vices of modernity and ends up being a theodicy founded on a belief in the ultimate benevolence of the whole, a goodness that in the end transcends and defeats the structural obstacles, sufferings, and moral lapses that seem to threaten it. (Hamilton 2015, p. 234) Although this is a powerful formulation, there is something of a straw man here. The ecomodernist narrative might indeed offer an optimistic picture of the socionatural future, but that does not necessarily constitute a teleology, much less a theodicy. It is one thing to claim that human transformative powers can, via technological innovation and effective governance, lead us to a good Anthropocene— understood as a sustainable future where humanity adapts to the new planetary conditions—and quite another to present this trajectory as a historical necessity or something that can be materialized without collective efforts or political mobilization. Ecomodernists, after all, are making a call to action. If we take the Ecomodernist Manifesto (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015) as a guide, we can see the outlines of the “new modernity” that Bruno Latour (2012) has called for: an alternative to modernity that takes the opportunity created by the Anthropocene to develop itself. For ecomodernists, at least in the version presented in the Manifesto, the key to a good Anthropocene lies in technological innovation: technology is put into service of a less consumption-based and destructive socionatural relation. Peter Sloterdijk (2017) has expressed a similar belief, suggesting that human technology has not yet had its last word. On this view, there is no reason for despair—provided that socionatural relations are taken seriously and

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human ingenuity is applied to solve the problems that emerge when natural and social systems become coupled. If that is done, an ecologically sustainable version of liberal-capitalism will be at hand, unless major planetary shifts neutralize our political and economic categories and turn us into witnesses of our own extinction. What is so wrong in the ecomodernist vision? A first concern regards its technical viability. Hamilton, as we have seen, believes that it does not take seriously enough the dangerousness of the planet’s trajectory. Such dangerousness has been aptly captured by Latour (2017), no matter his ecomodernist leanings, by pointing out how the goddess Gaia was not just a maternal deity but also a revengeful and harmful goddess better not to be awakened. On her part, Fremaux (this volume) points out that the ecomodernist promise has been unfulfilled so many times that it is no longer credible. She accuses ecomodernists of fostering the capitalist exploitation of the earth instead of responding to the increasingly obvious vulnerability of the human species in the face of unpredictable natural phenomena. Despite it being on its face a politics for sustainability, then, the ecomodernist view might be taken as in reality an expression of those “discourses of simulation” that help to organise liberal societies’ journey towards ever more social inequality and ecological destruction (Blühdorn 2007, 2017). Self-deception would then be the ecomodernist hallmark, as their “good Anthropocene” fails to acknowledge how power relations constitute and explains planetary unsustainability. Ecomodernism thus represents one of the two typical responses to the planetary threat, namely a “passive nihilism” that, according to William Connolly: do not invest in alternative paths of meaning, responsibility and activism partly because stubborn residues within and between them resist those investments and partly because they sense how disruptive political efforts would be to transform the institutions expressing them. (Connolly 2017, p. 166) Secondly, though, there is a moral argument concerning the disappearance of the non-human world in the ecomodernist discourse, at least in view of its critics. Fremaux (this volume), claims that the Anthropocene reinforces the reification of nature that has been at the center of the modern project from the outset—an intellectual operation that has been instrumental to human domination of other species and the larger non-human world. If nature is dead, it is because it has been killed. The ecomodernist version of the Anthropocene helps to conceal this crime. What is to celebrate, then, in the “good Anthropocene” as presented by ecomodernism? It would be just another step in the “denial of nature” (Vetlesen 2015) that puts the experience of the nonhuman world farther and farther from us. There is a good deal of misrepresentation at play here. The ecomodernist position is presented under the worst possible light, as involving a deliberate continuation of human exploitation, social inequality, natural destruction and ecological unsustainability. Theirs would then be a response to the Anthropocene that completely fails to understand the very lessons of the Anthropocene. Yet a less biased

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view of what ecomodernists actually say does not easily correspond to this caricature. Granted, there is technology and liberalism and capitalism in the future they depict -but that does not mean that their good Anthropocene is actually bad. Its goal, to begin with, cannot be said to be inherently wrong if we take the Manifesto’s words as a reference: A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world. Needless to say, those who reject modern technology or liberal democracy or capitalism will reject the ecomodernist vision outright. Their manifesto defends liberal principles such as democracy, tolerance and pluralism both for their own sake and for their instrumental value in bringing about sustainability. Again, this is not a vision that necessarily involves moral obliviousness or the (absurd) choice of unsustainability. As Dalby points out: While the temptation to dismiss ecomodernism as wishful thinking is obvious once a serious political economy analysis is engaged, to do so is to abandon some useful political resources that imagine a future that might be much less disastrous than the present trajectory suggests. (Dalby 2016, p. 45) As for the alleged indifference to the nonhuman world, this is again hard to find. Ecomodernism is, it should be recalled, a vision of sustainability. The manifesto is said to be written “out of deep love and emotional connection to the natural world” and openly embraces “one long-standing environmental ideal, that humanity must shrink its impacts on the environment to make more room for nature”. Modern technologies, in the ecomodernist view, offer the best chance to do so, while the opposite idea, that human societies must become smaller and use technology in a less intensive manner if they are to avoid collapse, is rejected as based on a false technical assumption that is also normatively undesirable. As Erle Ellis has put it, most of us would endorse the ideal of a planet able to “sustain both people and nature, leaving plenty of room for wild creatures to live and thrive in habitats free of human interference” (Ellis 2017). Now that does not sound like someone talking about a “dead nature”. It does express a very modern wish, namely the attempt to control—or at least organize—socionatural relations. But again, that is hardly a bad idea, provided that it is done under the guidance of scientific evidence, and as the result of a decision process informed by public deliberation. After all, what is the alternative to trying to control socionatural interactions? In the end, the trouble with ecomodernism has to do with a clash of value preferences. Disagreements do not concern the sustainability of the ecomodernist path to sustainabiliy, but rather the alleged undesirability of the future that it envisions. That is fair enough. Yet it could also be suggested that it falls to

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ecomodernism’s adversaries to prove that their alternative pathways to a good Anthropocene are plausible—both in terms of political viability and technical sustainability. Distorting the ecomodernist vision is a poor substitute for such reasoning. Unless, that is, the Anthropocene is seen as a planetary threat of such magnitude that it forces human societies to dramatically shrink because there is no alternative to a dismantling of liberal-capitalism if we wish to survive. If this latter position is taken, however, its defenders must themselves demonstrate that there is actually no alternative and persuade the wider public that such is the case. This would be tantamount to erase any trace of the good in the Anthropocene.

The good and the bad in the Anthropocene If the concept of a good Anthropocene is to make sense, then, it requires that human beings have the ability to shape or at least meaningfully influence their future. It means that planetary trajectories can be predicted and managed by humans, as opposed to their being just passive subjects of the Earth’s global transformations. And the Anthropocene indeed speaks to us about a planet where social and natural systems are “coupled”, so that the planetary trajectories are not independent from human actions (see Liu et al. 2007). This is arguably the crux of the problem: if human beings have produced the Anthropocene, can they govern it? If the answer is positive, then talking about a good Anthropocene makes sense. Mike Ellis and Zev Trachtenberg (2013) have addressed this issue by convincingly arguing that the Anthropocene is actually a moral concept that demands moral engagement. The reason is deceptively simple: as the Anthropocene is the result of individual and social choices, the choices we make from now on will have some influence on the shape of the future. To some extent, therefore, we can choose which Anthropocene we are going to live in. If a conscious decision is to be made, a good Anthropocene will surely be preferred to a bad one. A matter of disagreement might be whether human influence can deliver a good Anthropocene or just a better-than-worse Anthropocene. Still, denying that a good Anthropocene can be achieved or pursued depends on the most pessimistic assumptions about the planet’s trajectory and on a continuation or even extension of human passivity or recklessness. The latter is far from certain, as this very book attests: the conversation is taking place. On the other hand, modern environmentalism knows something about gloomy predictions not coming true. However foolish it would be to ignore planetary risks, it is equally irresponsible to take for granted that the current social order must be rapidly dismantled because ecological collapse is just around the corner. Some caution is warranted. A major implication of this view is that the possibility of a good Anthropocene depends heavily on human reflexivity, i.e. on the collective realization that the Holocene has finished or is finishing due to human impacts on planetary systems. This realization leads to the conclusion that human beings must now manage the socionatural entanglement produced by their prolonged and aggressive transformation of the environment. Reflexivity is not enough, but nothing can be done

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without enough of it. Unsurprisingly, Steffen et al. (2007) have suggested that as we become aware of our role as ecological agents at a global level, new responsibilities emerge that make of us the stewards of the Earth system. It is of course debatable whether that moment of self-recognition has been reached. So far, only a minority of people is familiar with the concept of the Anthropocene. Yet climate change, arguably its quintessential phenomenon, is universally recognized albeit not acted upon. It is thus more accurate to refer to an emerging reflexivity or to a reflexivity in the making. It has been suggested that this sudden recognition is a convenient, self-serving yet ultimately misleading account of planetary awareness (Bonneuil and Fressoz 2013, p. viii). After all, humanity is not receiving the first news about its own impact—even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thinkers and scientists, from Buffon to Fourier, had pointed to humans’ dangerously disruptive powers (see Bonneuil 2015, p. 22). By ignoring these antecedents and locating this recognition in the present, we might be de-politicizing the Anthropocene’s long history. Yet we did not know then what we are starting to know now: it is one thing to observe that human societies impact on their environments, especially after industrialization was unleashed, quite another to make sense of such impact and realizing that it has affected natural systems on a planetary scale. Furthermore, the early perspicacity of some individuals cannot be compared to the rising ecological awareness of contemporary societies—all the more since social activity has hugely increased during the last seventy years, in the course of the so-called Great Acceleration. Nevertheless, an interesting question comes up once the genealogy of the Anthropocene is invoked. The latter should be understood in the Nietzschean sense, as research into the true origins of social norms and practices (Nietzsche 1988). It has been argued, in a contemporary reading of the concept, that genealogies reveal the original meaning of some acts or arrangements, by bringing back to us the moment of their “radical contingency”, showing that they are products of choice and therefore can be reversed (Laclau 1990, p. 34). In the case of the Anthropocene, though, a genealogical investigation produces an unexpected outcome, since the distinction between “good” and “bad” origins (Sloterdijk 2010, p. 60) cannot be so easily made. The reason is that a focus on socionatural history demands a careful distinction between contingency and necessity as well as between intentional and non-intentional effects. As it turns out, the Anthropocene is not an intended effect of human actions, but rather the unexpected result of an aggregated impact that had no other purpose than providing for human ends, if often in an unfair or insufficiently equitable way. Humanity might be a geological actor, yet this has not happened in a conscious, deliberate or organized way. Furthermore, human beings do not “decide” whether to adapt to their environment, nor “decide” that theirs is an adaptation that, thanks to cultural transmission and the intense use of technology, leads to a highly transformative—and destructive— presence on Earth. That we are able to realize this now shows that our contemporary awakening to the reality of the Anthropocene makes sense and can be politically meaningful.

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On the other hand, for all the discussion about who exactly is the anthropos of the Anthropocene—a discussion that has rightly pointed out that different social groups hold different responsibilities in the development of those technologies, ideas and institutions that lie at the root of current planetary disruptions (Malm & Hornborg 2014)—does the answer hold any meaning for the planet itself? Ultimately, from a geological viewpoint, it is the human species as a whole that has changed the planet. To make it sustainable in the face of planetary changes, this formidable agency should be conjured again, albeit in a concerted manner: humans should deliberately work together to give shape to a good Anthropocene. But it should be noted that the sustainable Anthropocene is not necessarily the good Anthropocene. And making that distinction is key for reframing the concept. But how can a sustainable Anthropocene not be also a good Anthropocene? It is good, in a way. But sustainability alone is not enough to make the Anthropocene good. This becomes clear when we attempt to define the good and the bad in the Anthropocene, keeping in mind that we are dealing with an ambivalent notion that speaks about both human control and human powerlessness, depending on which aspect of socionatural relations is emphasized. To begin with: the bad in the Anthropocene can be represented by an uninhabitable or at least greatly inhospitable planet—a view mostly grounded on the geological side of the Anthropocene. From a deep time perspective, the human species is a mere anecdote within a dynamic Earth whose systems can react in unexpected and fearful ways. For those who see the Anthropocene in this fashion, any talk about ethics is incongruous: we find ourselves in a situation where conventional moral rules cannot be applied. If a moral language is spoken in relation to the Anthropocene, we run the risk of normalizing it: Talk of ethics render banal a transition that belongs to deep time, one that is literally Earth-shattering. In deep time, there are no ethics. (Hamilton, Bonneuil & Gemenne 2015, p. 8) A bad Anthropocene is thus one where the habitability of the planet is severely threatened and the most we can do is to prepare for it, minimizing our ecological footprint and adapting as best as possible to future massive disruptions. From this perspective, the very idea of a good Anthropocene is thus ultimately delusional. For its part, the good in the Anthropocene seems harder to pin down. Avoiding a catastrophic fate for the species would certainly be positive. But this can hardly give shape to a good Anthropocene of the kind discussed in this chapter. And the same goes for sustainability, which might be achieved in the absence of any serious discussion about the way in which socionatural relations should be re-organized. In the end, the good Anthropocene is the result of both preventing the worst and aiming for the best: avoiding planetary collapse in the short and medium term while taking substantive decisions about how to relate to the nonhuman world -so that it can flourish alongside human beings. In other words, sustainability is a necessary precondition for the good Anthropocene. Yet the technical arrangements

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that might allow human societies to enjoy the “safe space” it needs to maneuver lacks the moral significance that a good Anthropocene—by deliberately incorporating a particular vision of socionatural relations—involves. It would not involve a moral vision for the planet: a conception of socionatural relations that goes beyond human welfare alone. Yet the opposite also applies: a very good Anthropocene might be conceived without attention to its technical dimension, which may result in (a paradoxical) unsustainability.

Socionatural hope after the Holocene If a sustainable Anthropocene is not necessarily a good Anthropocene, it is because the latter will have to be given shape by public debate and sociopolitical action and not be just the outcome of a technical fix. That is why the ecomodernist view is better understood as one version of the good Anthropocene among many. Incidentally, it might partly be a reaction against the blueprint presented by radical environmentalism, which has traditionally argued that sustainability can only be achieved if the liberal-capitalistic system is abandoned and unnecesary human wants are restricted. As ecomodernism is seen as representing the continuation of liberalcapitalism in the new geological age, it naturally becomes the target of classical environmentalism’s criticism. However, the odd result is that any talk about the good Anthropocene is viewed with suspicion—a peculiar semantic contamination. A sociopolitical account of the Anthropocene that emphasizes the latter’s geological underpinnings and proceeds therefrom to issue alerts about the planetary catastrophe-in-the-making, claiming as Hamilton does that our moral and political categories are no longer applicable, is intellectually fascinating. Yet I wonder whether it is not politically sterile. The human species will disappear sooner or later and there is certainly no moral stance that can avoid that fate in the long run. And although saving water or taking public transportation will not bring us back to the Holocene, claiming that we can just “learn to die in the Anthropocene” (see Scranton 2014) does not seem like a workable program for the near future. This view stresses the bad in the Anthropocene and hence prevents it from being associated with anything “good”. However, human beings cannot be asked to think about the very distant future, nor will they be inspired by the untestable claim that total disaster is already under way and only the worst can be expected. Ironically, the Holocene being an interglacial period, climate change has delayed the next ice age by some 40.000 years (see Maslin 2015, p. 18). Something good in the bad, after all? The bitter truth is that neither the political discourse of ecological collapse nor the invocation of values such as self-limitation, frugality or austerity have ever worked in the political arena, and there are reasons to doubt that they ever will. As for de-growth, it does not seem to stir much public enthusiasm either. Sloterdijk (2017, pp. 35–36) has even suggested that climate-socialism and the ethics of frugality are hopeless illusions, given that those who live in developed countries are used to enjoying a well-being that includes advanced technologies; they do not even want to hear about a future that revolves around socioeconomic contraction

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and relative deprivation. For inhabitants of emerging and poor countries, the prospect of (continued) austerity may be even less appealing. There is, nonetheless, the temptation to claim that stopping the human experiment and retreating into a world of semi-autarchic communities is technically necessary to avoid geo-collapse. However this argument is, irrespective of its persuasive force, unwarranted: we simply do not know that much. But even though we have no reason to think that an ecologically amended liberal-capitalism would not be sustainable, that does not prevent anyone from arguing that a radically diminished human society is actually desirable. The good Anthropocene need not be the one depicted by ecomodernism nor any variation on the liberal tune; it could as well be an Anthropocene in keeping with the vision of radical environmentalism. But this future should be defended on its own, according to its normative merits, rather than as the sole way of avoiding disaster. If the public remains unpersuaded, so be it. Or not quite. The public must be engaged in a meaningful conversation about the good Anthropocene, each citizen promoting—more or less actively—his or her version of it. It is hard to think of a more urgent task for human societies than shaping a geo-politics that is at the same time legitimate (for it to be effective) and effective (for it to be legitimate). To this end, an engaging public discussion is necessary. However, we do not have it yet. It has already been suggested that a politics for the Anthropocene has two dimensions: the technocratic, to be developed through the institutions of global governance, and the democratic, which expresses itself in the public debate and through citizen participation. My argument is that this is the manner in which certain planetary limits can be safely managed while the collective search for the good Anthropocene takes place. Needless to say, none of this will happen if the body politic does not awaken to the new situation that the Anthropocene announces: that of a planet which has become dangerous. How to nurture planetary subjectivities, making us all aware of the key fact that we are earthly creatures, is another matter. There is no doubt that the Anthropocene is a revolutionary concept, one that impacts on other concepts, and particularly on those that try to make sense of all things political. Yet, against Hamilton’s claim that our inherited notions are no longer applicable in the Anthropocene, I would suggest that moral and political categories are challenged and changed by the Anthropocene, but neither suppressed nor replaced. In this regard, as pertaining to the conditions under which a debate about the good Anthropocene might take place, I would like to suggest two different things. On the one hand, the notion of the good Anthropocene must be related to the good more broadly conceived. This apparent tautology is intended to emphasize that a narrative of fear towards unbridled planetary forces is not enough to promote collective action. It may help, especially as minor catastrophes such as more intense and frequent hurricanes contribute to create a new awareness about the dangers of the Anthropocene—but fear is in itself an ambivalent driver, especially if the public ends up accustomed to those realities. What is the alternative? Philosopher Richard Rorty (1999) famously wrote about a “social hope” that should be put at the very

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center of public debate. This hope should be understood as a plausible narrative of progress—the belief that we can improve things as they stand. Rorty himself held that philosophical arguments are less useful for public deliberation than stories or narratives describing social utopias that serve as a guide for our collective efforts. Although philosophers may help, as they re-describe social phenomena or give new meanings to them, in his eyes they draw from those narratives rather than create them. Be that as it may, this notion of hope must now be expanded to include the natural environment. We should talk about “socionatural hope”, as a way of recognizing that we depend on natural systems and hence the social question cannot be separated from the planetary question anymore. But it is hope, not despair, that should be emphasized: hope in our collective ability to handle this monumental task, improving life on this planet as much as the life of the planet itself. On the other hand, the political nature of the Anthropocene and hence of the “good” Anthropocene should not be taken as involving a rejection of stewardship or management at the planetary level. These terms should not be seen with suspicion or be equated with “business-as-usual” perspectives. Admittedly, the “intrusion of Gaia” complicates the technocratic and linear project of sustainability, as it throws us towards an unpredictable scenario: pure management will not suffice (Stengers, quoted in Bonneuil & Fressoz, 2013, p. 20). The Anthropocene is inherently ambivalent, simultaneously expressing human de-centering and the species’ increasing geological-cum-ecological prominence (Clark, 2014, p. 25). The questions that it poses cannot be given purely scientific answers, because they are inherently political: how much sea-level rise is acceptable, which means of transport should be publicly fostered, what species are to be preserved, what is the right balance between emissions control and economic growth, which degree of animal suffering is to be tolerated, how much natural capital should we substitute. While this is not a politics that can be pursued without scientific calculations, nor does it constitute a public debate that can take place on the sole basis of normative preferences. Political questions do not admit just one answer—that is what makes them political in the first place. Yet they do not admit any answer either. Let us take the last of the questions posed above: in order to decide how much natural capital we should substitute, we have to find out first how much natural capital we can substitute by man-made or cultivated capital (on this, see Arias-Maldonado 2013). And the same goes for almost every other aspect of the socionatural relation in the Anthropocene. For this reason, neither stewardship nor management can be rejected: we need planetary managers. And we will need them no matter what kind of good Anthropocene we go for. Managing the planet is not incompatible with politics nor with a non-managed experience of nature—why should it be? Planetary managers, political actors and citizens can and must coexist. Broadly speaking, this division corresponds to the two dimensions of the politics for the Anthropocene that I have just described: institutional governance and public conversation. That is the context in which the search for a good Anthropocene is to take place. Therefore, the idea of socionatural management should, as much as the “good Anthropocene” itself, be freed from ecomodernist assumptions—unless critics of

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the latter propose instead a non-managed Anthropocene. The “good Anthropocene” should be conceptualized as a more neutral principle that demands to be elaborated through informed deliberation. Baskin’s (2015) suspicion that the Anthropocene is less a scientifically grounded concept than an ideology dressed as paradigm, insofar as it incorporates a particularly anthropocentric way of looking at the world, helps to express this idea. For the Anthropocene is actually a scientifically grounded concept, a description of socionatural relations as they stand after a long history of human meddling with the planet. It may be anthropocentric, but what else can it be if it deals with anthropogenic impacts on Earth? As for its meanings, they are up for discussion. In this vein, Damien White (this volume) argues that we should go beyond the opposition between a technocratic and an apocalyptic Anthropocene, opening up the political space so that the discussion about our post-Holocene future is pluralized. He is right: the good Anthropocene is not the exclusive property of ecomodernism, and I have stressed in this chapter the need to recover and expand this notion, so that it can potentially cover any imaginable desired socionatural future. At the same time, though, ecomodernism’s contribution should also be acknowledged. It has reminded us of the key role of technology in alleviating the human burden on the planet, as well as the necessity to associate sustainability with modernization and vice versa. The merits of the ecomodernist vision are, in any event, something to be discussed. What I have suggested in this chapter is that the good Anthropocene is not something we can do without. It plays a key role in the debate about the new geological epoch, nurturing the socionatural hope that is needed to mobilize public support in democratic and non-democratic societies alike. Without that hope, only a worse Anthropocene is assured.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to shed some light on the “good Anthropocene”, a controversial notion that has been so far mostly associated with the ecomodernist view—that of an Anthropocene made sustainable thanks to advanced technologies and a continued, if more self-conscious, human domination of nature. I have argued that the ecomodernist account of the good Anthropocene should be confronted on the normative level, as an undesirable view of the future, rather than as an unsustainable option for human habitation of the planet. However, the way in which it acknowledges the need for green technologies and links the Anthropocene with the good ought not to be so readily dismissed. On the contrary, it falls to those who promote an account of the Anthropocene grounded on the inevitability of the Earth’s collapse to demonstrate that this not a political dead-end—as the failure of all versions of eco-catastrophism have been. Be that as it may, I have suggested that affirming the possibility of a genuinely good Anthropocene, understood as one that is not only sustainable but involves a self-conscious re-arrangement of socionatural relations, is not tantamount to choosing the ecomodernist

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vision as the blueprint for a shared future. It is rather to open up the political space for a debate between conflicting visions of the good Anthropocene, whose positive connotations are presented as essential for public engagement, and thus collective action.

References Arias-Maldonado, M. (2013). “Rethinking Sustainability in the Anthropocene”. Environmental Politics, 22(3): 428–446. Asafu-Adjaye, J. et al. (2015). An Ecomodernist Manifesto. Available at: http://www.ecom odernism.org/. Baskin, J. (2015). “Paradigm Dressed as Epoch: The Ideology of the Anthropocene”. Environmental Values, 24: 9–29. Blühdorn, I. (2007). “Sustaining the Unsustainable: Symbolic Politics and the Politics of Simulation”. Environmental Politics, 16(2): 251–275. Blühdorn, I. (2017). “Post-capitalism, post-growth, post-consumerism? Eco-political hopes beyond sustainability”, Global Discourse 7(1): 42:61. Bonneuil, C. & Fressoz, J-B. (2013). The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us. London & New York: Verso. Bonneuil, C. (2015). “The geological turn: narratives of the Anthropocene”. In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, edited by Clive Hamilton et al. Abingdon: Routledge. Clark, N. (2014). “Geo-politics and the disaster of the Anthropocene”. The Sociological Review, 62(1): 19–37. Connolly, W. (2017). Facing the Planetary. Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming, Durham & London: Duke University Press. Dalby, S. (2016). “Framing the Anthropocene: The good, the bad, and the ugly”. The Anthropocene Review, 3(1): 33–51. Ellis, E. (2011). “The planet of no return: Human resilience on an artificial Earth”. Breakthrough Journal, 2: 39–44. Ellis, E. (2017). “Nature for the People. Toward a Democratic Vision for the Biosphere”, Breakthrough Journal, 7. Available at: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/pa st-issues/issue-7/nature-for-the-people. Ellis, M. & Trachtenberg, Z. (2013). “Which Anthropocene is it to be?”. Earth’s Future, 1 (2): 122–125. Hamilton, C.;, Bonneuil, C. & Gemenne, F. (2015). “Thinking the Anthropocene”. In The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis. Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, edited by Clive Hamilton et al. Abingdon: Routledge. Hamilton, C. (2014). “The delusion of the good Anthropocene”. Available at: http://clive hamilton.com/the-delusion-of-the-good-anthropocene-reply-to-andrew-revkin/. Hamilton, C. (2015). “The Theodicy of the ‘Good Anthropocene’”. Environmental Humanities 7: 233–238. Hamilton, C. (2017). Defiant Earth. The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene. Cambridge: Polity. Laclau, E. (1990). New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. London: Verso. Latour, B. (2012). “Love Your Monsters. Why We Must Care for Our Technologies as We Do Our Children”. In Love Your Monsters. Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, edited by M. Shellenberg & Tim Nordhaus. San Francisco: The Breakthrough Institute. Available at: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-2/love-your-m onsters.

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Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge: Polity Press. Liu, J. et al. (2007). “Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems”. Science, 317: 1513. Malm, A. & Hornborg, A. (2014). “The geology of mankind? A critique of the Anthropocene narrative”. The Anthropocene Review, 1: 62–69. Maslin, M. (2015). Climate Change. A Very Short Introduction, 3rd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Murdoch, I. (2014). The Sovereignty of Good. London & New York: Routledge. Nietzsche, F. (1988). Zur Genealogie der Moral. Stuttgart: Reclam. RevkinA. (2014a). “Exploring Academia’s Role in Charting Paths to a ‘Good’ Anthropocene”. Available at: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/exploring-academ ias-role-in-chartingpaths-to-a-good-anthropocene/?_r=0 Revkin A. RevkinA. (2014b). “A Darker view of the Age of Us -The Anthropocene”. Available at: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/a-darker-view-of-the-age-of-us-the-a nthropocene/. Rorty, R. (1999). Philosophy and Social Hope, London: Penguin. Scranton, R. (2014). Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. Reflections on the End of a Civilization. San Francisco: City Light Books. Sloterdijk, P. (2010). Scheintod im Denken: Von Philosophie und Wissenchaft als Übung. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Sloterdijk, P. (2017). Was geschah im 20 Jahrhundert?Berlin: Suhrkamp. Steffen, W., Crutzen, P. & McNeill, J. (2007). “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?” Ambio, 36(8): 614–621. The Breakthrough Institute. (2015). “A Good Anthropocene? Competing Visions of our Environmental Future”. 14 June. Available at: https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/ dialogue/can-we-have-a-good-anthropocene. Vetlesen, A. (2015). The Denial of Nature: Environmental Philosophy in the Era of Global Capitalism. London: Routledge.

PART IV

Democratic responses to the Anthropocene

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10 GEO-ENGINEERING: A CURSE OR A BLESSING? Marcel Wissenburg

In response to climate change, scientists and engineers are developing an ever expanding set of technological solutions on a very large to literally astronomical scale: geo-engineering. To apply them, and as a consequence of their application, political structures and institutions from global to local would need to adapt. That makes geo-engineering a problem for political theory: is this the right road to the future for our societies? The idea of geo-engineering raises worries, initially of an intuitive nature, and I do not mean just the primitive Promethean-Faustian-Frankensteinian prejudice against ‘playing God’ (for more on that sentiment, see e.g. Szerszynski, 2017, Chernilo, 2017 and Ariffin’s chapter in this book). This chapter addresses another intuitive reservation: is geo-engineering a curse or a blessing, a poison or a medicine? Geo-engineering promises on the one hand unparalleled control over our world, another great step forwards for humanity liberating itself from slavery to nature (for a fundamental critique, see Fremaux’s chapter), but, on the other, it requires more control over our own lives than before. Will geo-engineering free us or enslave us? The choice for freedom1 as a measure for the desirability of geo-engineering is not an accidental one, and will be explained below. Let me however stress the obvious: freedom is certainly not the only measure worth applying – there is also equality to consider, justice, democracy, happiness, tranquility, modesty, the integrity and possibly independent value of nature and the wild. Nor are moral and ethical categories the only types of concept suitable for a confrontation with geo-engineering – more acutely than any technological change so far, geo-engineering raises (for example) the ontological question whether a social construct like nature (vs. culture; cf. Descola, 2013 and Fremaux’s and Baker’s chapters in this volume) is still an appropriate term to use for the object of our regulatory affection.

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My argument is structured more or less as an attempt to move from (un)considered judgments to a reflective equilibrium (cf. Rawls, 1999a): I try to get a better appreciation of geo-engineering by refining an intuitive conception of freedom, and (a further refinement) by investigating how the freedom effects of geoengineering differently affect three types of stakeholder: individuals, societies and humanity as a whole. To give a brief and inadequate idea of the conclusions, the verdict for individuals is that geo-engineering hardly makes a difference, that for humanity as a whole prospects are far less bright than they initially appear to be, and that only societies stand to gain and lose perceptibly.

Geo-engineering and the Anthropocene advocates While it took some time to take root, the term ‘Anthropocene’ has now become one of the most popular buzzwords in discourses addressing climate, environment or ecology. It therefore needs only a brief introduction: the term denotes ‘the Age of Man’, the period of roughly the last two centuries (the so-called short Anthropocene) or the last 50,000 years (the long Anthropocene) during which human activities would have had an impact on the global ecology (or ‘Earth System’) equal to anything that defines, in geology, biology and climate science, an era (like the Pleistocene, Holocene etc.). It is worth stressing that ‘Anthropocene’ is a social construct and most definitely not a politically neutral concept, not a ‘purely objective, scientific term’ (cf. Baskin, 2015, Lepori, 2015, Luke, 2015a, 2015b, Schlosberg, 2016, Di Chiro, 2016, and half the chapters in this volume). It was introduced by the same people who coined the terms ‘global warming’, ‘tipping point’ and ‘climate change’, a group of mostly climatologists and natural scientists centered around Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, to whom I will refer as ‘the advocates of the Anthropocene’ (Wissenburg, 2016) or simply as ‘the advocates’ (see also Dryzek, Norgaard and Schlosberg, 2013: pp. 111ff.). The idea of an Anthropocene does not just presume that humans can be seen as the independent variable in the causal chain explaining climate change (in itself at least philosophically a questionable hypothesis) but also implies that ‘we humanity’ are morally responsible, if not for the mess then at least for cleaning it up. (For other grounds for hesitation see Cox, 2015, Trachtenberg, 2015.) The advocates vigorously pursue a political agenda: they promote global climate policy aimed at halting climate change before it reaches the tipping point. This global climate policy is to be based on and guided by Earth Science (cf. Lenton, 2016), a comprehensive body of knowledge created by ever-closer cooperation between the various natural and life sciences studying Earth System. Earth Science’s goals are apparently objectively given (the continued existence of humanity at the same or higher level of material welfare with the same materialist preferences), hence there is no need for climate politics, only for climate policy – it’s all merely a matter of effective, efficient implementation using rationally chosen instruments. Viable alternatives do not exist: the back-to-nature quietism of radical ecologists

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like Robyn Eckersley or Andrew Light (who would be surprised by this qualification) is ‘impossible’; eco-quietists live ‘in denial’ (Dalby, 2007). The advocates’ faith in expert rule and their lack of interest in liberal values like freedom, democracy and justice remind one of 20th-Century proponents of technocracy and are, frankly, disturbing. Even in more recent reflections on the future of Earth Science (Oldfield et al., 2014), which is to include some of the social sciences to help smooth the political path for global cooperation, there is no talk of an open society (for further discussion see Meyer’s and Hammond and Ward’s chapters in this volume). While geo-engineering is not originally part of the advocates’ Anthropocene discourse (its roots probably lie in the notion of terra-forming as developed in pre-WWII science fiction and early space exploration), it fits hands in glove with the idea of Earth Science guiding climate policy. Two basic answers to the challenges of the Anthropocene exist: adaptation (to the inevitable) and mitigation (of the inevitable). Geoengineering offers a third strategy – hence, one might say, a Third Way in climate policy: making the inevitable evitable by changing the climate itself (cf. Lenton, 2016). Strictly speaking, there is only a difference in degree between mitigation and geoengineering, but that degree is anything but minute: a carbon filter in your car exhaust and deflecting the planet’s sunlight in outer space are in different categories altogether. Geo-engineering is far more ambitious – Dryzek, Norgaard and Schlosberg (2013: p.120) aptly call it ‘The Anthropocene on steroids’. It exclusively uses physical technologies, not policies or other forms of regulation of human behavior; and it does so with the explicit purpose of controlling Earth’s climate, i.e., the entire planet’s system of ecosystems, rather than affecting climate conditions for any particular region. Where exactly geo-engineering ends and ‘something else’ (e.g. terra-forming or mitigation) begins is of course a matter of convention. In some contexts, geoengineering is limited to (by definition global) climate control through CO2 removal (say: the reagens of the climate system) and decreasing the planet’s absorption of solar radiation (the agens). But broader definitions also exist – e.g. ones including other greenhouse gasses and other processes affecting the climate. What these techniques always share, though, is the use of large-scale high-tech solutions: planting trees may technically affect the climate but would be understood as geoengineering only when applied on a global scale with measurable global effects; iron fertilization of the oceans is the real thing. Two things geo-engineering is (again, by convention) definitely not: directed at input or output, and a spinoff effect. It aims to affect the climate system, not (cf. Dobson, 2016) material consumption, production or population size, nor human physiology (e.g. ‘engineering’ higher tolerance for heat and humidity). Existing consumption patterns and production systems are taken for granted, and human engineering is simply not in the picture. Second, it excludes policies and technologies with unintended global climate side effects and technologies with merely regional effects, like the use of renewable energy sources (their primary aim being to replace depleting resources) or national water management policies in the Middle East.

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Even if only for the sake of argument, but also to avoid slippery slopes, from here on I will stick to a fairly strict understanding of geo-engineering as the use of purely physical technologies with the explicit purpose of controlling climate on a regional to global scale (while probably by definition affecting the entire planet’s climate). Geoengineering does not promise exact control over your neighborhood’s temperature, humidity and wind tomorrow – it may not even be physically possible, ever, to micromanage the weather. But with Earth Science it does promise more control over where ecosystems change and how they develop, than merely in terms of temperature. It promises a fairly detailed degree of global and regional climate engineering, with effects on seasons and thereby (by definition) on a region’s average weather conditions. It also sets limits to the possible composition of regional ecosystems (our limits, designed and defined by societies) – thus promising us the freedom to design our bodies ecologic: the ensemble of our bodies politic and the natural environment in which they might flourish, which in turn define side constraints for agriculture, architecture, culture etc. (cf. Wissenburg, 2016). However defined, geo-engineering is mostly science fiction so far, not due to any technical or physical causes since no lack of adequate data has ever before stopped scientists and engineers, but for lack of political support: geo-engineering is, rhetorically and perhaps ideologically, several bridges too far for existing liberaldemocratic nation-states. Yet. Given the choices, the freedoms it promises, and given the complexity and severity of the problems they address, it is inevitable that we ask ourselves if we should embrace the idea, stimulate the development and prioritize the exploitation, of geo-engineering technologies.

An intuitive notion of freedom The Anthropocene (and with it geo-engineering) is Janus-faced. It is a promise in that it takes away one of the most important impediments to human control over the conditions of our lives: the global natural environment can now (we assume) be shaped rather than shape us. Actually, as the advocates correctly observe, the option of letting nature shape us no longer exists: ‘letting nature run its way’ is now simply the choice for one nature management technique over others.2 Like nuclear technology, it can be used or abandoned, but it cannot be unlearnt. Yet at the same time geo-engineering is a curse, a nightmare waiting to happen even if it works perfectly (in climatological terms): we are now apparently bound to band together, cooperate, adapt individual dreams and hopes to those of others, or (if one opts out) see our living conditions determined by fickle humans rather than a relatively predictable nature. Again, to use the advocates’ vocabulary, there is no ‘rational alternative’. And so, it seems, individual freedom and dreams are further limited than before. To make sense of the confusing range of effects geo-engineering could have, one way to start is to treat it like any other new technology and investigate its reception in the form of a Technology Assessment (TA), measuring and weighing the costs and benefits for the various stakeholders (producers, consumers, and anyone affected by

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either). The format of a TA is not inappropriate here, and may be helpful as long as we keep an open mind to its shortcomings (cf. Barbour, 1980). A first set of shortcomings of TA has to do with the fact that it is basically a (too) simple cost-benefit analysis, for which one needs to know whose costs and benefits, i.e., one needs to identify the stakeholders; one needs to identify (more precisely, predict) the different dimensions or aspects where costs and benefits might arise; and one has to take into consideration that a different demarcation and choice of stakeholders affects the identification of potential effects. Humans aren’t very good at predicting the future. The best we can probably do is compare a new technology to a similar one introduced not too long ago, realizing all the time that similar is not identical. In our case, we are looking for a technology with a global impact that requires at least multinational and preferably global cooperation to use. I would suggest that the closest we can come to a technology similar to geo-engineering, though unfortunately still predicated on the existence of a human rather than natural enemy, is Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ rocket shield. As for the choice of stakeholders – I’ll address that momentarily. Another cluster of shortcomings has to do with the measurement of predicted costs and benefits. Cost-benefit assessments involve value judgments, for example, in the context of dictatorship, or of ever-simpler smart phones: is ‘less time needed for decisions’ good or bad, and how good or bad? Equally questionable, TA tends to use one measure for all costs and benefits – usually money. Here, the measure of all things will be freedom lost and gained, freedom being provisionally and intuitively defined as ‘actions one can undertake’. But as we shall see later, there are more valid and reasonable conceptions of freedom; hence our TA will remain incomplete and biased. Finally, a TA meets one problem any alternative would meet as well: uncertainty about the way the new technology actually works (and if multiple uses are discovered, how it will be used). For the sake of simplicity and for the sake of argument, I will assume that (any form of) geo-engineering, once applied, will work and will work precisely as predicted; there is no uncertainty and risk to take into account, no fear, no (false) hope and disappointment (with all its ripple effects on choices and behavior). So who then are the stakeholders affected by geo-engineering, and how will it affect their freedom (the set of actions they can undertake)? Again, for the sake of argument, I have to oversimplify and exclude other species, future generations and all sorts of relevant stakeholders at the meso-level: the various genders, religions, clans and families, communities, lifestyle groups and so on. I will limit myself to three stakeholders: individuals, societies (politically represented by states) and humanity as a whole – the advocates’ primary object of concern. How would geo-engineering affect these stakeholders in terms of ‘the actions they can undertake’? I have already hinted at a couple of implications for the individual. No individual is likely to ever be in a position where he or she can singlehandedly change the world’s climate. The more one’s life plans depend on the climate, though, the more geo-engineering affects those plans: a software

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engineer may be able to live the same life at any average temperature between 0 and 30°C; but this is obviously less likely for a family farmer. Yet in terms of freedom, the effects of the introduction of geo-engineering seem to be immaterial: it changes the source and direction of the climate and of climate change, not its nature. The only sense in which geo-engineering apparently affects individual freedom is that it forces individuals (some more than others) to reassess their plans of life more often, since one now has to adapt not only to a known quantity, the usually relatively slow and predictable type of climate change before geo-engineering, but also to any potential change of course effected by geo-engineering. Other things being equal, geo-engineering thus seems to negatively affect at least the room one has to lead a life free of having to make choices. In addition, in any society where any kind of politics exists,3 geo-engineering becomes part of the political agenda, and affecting the agenda on this new item is yet another choice offered to (or some would say, forced upon) the individual. While it is not unimaginable that a state can ‘go it alone’, can unilaterally geoengineer our climate – it is never politically wise to do so. The realities of international relations therefore force nations to cooperate, if they want to employ geoengineering technology, and that substantially affects their freedom. Cooperation on the scale required implies that the environmental conditions for each society’s survival and existence, for the shape of its body ecologic, thereby its economy, culture, population, socio-political system etc., are set not by that society itself but by a minimum winning coalition (or in the dreams of cosmopolitans and the advocates, ‘the global community’). On the plus side (the advocates would claim), geo-engineering will allow states, within these internationally set boundaries, to guide their societies with far less pain and unrest to a far more prosperous future than the alternative offers. Finally, humanity as a whole stands to gain from geo-engineering: it empowers. In addition to all the already existing options for our ecological future (from back-to-nature eco-quietism for a world population of less than a billion to twenty billions drowning in sweltering heat), it offers at least one more – or so the advocates would argue.

Freedom refined Why freedom? Why not assess geo-engineering instead in terms of other relevant criteria like equality, justice or democracy? To answer both questions in one breath: freedom is the foundational value not just in the broadly liberal political discourse that dominates political thought in our era, but by definition in every normative political theory, since there is no sense in attributing blame or praise for (not) meeting any moral standard in the absence of choice, i.e., freedom. Freedom is a necessary condition for moral action. That said, not every political theory appreciates freedom intrinsically, regardless of context. While I do not limit myself to individual freedom in this chapter, I should add that there are nonetheless grounds to pay special attention to the effects of geoengineering on individuals: only individuals bleed when you prick them. Geo-

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engineering has been absorbed into the vocabulary of the Anthropocene, which in turn is a discourse of sustainability. Sustainability (basically economy supersized: the virtue of frugality extended to include the management of natural resources) makes sense only either in the context of environmental justice, where it is the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens over individuals that matters; or in the context of obligations to future generations, read future individuals, and/or the options presently existing individuals have for the creation of future individuals. The quick and dirty TA above was based on a fairly simplistic understanding of freedom as ‘actions one can undertake’. But that is an ambiguous notion, for example because it can mean ‘actions one is (legally, morally, etc.) permitted to undertake’ and ‘actions one is not inhibited from undertaking (by human, moral, legal etc. obstructions)’ – both alternatives representing sets of possible interpretations of Berlin’s negative freedom (Berlin, 1969; cf. MacCallum, 1967). ‘Actions one can undertake’ can also refer to Berlin’s first interpretation of positive freedom as having (been given) the means to do something – and there is probably no need to remind the reader how confusing, even internally contradictory, the various interpretations of positive freedom turned out to be. Some of that confusion has to do with another concept with which freedom is often equated (or rather confused): autonomy, defined as the individual’s internal (mental) capability to make (authentic) choices or design a plan of life, as distinct from freedom that relates to the external conditions under which I must operate and execute my plan of life. To end this confusion (that still persists in politics and side-tracks many a political debate), it has become customary to make a distinction between formal and effective freedom: formal freedom as the absence of human-made obstacles to do something, and effective freedom as (formal freedom plus) the presence of the physical means to do something (cf. Swift, 2013) – definitions which, by the way, make it essential to also strictly distinguish between freedom as an external and autonomy as an internal condition. It is in this sense of effective freedom that I will use the expression ‘actions one can undertake’. It seems obvious that formal freedom is not the category one would want to use to assess geo-engineering, but effective freedom may be (too) ambiguous as well. There is a long tradition interpreting (effective) freedom as freedom of choice – thus, the more choices you have, the freer you are (cf. Pattanaik & Xu, 1990). Intuitively, however, enlarging your existing set of freedoms with (say) the freedom to be beheaded at dawn does not seem a genuine addition to your freedom. According to Amartya Sen, ‘freedom gives us the opportunity to achieve our objectives – things that we have reason to value. (…) It relates to the real opportunities we have of distinguishing things that we can and do value’ (Sen, 1993: p.522). Sen, in other words, supported an interpretation of (effective) freedom as opportunity freedom, having valuable choices, rather than just any kind of choice. As it turns out, though, opportunity freedom is a misnomer causing more confusion than it solves. What is a valuable choice may either be determined purely contextually (i.e., determined by an agent’s revealed or actual preferences) or by an independent standard for what ‘the reasonable person’ would deem valuable. The

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former makes freedom non-measurable and purely idiosyncratic; the latter simply means that a moral, ethical and political standard is called for – a theory of the good life, the good body politic and the good body ecologic. Bluntly put, the degree to which one has opportunity freedom will depend on the assessor’s party line. Opportunity freedom is not a measure of freedom, it is a measure of the quality or value of freedom (cf. Van Hees & Wissenburg, 1999, Van Hees, 2000). Still, that opportunity freedom is a misnomer is no reason to discard the intuition that the value of effective freedom is important to us, just as effective freedom of choice itself is. There is a meaningful difference between choices that can have value and choices that cannot. One can value freedom intrinsically but it still needs to be the choice between distinct options, freedom being a state of affairs in which one ‘decides’: there has to be something to decide on, no matter how silly. Here Jonathan Swift’s Big and Little Endians come to mind: as long as the choice can mean anything to you, two alternatives are genuine alternatives and not identical. Freedom of choice and opportunity freedom (or effective freedom and the value of freedom) do not completely cover and explain all the guesstimates of the freedom effects of geo-engineering articulated above. There is one other pair of conceptions of freedom that is relevant here: liberal and republican freedom (cf. De Bruin, 2009). Liberal freedom is what Benjamin Constant (2010) called ‘the liberty of the Moderns’, the individual’s set of possible actions that remain exempt from government interference or control. The larger this private sphere, the larger liberal freedom is; the assumption being that all other imperatives that constrain one’s effective freedom in this sphere are the result of autonomous, authentic choice rather than alien intrusion. Republican freedom, Constant’s ‘liberty of the Ancients’, stands for living under laws that are the legitimate product of collective self-determination; republican freedom is larger the more ‘actions one can undertake’ are defined and delineated by law (whether they are forbidden or prohibited is irrelevant).

Beyond intuition We are now ready to revisit the ‘barely considered’ TA judgments listed above, and assess how well individuals, states or societies, and humanity as a whole fare in terms of effective, opportunity, liberal and republican freedom. Let me start with the greatest disappointment: humanity. The idea that geoengineering might ‘liberate’ humanity from the bonds of nature in terms of effective freedom (or indeed any other kind) is based on at best over-abstraction, reification, at worst a romantic notion of a deep unity binding the species. To ascribe to that entity any kind of freedom, it has to be a self-conscious agent. There is no such thing as humanity in that sense. There are only individuals eking out a living either on their own or in organized groups. In Giovanna di Chiro’s words: ‘The generality of these diverse political assemblages cannot be captured in the universal “we” of the Anthropocene story. It matters which stories, knowledges, and words/ worlds make our environmental politics’ (Di Chiro, 2016: p.275). The closest we can come to identifying an entity uniting humans, thinking as one, acting as one

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and experiencing as one, is the United Nations. Perhaps there are contexts in which it makes sense to say that the UN ‘represents’ humanity (as an amalgam) – but to say that it is humanity is absurd. The idea that ‘humanity’ is the beneficiary of geo-engineering is of course a direct implication of an idea shared by the advocates and many others: that there is a global environmental crisis affecting all humans similarly and threatening perhaps the biological survival of the species, certainly the cultural life of civilizations (Einstein’s remarks on the weapons with which WW IV would be fought come to mind here). This may not be the place to ask what makes the human species worth saving – or whether its disappearance would be an intrinsically bad thing, other than so that its existing members can lead a good life, and provided further procreation does no harm. But it is the place to point out the rhetoric involved in claims made on behalf of ‘humanity’. Even at the constant risk of reification, it makes a bit more sense to ascribe agency (and thereby freedom) to civilizations or societies and their political incarnations, states: they do often act, more or less, as one, and in international relations understand each other as agents (though often complex agents made up of other agents). Now more Earth Science probably means more geo-engineering technologies, thereby more ‘actions one can undertake’, but things are a bit more complicated than that: the ‘one’ who can undertake action is not necessarily the state. Both for technological and political reasons, geo-engineering as such typically cannot be used by one state alone. Some geo-engineering technologies might be used as weapons (or threats) by rogue states, but geo-engineering itself is a longterm strategy that can easily be sabotaged by other nations. In other words: geo-engineering does not increase but actually reduces individual states’ effective freedom; it can only increase the effective freedom of coalitions large enough to not be effectively obstructed by others – what one might call winning coalitions in a climate war. Even then, other conditions will have to be met: even a minimum climate-effective coalition ‘going it alone’ against the rest of the world may in the long term affect the climate to its advantage but threaten its global power, even survival, in the short run. Either way, geo-engineering by definition implies a reduction of nations’ room to maneuver individually: their effective freedom is reduced. In this context, it is theoretically possible that a coalition is formed uniting all states (the UN as a composite actor, not as the representative of humanity) – but that does require the global coincidence of both short and long term national selfinterests, enlightened as much as primitive. It is more realistic to assume that, for now, not every state’s interest is necessarily served by geo-engineering, nor necessarily served by the (re)creation of any specific climate (assuming that to be possible in the first place). Some states and societies stand to gain, not just lose, from global climate change, and may on the whole gain more than they lose – think of the resources that are ever more accessible in the polar regions. If, and in so far as, it makes sense to talk about the effective freedom of states – then it might also make sense to talk about their opportunity, liberal and

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republican freedom. As far as opportunity freedom goes, we immediately run into the problem already discussed above: opportunity freedom isn’t really freedom – it is a judgment on the quality, the value, of specific freedoms, and that judgment depends on the agent’s theory of the good, plan of life, and so on. Applying those terms to societies might theoretically be sensible if one is a classic, orthodox communitarian but few others will concur. Applying them to states (or coalitions of states) reveals an interesting illustration of the variety of possible values of freedom. If (cf. Hailwood’s chapter) one is an International Relations realist or neo-realist, the survival of the state is its ultimate goal: geo-engineering technologies in one’s own hand support that goal, and form a threat in the hands of others, while geoengineering itself is nothing but a vital threat. If one adheres to a modern liberal view on International Relations, sovereignty is first of all a duty to serve the people, not merely a right to rule them – should a state fail to do its duty, it loses its right to sovereign rule. On this perspective, the necessity of coalition formation for geo-engineering to succeed, and the loss of effective freedom implied for states, suggests that a political constellation other than the state should take its place. The modern liberal view, in other words, has little room for the value of freedom for states – what matters is the freedom of individual human beings and their societies. To talk of the liberal and republican freedom of states is not as odd as it may seem: there is no polity constituting a public and protecting a private sphere for states – but there is a growing body of international law, of substantive international treaties and treaty organizations (cf. Wissenburg, 2009), all of which bind states. Geo-engineering itself does not increase the effective freedom of states, hence neither (even the potential) size of their liberal, intrusion-free, zone of self-determination – but it does increase the effective freedom of coalitions, enabling outsiders to set (further) limits to that same zone. Of course, every state can hope that no others will want to use geo-engineering technology (for whatever purpose) but in this instance, geo-engineering is much more like nuclear technology than like Star Wars: it is unrealistic and irrational not to prepare for any eventuality. Paradoxically then, if a state wants to maximally protect its pre-existing liberal zone of non-interference, its control over its body ecologic, then it will have to embrace the global equivalent of republican freedom – it will have to actively engage in international cooperation and regulation of geo-engineering. No nation is an island entire of itself. Finally – what are the freedom effects of geo-engineering for the individual? On the whole, they are not too different from what happens to states. In principle, geo-engineering does not affect the individual’s effective freedom: it is not ‘an action one can undertake’ – which is why the concept of opportunity freedom is irrelevant here, too. For the individual, there is no difference between random climate and climate designed by committee. The one may be natural, the other artificial – from the point of view of the affected individuals they create and reduce just as much of their effective freedoms. In principle. There is, after all, a side effect to geo-engineering: if successful, and momentarily disregarding population effects and the non-identity problem, geo-engineering is supposed to create living conditions (and thereby opportunities, ‘actions one can undertake’) that are at least as

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good respectively numerous as when nothing had been done. For a consequentialist, this potential increase in choices may or may not be fortuitous in terms of opportunity freedom. That verdict will depend on how much one values self-governance, tranquility, submission etc., and how much one disvalues human hubris, critical reflection and so on. If one values freedom intrinsically, then one should give geo-engineering a guarded welcome. Guarded, because every silver lining of course comes with a cloud. The cloud, the dimmer side of geo-engineering, has to do with liberal and republican freedom. Obviously (just as in the case of states) geo-engineering threatens to encroach on the individual’s intrusion-free zone: ‘the’ polity, or at least a collective, determines how geo-engineering will be used, thereby determines its side-effects, and thus dictates which new actions you can and cannot undertake. And just as in the case of states, the protection of liberal freedom here suggests or even necessitates that one embraces republican freedom: to maximally protect the former, one’s control over one’s plan of life, one needs to increase political participation. What makes this a disheartening conclusion is that most individuals’ impact on any global political problem is utterly negligible.

Conclusion Geo-engineering is certainly no straightforward blessing but it has potential. Assuming geo-engineering can work flawlessly, it will in one respect reduce the effective freedom of both states and individuals, since large-scale cooperation is required, in other words: it entails self-binding. But it has a liberating potential in another respect, if it achieves not merely in climate but also in socio-economic terms what it is supposed to do: protect and improve living conditions, creating more ‘actions you can undertake’. Whether that freedom is valuable is open to debate: the deontologist values freedom intrinsically, for the consequentialist it depends on whether or not geo-engineering supports ‘the right’ kind of society and the good life. In addition, geo-engineering will not necessary benefit everyone or every state – some benefit from climate change, some do not. Overall, however, it is irrational not to participate in the development and management of geoengineering strategies. Like the Star Wars shield, geo-engineering as a whole and every distinct geo-engineering technique and technology can be used as a weapon that will affect the effective freedom of each and every individual. Retreating to some kind of private sphere (or ‘splendid isolation’) is not an option. Distinguishing just four types of freedom and three stakeholders was sufficient to make it clear how utterly and perhaps hopelessly complex a sensible answer to the question ‘blessing or curse’ will be. After all, freedom is only one of many ethical concepts with which geo-engineering should be confronted; nor can we assume infallibility, equal risk figures for every technology, equal effects on all stakeholders, and so on. A chapter alone offers insufficient room to reach a complete reflective equilibrium on the pros and cons of geo-engineering – but any journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

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Notes 1 The obligatory caveat applies: on the rare occasions where I may use the term liberty, I will do so as a synonym for freedom. 2 Even if geo-engineering is still science fiction, ‘letting nature run its way’ as a nature management/design technique has already been adopted on a wide scale under the name ‘rewilding’ – cf. Tanasescu (2015). For critical discussions of this ‘creative appeal’ in the Anthropocene discourse in general see White, Arias-Maldonado, and Hailwood in this volume. 3 Deliberation and participation are not limited to western liberal democracies, but are a defining part of any decent society (cf. Rawls, 1999b, Crick, 2000).

References Barbour, I. (1980). Technology, Environment, and Human Values. New York: Praeger Publishers. Baskin, J. (2015). ‘Paradigm Dressed as Epoch: The Ideology of the Anthropocene.’ Environmental Values. 24(1), 9–29. Berlin, I. (1969). ‘Two Concepts of Liberty.’ In: I. Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 118–172. Chernilo, D. (2017). ‘The Question of the Human in the Anthropocene Debate.’ European Journal of Social Theory. 20(1), 44–60. Constant, B. (2010). The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns. First published 1819, Jonathan Bennett (ed). Available from: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/a ssets/pdfs/constant1819.pdf [Accessed 15th November 2017]. Cox, C. (2015). ‘Faulty Presuppositions and False Dichotomies: The Problematic Nature of “the Anthropocene”’. Telos. 172, 59–82. Crick, B. (2000). In Defence of Politics. 5th edn. London: Continuum. Dalby, S. (2007). ‘Ecological Intervention and Anthropocene Ethics.’ Ethics & International Affairs. 21. Available from: http://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2007/ecologica l-intervention-and-anthropocene-ethics-full-text/ [Accessed 15th November 2017]. De Bruin, B. (2009). ‘Liberal and Republican Freedom.’ Journal of Political Philosophy. 17(4), 418–439. Descola, P. (2013). Beyond Nature and Culture. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Di Chiro, G. (2016). ‘Environmental Justice and the Anthropocene Meme.’ In: T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J. Meyer & D. Schlosberg (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 362–381. Dobson, A. (2016) Environmental Politics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryzek, J., Norgaard, R. & Schlosberg, D. (2013). Climate-Challenged Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenton, T. (2016). Earth System Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lepori, M. (2015). ‘There Is No Anthropocene: Climate Change, Species-Talk, and Political Economy.’ Telos. 172, 103–124. Luke, T. (2015a). ‘Introduction: Political Critiques of the Anthropocene.’ Telos. 172, 3–14. Luke, T. (2015b). ‘On the Politics of the Anthropocene.’ Telos. 172, 139–162. MacCallum, G. (1967). ‘Negative and Positive Freedom.’ Philosophical Review. 76, 312–334. Oldfield, F., Barnosky, A., Dearing, J., Fischer-Kowalski, M., McNeill, J., Steffen, W. & Zalasiewicz, J. (2014). ‘The Anthropocene Review: Its Significance, Implications and the Rationale for a New Transdisciplinary Journal.’ The Anthropocene Review. 1(1), 3–7.

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Pattanaik, P. & Xu, Y. (1990). ‘On Ranking Opportunity Sets in Terms of Freedom of Choice.’ Recherches Economiques de Louvain. 56(3–4), 383–390. Rawls, J. (1999a). A Theory of Justice. 2nd ed. Harvard: Belknapp Press. Rawls, J. (1999b). The Law of Peoples. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Robock, A. (2008). ‘20 Reasons why Geoengineering may be a Bad Idea.’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 64(2), 14–18. Schlosberg, D. (2016). ‘Environmental Management in the Anthropocene.’ In: T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J. Meyer & D. Schlosberg (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 193–208. Sen, A. (1993). ‘Markets and Freedoms: Achievements and Limitations of the Market Mechanism in Promoting Individual Freedoms.’ Oxford Economic Papers. 45(4), 519–554. Swift, A. (2013). Political Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide for Students and Politicians. 3rd edn. Oxford: Polity Press. Szerszynski, B. (2017). ‘The Anthropocene Monument: On Relating Geological and Human Time.’ European Journal of Social Theory. 20(1), 111–131. Tanasescu, M. (2015). Environment, Political Representation, and the Challenge of Rights. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Trachtenberg, Z. (2015). ‘The Anthropocene, Ethics, and the Nature of Nature.’ Telos. 172, 38–58. Van Hees, M. (2000). Legal Reductionism and Freedom. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Van Hees, M. & Wissenburg, M. (1999). ‘Freedom and Opportunity.’ Political Studies. 47(1), 67–82. Wissenburg, M. (2009). Political Pluralism and the State. London: Routledge. Wissenburg, M. (2016). ‘The Anthropocene, Megalomania, and the Body Ecologic.’ In: P. Pattberg & F. Zeli (eds), Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene: Institutions and Legitimacy in a Complex World. London, Routledge, pp. 15–30.

11 SUSTAINABILITY GOVERNANCE IN A DEMOCRATIC ANTHROPOCENE The arts as key to deliberative citizen engagement Marit Hammond and Hugh Ward

Paul Crutzen’s suggestion to name a new geological epoch – the ‘Anthropocene’ – expresses recognition of the fact that human activity has become a key driving force of the Earth’s ecological processes (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). This acknowledgement demands renewed reflection on how the goal of sustainability ought to be conceptualised and approached in these conditions, including in relation to democracy. This chapter first outlines a particular account of sustainability in this light, and subsequently offers some reflections on its key societal foundations. Specifically, we argue for deliberative democratisation as a way of keeping societal development as open and reflexive as anthropocenic conditions demand, and highlight the realm of the arts as key to societal deliberation of the relevant kind. The argument is structured as follows. The next section reflects on the concept of sustainability in the Anthropocene, suggesting that sustainability in this context consists first and foremost in a society’s ongoing evolution being defined by patterns of reflexive openness. The section thereafter connects these patterns to deliberative democracy as a necessary foundation for sustainability governance, drawing out empathetic listening and critical contestation as the decisive processes for deliberation. These cannot be achieved by deliberative institutional innovations alone, but require a broader societal foundation for deliberation, for which the subsequent section highlights the role of the arts as a key facilitator. Finally, the last section concludes that sustainability in the inescapable, unpredictable and ever-changing conditions of the Anthropocene can then be neither guaranteed nor enforced; but it can be promoted in new ways within societal realms previously overlooked, such as a flourishing arts scene.

The concept of sustainability in the Anthropocene The sustainability of human societies conceptually denotes a lasting and normatively desirable response to the sum of the current socio-ecological crises, most

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notably climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and the associated resource scarcities. As such, it goes beyond environmental governance understood as the management of specific environmental problems; it constitutes not just a single end, but a successful response to all of the socio-ecological conditions that constrain human life on the planet, and that are themselves in constant change. Ecosystems are intricately interlinked through dynamic, complex feedback loops, so ecological change is not continuous and gradual, but episodic, moving in non-linear ways between different stable states (Holling and Meffe 1996, 332). In the Anthropocene, in light of an equally complex, irreversible and ever-intensifying hybridity between socio-political and ecological feedback loops (Arias-Maldonado 2014; Wapner 2014), humanity inexorably co-evolves with (Arias-Maldonado 2014, 4) or is even co-constituted by (Wapner 2014, 44) such ecological processes. As such, although sustainability has been defined in a multitude of ways, a conception based on the science of the underlying socio-ecological conditions manifests itself not in the achievement of specific, politically defined targets, but rather at the level of the fundamental patterns by which societies evolve over time. Thus, sustainability denotes a response not to a specific ‘anomaly’ or ‘problem’, but to a general reality of forever changing conditions. At this level, then, sustainability means aligning the fundamental patterns of a society’s ongoing evolution to become responsive to these underlying ecosystemic changes. Given their nature, this means the concept must ‘embrace uncertainty and unpredictability’ (Holling 2001, 391) as the general condition of modern societies in the Anthropocene. In the context of complex and dynamically changing ecosystems, sustainability would be wrongly conceived as a fixed project delineated in time and scope; rather, it is a moving target, defined at the level of the overall character of a society’s development over time (Holling and Meffe 1996, 332). As such, John Dryzek (2016, 4) highlights, sustainability in the Anthropocene becomes a more complex project than previous Green attempts at urging the recognition of ecological ‘limits’ or planetary ‘boundaries’ by conforming to particular visions of more ecologically harmonious lifestyles. Once it is recognised that ecosystems are not external systems, but that human societies are part of a singular social-ecological system and driving its very parameters, fixed limits or boundaries ‘lose precision in the face of the [resulting] dynamic and unstable character of the Earth system’ (Dryzek 2016, 4). Instead, sustainability implies the need for a continuous process of assessing, reflecting on, and responding to changes in the combined social-ecological system. Moreover, recognising that all sorts of human activities and agents can thus consciously transform ecosystems in all sorts of ways makes this process a matter of value judgement rather than a merely scientifictechnical issue (Arias-Maldonado 2013, 436, 438); and one that concerns and involves the society at large rather than the typical groups of ‘experts, specialists, and bureaucrats’ only (Bäckstrand 2003, 29). Thus, with unpredictability and change constituting the very essence of what it responds to, what is decisive for sustainability in this sense is not a managerial capacity to control specific problems, but rather a society’s overall reflexive openness;

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that is, its capacity to consciously change and adapt, responding not just to specific issues from within given governance frameworks and societal structures, but being able to overcome these kinds of ‘path dependencies’ themselves (Dryzek 2016). Openness must be ‘reflexive’ in this sense because it is not just any change (which occurs also in undirected ways) that advances sustainability as the fundamental character of the society, but only conscious change both towards and expressive of characteristics that enhance its long-term resilience. For example, if a society met what it considers a specific sustainability goal – say, staying within 2°C of global warming – this is still not indicative of its overall sustainability if it resulted as an unintentional side effect (say, of an unintended economic downturn), or as a result of merely relocating the cause of the underlying problem elsewhere in time or space (Robinson 2004). Conscious reflexivity, in contrast, involves learning from the past; retaining an openness to alternative pathways; and inducing deliberate change (Brulle 2010, 94), which in turn requires the society at large to engage in thinking about the future more openly, allowing its members to consider what kind of society they want to live in (Thompson 2010; Robinson 2004). Scientific research, and public debate on it, provide one component of such reflexiveness on the state and future of the society. Yet inasmuch as the ability to change the society’s developmental path must also include value change, collective ethical reflection is just as vital (Dryzek 2016; Arias-Maldonado 2013). In summary, when conceptualising sustainability and its governance imperatives in the Anthropocene, the focus must be on the complex, dynamic and open-ended interactions within combined social-ecological systems, hence on the broad societal foundations for a forever ongoing process of advancing sustainability. We argue that, at least for the Western industrialised societies which, in contrast to many other societies (Malm and Hornborg 2014), are the real driving force behind the emergence of the Anthropocene, one key foundation of sustainability is therefore an open, critical discourse continually pushing against the boundaries of established ways of thinking. As the next section highlights, this implies not just democracy as such, but new, more deeply reflexive forms of democratic engagement.

Empathetic listening and critical contestation: An account of deliberative sustainability governance The recognition that sustainability is more than a typical policy project that could be ‘implemented’ in a technocratic manner has led scholars to link it to democracy as a necessary approach: As a perpetual project that must express society’s visions and values, sustainability demands wide democratic engagement, as opposed to being a merely managerial task for experts (Barry 1996; Arias-Maldonado 2000). Specifically, the reflexivity necessary for societies to respond to the inherent uncertainty of anthropocenic conditions can be linked to deliberative democracy. Unlike existing forms of liberal democracy, which seek merely to aggregate people’s pre-existing preferences, deliberative democracy places at the core of democracy the kind of reflective discourse that can change people’s outlooks and open up

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new societal visions. This supports societal learning and reflexivity, can induce more public-minded and long-term orientations, and bring in so far unheard voices, including, crucially, the voice of nature itself (Dryzek 2016, 2000; Niemeyer 2014). Key to this is that citizens are not assumed (as they are in aggregative models of democracy) to make isolated, self-interested choices. Instead, democratic legitimacy demands reflective assent to political outcomes through processes of public deliberation (Dryzek 2010, 23). These allow the expression of a much wider range of views and concerns than elections, as well as ‘[imposing] a certain reflexivity on individual preferences and opinions’ (Benhabib 1996, 71) by inducing citizens to consider the perspectives of others and the common good. At the level of the society as a whole, deliberative legitimacy thus necessitates critical contestation of otherwise ideological or power-based influences on political decision-making, such that it provides for inclusive, critical discourse in a diverse public sphere that challenges entrenched views and structures. Compared with the liberal model, which is structurally tied to the unsustainable status quo (Dryzek 2000, 144), a deliberative democracy must therefore open up existing ideologies and entrenched structures to critical challenge; it is through this critical openness that it fosters a more thorough collective rethinking of the society’s future paths. Insofar as this includes an orientation towards ecological concern, it thus promises to provide a governance foundation for sustainability in the Anthropocene. Despite this theoretical promise, recent applications of deliberative democracy in practice have been of mixed promise for sustainability, however. Since the institutional turn in the theory (Dryzek 2010, 6–8), several democratic innovations have emerged in the area of environmental governance; yet these are often intentionally reconciliatory rather than critical in character, such as most models of ‘stakeholder governance’ and ‘partnerships’ for sustainable development (see e.g. Glasbergen 2007). On the other hand, deliberative democracy itself has evolved into different strands, many of which no longer emphasise the critical principles key to sustainability governance. Indeed, it is precisely the recent contributions focused on practical, real-world innovations that have largely forfeited the theory’s original critical orientation (Böker and Elstub 2015). For instance, although innovations like citizen assemblies and other ‘mini-publics’ have been widely celebrated for their impacts (Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Grönlund et al. 2014), including in terms of critical citizen voices urging more demanding sustainability policies through these channels (Dryzek 2016, 12), they are not genuinely critical and accessible social spaces, but artificial, invitation-based events with limited effectiveness (Böker 2017). As such, they do not go beyond the small scale and conventional focus at which some authoritative body has reason and resources to institute them. This mismatch between the critical origins of deliberative democracy and the comparative docility of its actual governance innovations must thus be seen as particularly troubling from a sustainability point of view, for which democratisation is central precisely for its promise to widen the space for inclusive social critique, yet whose urgency also requires real starting points for this in the here and now, including at the level of large-scale, structural problems.

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Thus, we argue, taking seriously the complexity of socio-ecological conditions in the Anthropocene prompts a closer look at the role of deliberative democracy in sustainability governance. If not everything that is called deliberation today is likely to be sufficiently reflective, what is it exactly that deliberation must achieve? In the next section, we close in on two aspects of deliberation that, when applied to the societal scale, are decisive for reflexive openness for sustainability: On the one hand, inducing a change in perspectives through empathetic listening, including to the voice of nature, as expressive of ecological concern; on the other, broadening horizons through critical contestation of entrenched ways of thinking. We focus on these two properties to argue that conventional deliberative innovations do not reach far enough, and thus highlight one alternative starting point towards deliberative democratisation: the role of the arts.

The role of the arts in society-wide deliberative reflection The Oxford English Dictionary defines art as ‘the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.’ We also include music, theatre, film, and creative writing alongside the visual arts. As creative processes, the arts do not solely seek to deal with empirical issues or to produce facts and validated theories about society and nature; thus, we differentiate the arts from the natural and human sciences, but also from purely factual reportage and documentary (though art may still have some factual content). For instance, we do not see Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth as an artistic intervention into the debate on climate change; a better example is the film The Day After Tomorrow, depicting a freezing future for the US after a reversal of the North Atlantic circulation. Artists’ own understanding of what art is are notoriously diverse, but Leo Tolstoy saw art as an activity leading to common empathetic understanding that creates community: Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them. (1960 [1899]) We now highlight the importance of empathy to deliberation and the role of the arts in relation to empathy.

The role of the arts in empathetic listening It is central to deliberative reflection that participants acknowledge and try to understand the perspectives of others – that is, that they are capable of empathy. The arts can help train people to empathise; that something like empathy, in turn, can affect the way that we reflect on, and orientate towards, the natural world.

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Meanings of empathy can be broadly grouped into empathy as a cognitive activity (forming an impression of what others are thinking and feeling), or empathy as an affective process (sharing emotions, or reacting in an emotionally appropriate way) (Morrell 2010, 39–40; Baron-Cohen 2011, 12). Although there has been considerable interest in empathy in recent years, there is a long tradition of suspicion of it as a basis for moral behaviour; for instance in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1976 [1759]). Drawing on this tradition and recent work in experimental psychology, Bloom (2017) argues that affective empathy focuses our attention towards a specific other, that it is capricious and largely favours those socially close to us. We do not deny that empathy can mislead if it is not balanced by reason; but by the same token, reasoned compassion may not be activated if empathy is absent. Cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and altruistic behaviour can be understood together as forming a process (Morrell 2010, 39–66): depending on a person’s disposition for empathy and the situation, cognitive and/or affective empathy may arise, and can lead to a change in behaviour so long as this is not ‘blocked’ by other motives, such as personal selfinterest (Loewenstein and Small 2007). Although some sort of link between empathy and deliberative democracy has been widely noted in the literature, Morrell’s (2010) is the most extensive treatment. He argues that the emphasis in existing discussions has largely been on the cognitive rather than affective aspects of empathy, because deliberation has been conceived as a process resulting from the application of ‘cool’ reason not ‘hot’ emotion. But it is actually both cognitive and affective empathy that are required for deliberative democracy (Morrell 2010, 101–128). Likewise, for sustainability as reflexive openness, we do not wish to limit empathy to its purely emotional aspects, but argue that it matters where it opens up new perspectives and thus new learning processes within deliberative encounters. For this, empathetic deliberation is not limited to the mini-public setting that much of Morrell’s experimental psychology seems to relate to. Goodin (2003) argues that reflective deliberation goes on in the minds of individuals whenever they exhibit empathy by trying to imagine the perspectives of others on the issues at hand, and he points out that the emotional appeal of the arts may be a powerful force in such reflections (Goodin 2003, 181). Thus, for successful sustainability governance, the question is how art can help induce this effect at the broad societal level. To start with, arts education might help citizens become better deliberators in the reflective sense by training them to empathise. Whereas the inability to empathise (or cognitively override relatively automatic empathetic feelings) can lead to dehumanising others (Haslam and Loughnan 2014), thus reinforcing social distance between individuals and undermining perspective taking (Cikara et al. 2011; Preston and de Waal 2002), research indicates that encouraging people to imagine the lives of outgroups increases their ability to empathise with them (Crisp and Turner 2009). Thus, for most people, empathy is not fixed by the biology of personality; rather, it can be encouraged through education. Humanistic education theorists

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like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers tried to dissolve the distinction between cognitive and affective aspects of education and, extending classical ideas about education, focused on the education of the whole person – including a vital role for the arts. In this conception students learn together, and learn to listen to and appreciate each other’s point of view (Rogers and Freiberg 1994, 157); for instance, when learning to play music together, they are taught to hear each other’s parts and not to assert their contribution to the detriment of what they seek to convey collectively. Consistent with this, Goldstein and Winner (2012) found evidence that experience in acting, an activity in which one must step into the shoes of others, leads to growth in both empathy and theory of mind. Moreover, people’s day-to-day experiences of art can also help induce appreciation of others’ positions and circumstances, mirroring our conception of an open, dialogical process of social learning for sustainability. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver makes the point that the arts can do more to help us to empathise, in some circumstances, than factual reporting by the media: The power of fiction is to create empathy. If lifts you away from your chair and stuffs you gently down inside someone else’s point of view … A newspaper could tell you that one hundred people, say, in an airplane, or in Israel, or in Iraq, have died today. And you can think to yourself, ‘How very sad’ … But a novel could take just one of those hundred lives and show you exactly how it felt to be that person … You could taste that person’s breakfast, and love her family, and sort through her worries as your own, and know that a death in that household will be the end of the only life that someone will ever have. As important as yours. As important as mine. (1996, 231) As has been pointed out by critics of the rationalistic cast of deliberative democracy (Ward et al. 2003; Young 2000), it is not only professional artists that can bring others’ positions alive in this way; so may ordinary people through storytelling, song, and narrative. Some might argue collectively experiencing others’ tragedy through the arts may only lead to a sort of emotional catharsis with no direct resultant change in behaviour (Aristotle 2013[c.335BC]); but it is not difficult to cite cases where vicarious experience through art relates to a wider critical movement. For instance, in his novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens (1954[1855]) exposed the appalling urban environmental conditions that exploited workers were subject to in the new industrial towns of Victorian England, and did so in a way that allowed middle-class readers to gain some empathetic insight into lives of poverty. With this, he called into question the inevitability of such environmentally and socially unsustainable capitalist forms, against the work of economists like McCulloch, Malthus, and Nassau Senior who had made poverty seem natural and inevitable (Henderson 2000). Art, then, can provoke empathetic engagement in a way that is highly relevant to deliberative reflexivity on sustainability. Crucially, it has been theorised to

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provoke perspective-taking not only between humans themselves, but in relation to nature, and thus ecological concern. Indeed, at its origins, the concept that eventually came to be labelled empathy was developed as part of aesthetic theory. The idea was that of understanding derived from projection on to the art object of aspects of the self, which was then extended to include projection on to natural features such as landscapes, resonating with the idea found in green theory of an expansive conception of the self that comes to include other species and whole ecosystems (Morrell 2010). For instance, in the 18th century, growing sensibility towards the pain experienced by animals as a result of human cruelty led to a widening of the circle of ethical concern that eventually led to legislative change, and was based on appreciation of the feelings that sentient creatures might have (Thomas 1983, 173–191). Aldo Leopold famously argued for a land ethic that ‘enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land’ (Leopold 1968[1949], 204). Such an ethic could be based solely on factual understanding of ecological processes, but Leopold undoubtedly saw it as also grounded in an affectively empathetic attachment to the land, as exemplified in his essay ‘Thinking Like a Mountain’ (Leopold 1968[1949], 129–133). There are numerous attempts by artists to try to make us think like other species, by imagining what it would be like to lead the life of the animal concerned; Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down (1972), the epic about the life of rabbits later turned into a film, is a classic of this kind. To be sure, while the idea of the arts playing a vital role in constructing common understandings of nature has been positively discussed by those concerned with sustainability, it is also possible to see powerful art works affecting a relative closure of viewpoints around a particular social construct of what nature is – or could be. If this occurred, it would violate the essential openness that we have argued is required. Thus, to avoid this, it is pluralism, dynamism and openness in the arts themselves that would seem to be necessary. In summary, then, artistic expression can be theorised as a particularly important contribution to deliberative processes when it comes to empathetic listening and perspective-taking, which in turn are key to rendering deliberation deep and reflective enough to play a role in sustainability. Not only do the arts increase our ability to empathise with others in the deliberative process, but they may also help us empathise with the natural world, and thus open up a vital new horizon.

The role of the arts in critical openness Some might suggest that it is unrealistic to envisage a society in which the arts flourished and were equally accessible to all. However, this is to underrate the role of ‘popular’ forms of artistic intervention that are arguably more accessible than ‘high’ culture, and that can and have been used to make political interventions. As Street argues, in the complex interplay between popular culture and capitalism, popular culture is neither just a form of manipulation nor simply a vehicle for

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radical self-expression (Street 1997). What is decisive is that it opens up potential spaces for ever new practices of critique. Indeed, this is crucial inasmuch as some key constraints on reflectiveness, critical social theory reminds us, are the boundaries of what is sayable, thinkable and imaginable in the first place. For critical theorists, structures of domination that suppress challenge and perpetuate a given order exist not just in the form of direct, tangible acts of oppression, but permeate people’s very thinking in the form of false ideological belief systems (e.g., White 1986). The practice of critique is what uncovers and challenges these, and is thus the only chance for social agents to emancipate themselves from these intangible, yet all the more pervasive forms of oppression and reflexive constraint (Rostbøll 2008, 146–7). Critique, in other words, is what has the potential to transcend not just specific rules or formal power structures, but, most crucially, the invisible ‘grammar’ (Norval 2006) that pre-structures people’s very perceptions and intuitions. For Kompridis (2006, 3–13), critique is thus central to the profound self-reflective learning process about a society’s forms of life and cultural traditions that can enable its members to ‘think from a new stance’ and transform their social practices. For societal openness, critique as a social practice is thus key; it alone marks the notion of an intrinsic pushing for new ideas, contestations, and changes in perspective each of which might reveal and overcome yet another limitation to the overall ‘societal mindset’. Inasmuch as familiar ways of thinking can impose a ‘grip’ on people’s perceptions, such critical ‘dislocations’ through a rearrangement of familiar elements is needed to help see the reality in a different light. As such, critique as a dislocation or ‘defamiliarisation’ (Levitas 2009, 56) of the takenfor-granted constitutes a decisive element by which an ethos of free and diverse engagement with the political in the public realm creates new beginnings and pathways. Some art deliberately sets out to create such dislocation. For instance, Bertolt Brecht described ways of acting and staging plays that deliberately hinder the audience’s identification with characters, pushing its members towards conscious evaluation of what they did and said (Brecht 1964, 91). Even mainstream television programming can (perhaps inadvertently) help subvert existing discursive dichotomies; the BBC’s Planet Earth II programme on cities brought to the attention of some 11 million viewers the reality that some forms of wildlife often flourish better in cities than in the environmentally impoverished countryside, thus subverting a previously taken-for-granted concept of ‘nature’ as separate from concentrated human activity. Another example is American artist Ellie Irons’ recent ‘Weedy Resistance’ project: By artistically drawing attention to urban plant life otherwise written off as ‘weeds’, Irons similarly questions the typically taken-for-granted human-nature distinction, and uses this as a starting point towards a feminist critique of the Anthropocene concept.1 To many, the arts constitute the public realm par excellence that pushes against the boundaries of the present in these ways. Conceptually, because of its ‘autonomy from society’, art provides a ‘reservoir for human freedom’ (Skees 2011, 916) that, unlike other realms in society, ‘does not conform to [the] external forces of influence’ that threaten critical reflectiveness (Skees 2011, 921). For Ypi (2012, 156),

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the arts are therefore the sphere in society that has the potential, and typically the self-understanding, to play the role of an avant-garde: transforming existing cultural and political practices in light of new projects for the emancipation of society. … These cultural and political initiatives have historically played a crucial role in developing the learning process by virtue of which previously discredited or problematic interpretations of the function and purpose of shared institutions have been replaced by more (allegedly) progressive views. This is precisely the kind of ‘learning process’ that is, we have argued, vital for modern societies’ capacity to advance sustainability in anthropocenic conditions. The arts can play a key creative role in ‘unlocking’ and thus enabling the imagination of new, previously unthinkable societal futures by ‘exploring, shaping, testing and challenging reality and images, thoughts and definitions of reality’ (Dieleman 2008, 2). Such ‘visioning’ has an innate ‘reflexive capital’ (Dieleman 2008, 7), contributing not just to learning in a technical or creative sense, but providing the critical dislocations that enable people to see the given reality in a different light and thus extending the very boundaries of the thinkable and sayable (Brecht 1964). For Rancière, this makes the arts a quintessentially political force, as ‘enabling words with the power of framing a common world’ (Rancière 2010, 155). Insofar, that is, as ‘certain forms of exclusion are instituted and active at the level of perception’ (Drake n.d., 2), and art is what ‘is displayed, or takes place, in the field of perception’ (Drake, n.d., 4), it takes on a political role as an ‘arts of resistance’ (Drake, n.d., 5; see also Rancière 2010, 134) against precisely the forms of domination that, according to critical theory, narrow down the space of ‘thinkable’ political options. In this way, the arts, by providing ‘sources of empowerment’, ‘alternative values’, and the ‘imaginative resources to create the “new story” that our civilisation so urgently needs’ (Clammer 2014, 66, 69; see also Lidström and Garrard 2014, 36), can thus be a vital foundation for the kind of critical-imaginative engagement with the society’s future that might achieve a reflective openness precisely through collective social interaction. Thus, empathy construed narrowly as an act of imagination about how other people, or indeed nature, might see things, is only one side to the role of artistic imagination in deliberative sustainability governance. These acts of imagination are about people as they are, not people as they could be in a very different society, and they are about nature as we receive it after millennia during which humankind has shaped its environment, not what nature might become. Deliberation conceived as an open-ended collective learning process about the relations between humankind and nature thus demands an additional dimension of critical, visionary thinking about what might be. Whilst ‘in most discourses of sustainability little attention is paid to the role of the arts’ (Clammer 2014, 65), the new anthropocenic recognition that sustainability governance can no longer be considered a mere technical issue demanding scientifically informed targets and solutions, but must be seen as a

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perpetual process whose social and critical dimensions are now at the forefront, urges an acknowledgement of the potential of the arts as one important foundation for societal engagement with sustainability.

Conclusion In the Anthropocene, conceptualising the normative end of sustainability and specifying its governance implications makes it imperative to reflect on the very broad societal foundations for appropriate general patterns of social-ecological evolution. Previous scholarship on sustainability governance has often focused on specific targets to be achieved through strategic governance interventions; such an approach would match only an understanding of sustainability as a response to external and clearly delineated environmental problems, and fails to provide a convincing foundation for the inherently dynamic, open-ended, and often unpredictable coconstitution of the mutually interlocked social-ecological systems that societies must be understood to be in the Anthropocene. While theorists are right in highlighting a role for deliberative democracy to engender reflexive governance in response to such conditions, this chapter has sought to stress the role of the arts as an important foundation for its effects at the societal level, as opposed to small-scale deliberative events only. An independent arts scene, we have argued, can be seen as the archetypical source of a simultaneously imaginative and critical general spirit, whose very raison d’être is the visualisation of new horizons through reflective engagement with new perspectives. Though most certainly suffering from its own limitations and obstacles as well, the cultural realm should thus at least be considered as one key dimension within the overall governance puzzle of what a democratic Anthropocene could look like. The key governance implication from this is to take seriously the conception of deliberative democracy as a system of interconnected social and political arenas – a vital one of which is the sphere of the arts. Deliberative democracy will provide a foundation for sustainability governance only if it can go beyond small-scale experiments such as mini-publics; and one way in which it can go beyond them is to conceptualise how broader societal arenas might engender similar influences on people’s broadening of perspectives and confrontation with critique. This is not an instrumental argument for sustainability only, because both empathy and critique enhance deliberation itself; the argument is instead that a deeper deliberative engagement at a broader, societal level can be key to sustainability even where previous experiments with deliberative environmental governance have not been able to facilitate such critical reflexivity. Specifically, artistic engagement supports a broad form of ‘societal deliberation’ by encouraging empathetic perspective-taking and a critical pushing against set belief systems; yet at this level, these cannot be simply instituted or ‘staged’. Instead, in order to promote such a role, societies ought to enable and facilitate a free, independent arts scene, such as through public funding for independent arts establishments; including a variety of creative and humanistic elements in public education; providing public spaces for expression

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and debate; protecting diverse and independent media; and transparency within formal governance. For Rancière, the arts can then become nothing less than an overarching ‘social practice’ that creates, and makes visible, new types of common spaces (Rancière 2010, 135, 138). Even though, or indeed precisely because, this does not follow any clear strategic mission towards a specific target (Rancière 2010, 140), it must be considered the key social resource and space for building reflexivity in the face of complexity – the vital challenge of sustainability governance in the conditions of the Anthropocene.

Note 1 https://inhabitingtheanthropocene.com/2017/05/03/weedy-resistance-multispecies-ta ctics-for-contesting-the-age-of-man/; see also https://ellieirons.com/.

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Clammer, J. (2014). ‘Art and the Arts of Sustainability’. Social Alternatives 33(3): 65–70. Crisp, R. J. and Turner, R. N. (2009). ‘Can imagined interactions produce positive perceptions? Reducing prejudice through simulated social contact’. American Psychologist 64 (4): 231–240. Crutzen, P. J. and Stoermer, E. F. (2000). ‘The “Anthropocene”’. Global Change Newsletter 41: 17–18. Dickens, C. (1954[1855]). Hard Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dieleman, H. (2008). ‘Sustainability, Art and Reflexivity: why artists and designers may become key change agents in sustainability’. In Sacha Kagan and Volker Kirchberg (eds.), Sustainability: A New Frontier for the Arts and Cultures. Frankfurt a. M.: VAS – Verlag für Akademische Schriften, 1–26. Drake, C. (n.d.). ‘Ethics and Aesthetics: Alfredo Jaar and the Role of Art in Political Critique’. Unpublished manuscript. Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryzek, J. S. (2010). Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryzek, J. S. (2016). ‘Institutions for the Anthropocene: Governance in a Changing Earth System’. British Journal of Political Science 46(4): 937–956. Glasbergen, P. (2007). ‘Setting the Scene: The Partnership Paradigm in the Making’. In Pieter Glasbergen, Frank Biermann and Arthur P. J. Mol (eds.), Partnerships, Governance and Sustainable Development: Reflections on Theory and Practice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Goldstein, T. R. and Winner, E. (2012). ‘Enhancing Empathy and Theory of Mind’. Journal of Cognition and Development 13(1): 19–37. Goodin, R. E. (2003). Reflective Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goodin, R. E. and Dryzek, J. S. (2006). ‘Deliberative Impacts: The Macro-Political Uptake of Mini-Publics’. Politics & Society 34(2): 219–244. Grönlund, K., Bächtiger. A. and Setälä, M. (2014). Deliberative Mini-Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process. Colchester: ECPR Press. Haslam, N. and Loughnan, S. (2014). ‘Dehumanization and Infrahumanization’. Annual Review of Psychology 65(4): 399–423. Henderson, J. P. (2000). ‘“Political Economy is a Mere Skeleton Unless …”: What Can Social Economists Learn From Charles Dickens?’ Review of Social Economy 57(2): 141–151. Holling, C. S. and Meffe, G. K. (1996). ‘Command and Control and the Pathology of Natural Resource Management’. Conservation Biology 10: 328–337. Holling, C. S. (2001). ‘Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems’. Ecosystems 4: 390–405. Kingsolver, B. (1996). High Tide in Tucson. New York: Harper-Collins. Kompridis, N. (2006). Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future. Cambridge: MIT Press. Leopold, A. (1968[1949]). A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Levitas, R. (2009). ‘The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society: Utopia as Method’. In: T. Moylan and R. Baccolini (eds.), Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming. Oxford: Peter Lang, 47–68. Lidström, S. and Garrard, G. (2014). ‘“Images adequate to our predicament”: Ecology, Environment and Ecopoetics’. Environmental Humanities 5: 35–53. Loewenstein, G. and Small, D. A. (2007). ‘The Scarecrow and the Tin Man: The Vicissitudes of Human Sympathy and Caring’. Review of General Psychology 11(2): 112–126.

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Malm, A. and Hornborg, A. (2014). ‘The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative’. The Anthropocene Review 1(1): 62–69. Morrell, M. E. (2010). Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking and Deliberation. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Niemeyer, S. (2014). ‘A Defence of (Deliberative) Democracy in the Anthropocene.’ Ethical Perspectives 21(1): 15–45. Norval, A. (2006). ‘Democratic Identification: A Wittgensteinian Approach’. Political Theory 34(2): 229–255. Preston, S. D. and de Waal, F. B. M. (2002). ‘Empathy: its ultimate and proximate bases’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 25(1) :1–72. Rancière, J. (2010). ‘The Paradoxes of Political Art’. In Steven Corcoran (ed.), Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury Continuum. Robinson, J. (2004). ‘Squaring the circle? Some thoughts on the idea of sustainable development’. Ecological Economics 48: 369–384. Rogers, K. and Freiberg, H. J. (1994). Freedom to Learn. New York: Merill. Rostbøll, C. F. (2008). Deliberative Freedom: Deliberative Democracy as Critical Theory. Albany: SUNY Press. Skees, M. W. (2011). ‘Kant, Adorno and the work of art’. Philosophy and Social Criticism 37 (8): 915–933. Smith, A. (1976[1759]). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Edited by D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Street, J. (1997). The Politics of Popular Culture. Philadelphia: Temple Press. Thomas, K. (1983). Man and the Natural World. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Thompson, Allen (2010). ‘Radical Hope for Living Well in a Warmer World’. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 23(1–2): 43–59. Tolstoy, L. N. (1960 [1899]). What is Art? Translated Alymer Maude. Reprinted Hackett: Indianapolis. Ward, H.; Norval, A.; Landman, T., and Pretty, J. (2003). ‘“Open citizens’ juries and the politics of sustainability’. Political Studies 51(2): 282–299. Wapner, P. (2014). ‘The Changing Nature of Nature: Environmental Politics in the Anthropocene’. Global Environmental Politics 14(4): 36–54. White, S. K. (1986). ‘Foucault’s Challenge to Critical Theory’. American Political Science Review 80(2): 419–432. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ypi, L. (2012). Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

12 CRITICAL DESIGN, HYBRID LABOR, JUST TRANSITIONS Moving beyond technocratic ecomodernisms and the it’s-too-late-o-cene Damian White

We live in hybrid worlds, dynamic worlds, urban-ecological worlds that now present significant challenges for all manner of eco-political discourse. Abiding assumptions, that a provident “balance of nature” ultimately characterizes ecosystems, have been steadily replaced over the last three decades by stochastic and nonlinear views of socio-ecological relations, leaving the question of appropriate baselines for conservation, restoration or land management messy and political (Head 2016; Head 2017). Scientific ecologists who once began their investigations of “Nature” by taking humans out of the picture are now being challenged everywhere by historical ecologists, environmental historians and ecological anthropologists demanding we recalibrate to put people, social processes, history and political economy back in (see Moore 2015; Head 2016). Donna Haraway has been telling us for forty years that our nature-cultures have given rise to odd cyborgs and companion species, strange social natures and technonatures spilling out across the landscape (see Haraway 2016; Arias-Maldonado 2015; Wark 2015; White, Rudy and Gareau 2016). Such observations seemed to have little traction in the wider scientific community and now, suddenly, the concept of “the Anthropocene” is everywhere. Furthermore, whilst all these confusing challenges to the eco-political imagination have been going on, a steady drip of studies from climate science would seem to inform us on a nearly weekly basis that “Anthropocene”, “Manthropocene”, “Capitalocene” “Chthulucene” or otherwise, the likelihood of preventing an average of 2C (3.6F) of warming in this century is slipping away. These are confusing times for many articulations of environmental positions and politics. A political field, that has long been drawn to what Tony Fry has named “the illusion of permanence”, to the notion that we can return to a stable state, to homeostasis, is struggling intellectually to re-adjust to the prospects of socio-political and socio-ecological worlds marked by near permanent unsettlement (see Fry 2009; White, Gareau and Rudy 2017; Connolly 2017). We increasingly know that

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in the best possible circumstances, human life in the post-Holocene is going to take place on a dynamic, restless and warmer planet (Jamieson 2014). Strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation will have to be iterative and ongoing, made again and again and again (Tonkinwise 2011; White, Gareau and Rudy, 2017). Yet, ecopolitical discussions of our post-carbon, post Holocene futures have become rather stuck. At least in much of the affluent world, Anthropocene times may have generated extensive epistemological, ontological, disciplinary and ethical debates around how we conceptualize our future socio-ecological futures. However, with a few honorable exceptions (e.g. Barry 2012), the contribution these discussions are making to help facilitate the emergence of new political visions of possible sustainable sociotechnical political futures to come, is much less clear. Alex Steffen (2016) captures one aspect of this impasse when he observers: “Much of our popular thinking about ‘sustainability’ is old. Many of our ideas about green living sprang from the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Then, they seemed like good answers to the ecological problems of that time”. But we now face the prospect of advocating for change on “a nearly inconceivable scale” and seem to have few resources to help us. This chapter will argue that a second and related aspect of this impasse is that we are increasingly encouraged to believe the only options we have on the table are to embrace a technocratic and centrist vision of a good Anthropocene or consign ourselves to the unfolding of the apocalyptic Anthropocene. I want to suggest that the discursive dominance of these two currents has suppressed the political imaginary and crowded out the many movements struggling to articulate a politics for the Anthropocene focused on just transitions (see Newell and Mulvaney 2013). In short, we need to open up more political space to have other kinds of political conversations that can open up other kinds of political imaginaries. Three strategies are proposed here to move us in other directions: (i) I will argue we need to provincialize, pluralize and expand the field of possible post-Holocene futures well beyond the current dominance of technocratic modernization imaginaries or the despair that is generated by the fear that we have now entered the it’stoo-late-o-cene; (ii) I will suggest that the spaces emerging between critical design and the critical social sciences provides interesting places to think beyond technocratic ecomodernism – even if the field has limitations; and (iii) finally, I will suggest that modes of critical design futuring need to more carefully attend to the “labor point of view” (Wark 2015; Moore 2015; Battistoni 2017) to expand the range and appeal of the just transition.

The apocalyptic Anthropocene and the it’s-too-late-o-cene The rise of Authoritarian Populisms across the affluent world clearly could not have come at a worse time for the climate or the global environment. Trump in the US, Orban in Hungary, the Law and Justice Party in Poland, Pauline Hanson in Australia, and so on, have all been remarkably successful in combining a politics

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of resentment and xenophobia with calls for doubling down on fossil fuel extractivism and climate/environmental denialism. This has occurred at the very time when leading climate scientists like Kevin Anderson were questioning whether holding us to a two degrees rise in average global temperatures was in any way plausible given present trends, and James Hansen had declared the two-degree guardrail was no safe guardrail at all but going to take us into completely uncharted waters. At more general level, for some time now it has been environmental crisis reworked as the apocalyptic Anthropocene that has come to dominate political imaginaries of the future coursing through much of the affluent world. Not since the mid-1970s, have we seen such a torrent of survivalist and catastrophist currents move through Anglo-American popular culture. From The Walking Dead to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road visions of socio-ecological collapse are everywhere. Our bookshops heave with apocalyptic environmental tomes. Clive Hamilton has offered us a Requiem for a Species. Roy Scranton offers us instructions on Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. The ever ironic Bruno Latour seems to have lost his cheeky Gallic sense humor of late and has now embraced James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia. In Britain, The Dark Mountain project – mixing English nationalism with deep ecology – suggests we should take to the hills. Some red-green currents in Europe seem increasingly drawn to the pessimistic slogan of “degrowth” to mobilize resistance. On the far Right, libertarian billionaires are buying up high security “eco-bolt holes” in New Zealand just in case the shit really does hit the fan. On the far Left, there is talk of the need for communism with lifeboats to build again after the great die off. Turning our multiple socio-ecological crises into a vision of the future as the apocalyptic Anthropocene, of course, has a good deal of material to work with. The existing climate models of the IPCC are not without their own apocalyptic possibilities. The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC 2017) presents a 1:10 chance of runaway global warming which would be a complete calamity. Beyond rising greenhouse gas emissions and endless worrying news on biodiversity metrics, problems appear to be piling up on many fronts. Coral bleaching runs through the Great Barrier reef; chronic and persistent air pollution now wraps the mega cities of the South; there are now firm signs that the West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to fail; and methane-spewing holes have emerged in the Siberian permafrost. Still, there is a big difference between acknowledging our current socio-environmental politics may have catastrophic outcomes if all things remain equal and a politics of Malthusian catastrophism that presents all things remaining equal as the most likely outcome. Moreover, it is a legitimate political question to ask – what publics are served by an ecology of panic? How does “Learning to die in the Anthropocene” (Scranton 2015) speak to the concerns of people who have scarcely been able to make a living in the Holocene? In what way does the slogan “Degrowth Now!” build the courage and competence to struggle for a just transition in Detroit or Appalachia, Athens or Andalucía, whose populations have experienced more than their fair share of neo-liberal degrowth for decades? As the apocalyptic Anthropocene increasingly tips into the it’s-too-late-o-cene, who is going

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to benefit from this particular political imaginary and whose stories and struggles threaten to be silenced or rendered invisible? If the apocalyptic Anthropocene now seems to offer ecopolitics little more than “melancholic paralysis” (Wark 2015) or even what William Connolly has insightfully named, a ecopolitics of “passive nihilism” (2017), the desire to refute this current has led many others to turn back to the Cold War project of “modernization”. Such is the manoeuvre that has been made by The Ecomodernist Manifesto to take one prominent example. The Ecomodernist Manifesto is a statement of faith and purpose written by eighteen prominent environmental scientists, social scientists and campaigners orchestrated by The Breakthrough Institute. The core assertion of the Manifesto denotes a full frontal assault on end times ecology, ecological romanticism, deep ecology and everything else that would follow in its wake. Ecomodernists argue that it is high time that overfed Northern environmentalists recognized that the spread of “modernization” over the last 200 years has not just generated a remarkable improvement of living standards, pacification and the benign spread of liberal democracies but that it has delivered, and will continue to deliver, a range of clear ecological benefits if we continue down our current path, albeit in an adjusted manner. Quite contrary to the pessimistic projects of end times ecologists, it is maintained, “modernization” largely via technological innovation, drives ecologically benign processes of decoupling, agricultural intensification and urban densification. Unlike end times ecologists, ecomoderns see modernization as a right that all members of our global population should share. They see many needs as presently remaining hopeless, unmet and rarely discussed by Northern environmentalists (notably energy poverty). They also suggest many reasons to be cheerful about our future. Ecomodernists have argued that reforestation is occurring across parts of the Northern hemisphere, decoupling is now a real possibility, agricultural intensification has more gains than losses and the mass movement of peoples to the city will, on balance, produce good outcomes. Indeed, ecomodernists argue if we could just speed up such processes, massively scale up public and private investment in postcarbon energy “breakthrough” technologies and, in the interim, get over our irrational fears of nuclear energy and fracking for natural gas, this will ensure that we have every prospect of achieving a “good Anthropocene”. A significant body of elite public opinion makers in the OECD would certainly seem to be on board with the Ecomodernist Manifesto and have concluded it would be good for them and for the maintenance of the institutional settlement they value. From The Economist to The Financial Times, and from the Davos set to the Gates Foundation, a broad “ecomodern zeitgeist” can be observed to have settled over those sections of the business class who are wary of embracing authoritarian populists or climate contrarians and indeed see many opportunities for money to be made in low carbon capitalism. But who exactly would this “good Anthropocene” of North American ecomodernists be good for? Does it really provide an inspiring vision of the future that

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can push back against the apocalyptic Anthropocene? Are publics really going to rally round a call for green technocracy as an alternative to Trump and his ilk?

Designing the future so that everything must change so that everything stays the same. There is much to say about the rise of various end times ecologies and technocratic ecomodernisms as attempts to provide futuring frames for negotiating the Anthropocene. It is tempting to think about these political frames as polar opposites and in many obvious ways there are sharp and profound differences among them. But there are also strange convergences that can be teased out from these lines of political argument that deserve fuller investigation as well. I would like to suggest that both these discourses work out from a series of binary arguments and a conceptualization of socio-ecological, socio-spatial and socio-technological relations and agencies that are remarkably power free. Advocates of the apocalyptic Anthropocene and the good Anthropocene both begin by presenting human beings in generic, ontological terms as either “environmental degrader” or “historical demiurge”. We are then encouraged to see socio-environmental problems as attributable to the universal “we who have all contributed to the crisis” or the unfortunate outcome of a modernization process which “we have all gained from”. Such ways of framing the discussion immediately direct attention away from the long histories of colonialism and plunder that are intimately entangled with our current environmental problems and many of the solutions proposed by the rich and powerful. This binary frame also detracts attention from the disproportional contributions that specific institutional actors, financial and industrial sectors, modes of valuing and accumulation have made to generating ecological and climate crisis, or the role that specific social groups have made to environmental degradation. More troubling still are the ways in which this binary logic encourages, on all sides, over-simplistic answers to complicated matters such as the virtues of “modernization” and “growth.” The proposition that environmental questions can boil down to the binary issue of whether we should be for or against “growth” or “modernity” is a hallmark of both discourses. The proposition that a critical interrogation of the socio-ecological consequences of modernity/coloniality might need to grapple with startling technological advances and dramatic rises in living standards (for some) and genocide, colonialism and cultural regression (for others) is absent from the discussion (Whyte 2016). The proposition that a critical consideration of the legacy of economic growth might require careful excavation of the qualitative versus quantitative aspects of growth; attention to uneven development, patriarchy and settler colonialism, the different ecological and health impacts of different kinds of growth; and the different political effects of different kinds of growth (Schwartzman 2012; is foreclosed. In short, the notion is lost that we might need some critical capacity to excavate the dialectics of growth/immiseration; pacification/violence, clean up/spatial displacement through ecologically uneven exchange that defines the global neo-liberal production of social nature.

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In terms of futures it can be observed that both these positions offer ways of thinking about possible futures that enrol legitimate scientifically grounded fears with many more cultural assumptions, anxieties and fatalist worldviews, which are then projected onto the rest of the world. As Kyle Powys Whyte (2016) has observed, the “eco-apocalypse to come” – that has long underpinned so much white North American environmental discourse – rarely reflects on the situated politics of apocalyptic discourse, notably that the apocalypse happened a very long time ago for many black, brown, indigenous and other subordinated peoples and for many still is ongoing. Similarly, North American Ecomodernists champion the liberatory power of “modernization” but demonstrate no interest in reflecting on the historical role that Cold War modernization theory has played in legitimizing the neo-colonial foreign policy ambitions of US liberals and conservative regimes alike to remake the world in the image of the USA. Modernization theory and its allied political praxis has regularly been used by US foreign policy elites and the US military to support certain kinds of modernization projects that ally with US interests (e.g. Pinochet’s Chile) but fundamentally undermine other modernization projects that could open up other modern paths to different kinds of futures (e.g. Allende’s Chile). For example, the vision of urban/rural futures offered in the Manifesto, of speeding up existing process of neo-liberal planetary urbanization as is, to open up more room for a “rewilded Nature” is both technocratic but also oddly reminiscent of many North American wilderness imaginaries of old which assumed “optimal nature” emerges when people are removed. No investigation is made of the complex “push” and “pull” factors speeding current manifestations of planetary urbanization or the role that expulsions and dispossession has played in driving current processes of global urbanism (see Sassen 2014). Little attention is given to the proposition that rural worlds are historical and dynamic with their own potentialities for different futures. There is no reflection on the possibility that in peopled landscapes living with other non-humans could take many different forms, nor is there much reflection on the question as to whether diverse rural peoples across the planet want to live in zootopia. To be sure, ecomodernists are right to argue that processes of urbanization can come with many social and environmental gains. There is much to be said for modes of futuring that place the construction of just, livable modes of sustainable urban futures at the center of our analysis. However, to move this discussion forward would require more careful engagement with the progressive and regressive ways in which urban ecological modernities can evolve. As Daniel Aldana Cohen (2017) has argued we need tools to distinguish “luxury” modes of urban greening that consolidate existing forms of power and privilege, surveillance and security, from attempts to build “democratic urban ecologies” that try to do the reverse. There is a world of difference between supporting a functionalist account of modernization that merely seeks to further planetary urbanization as is and supporting a modern urban ecological politics to build just and democratic urban futures. We already know that urban modernization as is can facilitate class and

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racial segregation, slumification, green gentrification and green governmentality and it can sustain high carbon and parasitic modes of urban development which merely displace their social and environmental “bads” onto other spaces and places. This is a very different modernizing project though from the project to build sustainable urban futures that can internalize their carbon and other environmental externalities, find just ways to cool, green and build resilient cities for all and are committed to the view that the rights to the sustainable city for all must be secured through the provision of new public goods (like affordable housing, education and healthcare) and new participatory design strategies and democratic fora that fundamentally distribute power and possibility. Modernization theory though, with its preference for grand generalizations has few conceptual tools to make these distinctions. Are you for or against modernization? The question is almost completely useless for thinking politically about the many possible future paths we might take.

Pluralizing and provincializing ecological modernities We need then to push back on the proposition that the only options we have are to embrace a technocratic vision of the good Anthropocene or consign ourselves to the unfolding of the apocalyptic Anthropocene. How can we do this? I would suggest a first move here should be pluralize and provincialize 1 discussions of possible ecological modernities. The ideology of modernization steeped as it is in functionalism, technocentricism, a-political “system imperatives” and cold war liberalism needs to be decentered, the matter of capitalism needs to return and the possibilities of thinking plural futures needs to be re-grounded. A fully compelling attempt to map, contextualize and situate ecopolitical futures beyond a technocratic ecomodernist imaginary is a vast undertaking, It would have to encompass the full diversity of socio-ecological imaginaries, running across the global North and global South, consider contributions from radical and colonial imaginaries as well as capture surging modes of subaltern and post/decolonial futuring traditions emerging out of many places from afro-futurisms, latinx futurisms, indigenous futurisms and beyond. Such a project is vital but beyond the scope of this chapter. Let us do something a little more delimited here. If we focus just on the forms of sustainable transition that have dominated affluent world eco-political imaginaries it quickly becomes apparent that there have been many different proposals and visions of what we might broadly conceptualize as an “ecologically modern future” running through such literatures in the environmental social sciences, eco-design, sustainable architecture, green engineering, radical technology, ecology, critical theory and beyond – most of which have had nothing to do with “modernization theory.” As Table 12.1 demonstrates, contemporary debates about “modernization” are presented in universal, singular and monolithic terms by some of the most influential technocentric ecomoderning discussions in the US. However, Table 12.1 demonstrates that as we move beyond US centric technocratic ecomodernisms to consider quite different traditions of Bright Green ecomodernisms, European traditions of the sociology of

1. Technocratic Ecomodernism Breakthrough Institute Breakthrough Energy Coalition Gates/Zuckerberg, et al. Environmental Progress

Not a focus. The poor, marginalized & women need more capitalism, economic growth + development. Very restricted. Green/tech billionaires & “third way”/ post-partisan/centerright policy makers; nuclear industry.

No interest. Prioritize economic growth not r edistribution. Schumpeter innovation plus market capitalism.

Yes. Continue & globalize US urban trends to encourage urbanism as is and expand capital and tech intensive agrofood system; facilitate rural depopulation + create opportunities for rewildling.

No. Much of the world needs to consume more.

No. Continue & globalize existing industrial & manufacturing opportunities across the globe.

Yes. Post carbon grid scale infrastructure needed: Massive nuclear expansion gas/fracking, clean coal, carbon capture & storage, solar, HEP.

Yes. Key focus. Massive publically & privately funded R&D push for post carbon tech with growing focus on making nuclear affordable new financial models for nuclear, encourage R&D into carbon capture and storage.

(Continued )

Transform Power relations?

Vision of Public/ Audience?

Change Ownership and Control?

Urban/ Rural Transition?

Reorganize Consumption?

Reorganize Industry?

Energy Transition?

R&D?

TABLE 12.1 Pluralizing and provincializing affluent world conceptualizations of possible ecologically modern futures

2. Bright Green Ecomodernism Rocky Mountain Institute Circular Economy Wuppertal Institute Project Drawdown

(Continued ) Transform Power relations? Limited interest. Focused on unleashing energies of green entrepreneurs, green professionals, green business. Some interest in environmentally positive results of women’s emancipation.

Vision of Public/ Audience? Relatively restricted. Green/social entrepreneurs + first movers; green consumers; green CEOs. Audiences for TED Talks. Business environmentalism.

Change Ownership and Control? No. Implement Green/Natural Capitalism. Demonstrate “win-win” possibilities for all.

Urban/ Rural Transition? Yes. Encourage smart green Cities; Urban densification; Green urban service design; Smart transit; new car technologies; automation. Protect small organic producers; experiment with agro-ecology; make rural economies viable; experiment with local/ urban farming.

Reorganize Consumption? Yes. Ethical Consumption; Green Consumption; Mindfulness; Ecolabelling.

Reorganize Industry? Yes. Circular economy, cradle to cradle/waste as food. Green chemistry; green materials; biomimicry.

Energy Transition?

Yes. Renewables, distributed power, smart grids, energy efficiency new transportation technologies. Varied positions on nuclear power, from hostile to pragmatic.

R&D?

Yes. R&D, but deployment now of the full range of existing green innovations at all scales most important.

SocioTechnical Transitions Frank Geels

3. European Sociology of Ecomodernization Wageningen University Arthur P.J. Mol Gert Spaargaren

Limited interest. Questions of power, justice, and inequality tend not to be a focus of research. Broad. Academics; social movements; EU policy makers; political parties; consumers; green business.

Not a focus. Generally sympathetic to Northern European Corporatism, Social Democratic model/ Third Way/ Reflexive modernization.

Yes. Green Urban Policy; New Urbanism; Integrated green urban planning. Ecological Modernization of agriculture, but pragmatic stressing of multiple methods: organics, agro-ecology, sustainable intensification, GM.

Yes. Take ethical consumption + green consumption seriously. Virtues of consumer labelling.

Yes. Policy innovation for bright green innovation. Closed loop production, industrial ecology. Green chemistry, green materials, ecoefficiency.

Yes. Expand & globalize renewable & tech policies of environmental innovators, firms, regions, & cities in EU.

Yes. As with 2, but in addition expand & globalize gains + good practice of Northern European environmental policy & environmental management systems. Support whole system Innovations such as the multi-level perspective

(Continued )

Transform Power relations?

Vision of Public/ Audience?

Change Ownership and Control?

Urban/ Rural Transition?

Reorganize Consumption?

Reorganize Industry?

Energy Transition?

R&D?

4. Ecological Urbanism/ Landscape Urbanism Mohsen Mostafavi Tim Beatley William McDonough & Michael Braungart

(Continued ) Transform Power relations? Some interest. Concerns for “social inclusion/ engagement;” social equity; environmental justice; ethics; and aesthetics.

Vision of Public/ Audience? Restricted. Largely addressed to Architecture + Design Profession + Urban policy makers.

Change Ownership and Control? Not a focus. More attention given to “eco-city beautiful,” public art/ design.

Urban/ Rural Transition? Yes. As with 2 but more focus on architectural, design, technocentric/aesthetic interventions. Examples: net zero buildings; walkable cities; smart tech; retrofitting urban agricultural & urban food opportunities embedded in broad urbanspaces; new urban landscapes /food-scapes.

Reorganize Consumption? Yes. Ethical Consumption Green Consumption

Reorganize Industry? Yes. Generally supportive of 2 & 3.

Energy Transition?

Yes. Generally supportive of strategies proposed by 2 and 3.

R&D?

Yes. Mainly concerned with design-focused R&D for new building materials, new spatial topologies, architectural & landscape innovations.

5. Green Collar Economy/Green New Deal Van Jones Bill McKibben Robert Polin

Yes. Committed to Socioeco justice for all. Equity focused. Views the social democratic state as the driver of the just transition.

Very broad. Workers; activists in labor movement, Environmental Justice movement, and the Progressive community. Left Democrats; LeftGreen Social Democrats. Yes. Social democratic/ green Keynesian transition needed. Culturally inclusive and environmentally just transition needed.

Yes. Focus on environmentally just & culturally inclusive green urbanism: eco-urban retrofitting; socially just adaptive reuse; upgrading public housing & public space; affordable green public goods (eg: transport). Agricultural commitments of 2 + 3, with focus on diversified and just green urban and rural economies. Concern for rights of agro-food workers and just redesign of agro-food industry.

Yes. As with 3, but more focus on linking consumption to environmental justice, labor rights & local development.

Yes. As 2 + 3, but more interest in planning, industrial policy; worker orientated/ owned green production; co-ops; public works.

Yes. As with 2 + 3, but greater focus on energy transition as stimulus for public works, “good green jobs,” & economic redevelopment.

Yes. Publically funded R&D vital, but prioritize deployment of energy tech; retro-fitting with existing tech + even low tech. Public recompense for publically funded R&D needed.

(Continued )

Transform Power relations?

Vision of Public/ Audience?

Change Ownership and Control?

Urban/ Rural Transition?

Reorganize Consumption?

Reorganize Industry?

Energy Transition?

R&D?

6. Design for Radical, Social, and Eco Innovation Radical Participatory Planning Transition Design Critical Design Redirective Practice Design for Community Economies

(Continued ) Vision of Public/ Audience? Very expansive. Humans as zoon politikon & civic designers. Radical designers artists. Nonhumans.

Change Ownership and Control? Yes. Generally supportive of bottom up neighborhood/community/ municipal/ regional control; libertarian municipalism; community economies; & cosmopolitian localism..

Urban/ Rural Transition? Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with more emphasis on virtues of decentralized neighborhood/ community owned green service design; new communitarian modes of pleasure and leisure; bottom up DIY/tactical green urbanism. Focus on local organic urban gardening; protecting small farmers, peasant agriculture & commons though permaculture agroecology, animal rights & welfare; virtues of moving beyond meat.

Reorganize Consumption? Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with emphasis on collective consumption; sharing; prosuming; mindfulness; sufficiency; ideas for life & leisure beyond consumer culture.

Reorganize Industry? Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with more emphasis on virtues of distributed & localized coproduction/ creation; prosumers; post-object design + production, artisan, maker & repair cultures.

Energy Transition?

Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with more emphasis on experiments in bottom up community ownership, energy democracy, & energy saving through community behavior change toward altered lifestyles, service design, and convivial low carbon living.

R&D?

Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with more emphasis on R&D with people. Civic invention from below, e.g. citizen science, indigenous science, and citizens’ knowledge. Convivial tech; democratic invention; social innovation.

Yes. Of critical importance. Generally focused on disrupting corporate power, patriarchy, bureaucracy, and coloniality through support of decolonial participatory transition strategies.

Transform Power relations?

7. Ecosocialism & Social Ecofeminisms Barry Commoner André Gorz David Harvey Donna Haraway Christian Parenti.

Urban/ Rural Transition? Yes. As with 2 + 5, but embeds green urban transition in popular democratic urban planning & budgeting, along with state institutions that redistribute wealth and power. Land reform + distribution, socialized agriculture. Build a new sustainable commons. Support and fully empower rural populations to develop post-patriarchical and post capitalist agro-food systems..

Reorganize Consumption? Yes. But holds that a decommodified world based on rational consumption for human need will look very different to current consumer culture or green consumption. Skeptical of mindfulness & green consumption.

Reorganize Industry? Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with call to build socialized industrial ecologies + convivial modes of industrial design to give workers power + control. Production to facilitate social need, gender emancipation, & self-management.

Energy Transition?

Yes. As with 2, 3, + 5, but with view that new ownership structures needed for public energy transition via progressive developmental transition. Calls for state/social ownership, public procurement, and for squeezing waste out of system through de-militarization + socially rational production + energy efficiency.

R&D?

Yes. As 5 + 6 but problem identified not as R&D deficit, but rather wasteful & irrational capitalist/ patriarchal accumulation/ militarism, and commodification of knowledge. Favors socializing R&D via democratic innovation clusters that bring many forms of expertise into dialogue. Build a de-commodified intellectual commons.

Yes. Core concern. Calls for move from capitalist ownership and property relations to social/collective/communal ownership.

Change Ownership and Control? Very expansive Addressed to working people.

Vision of Public/ Audience? Key Focus. Systematically challenge, disrupt and unravel market power, militarism, imperialism, patriarchy, & the domestic division of labor in favor of a post- patriarchial & post-capitalist sustainable future.

Transform Power relations?

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ecomodernism/sociotechnical transitions, the green collar economy/green new deal discourse, traditions of radical, critical and transition design and finally discussions of eco-socialism and eco-feminism, we can see that even if we delimit our focus to affluent world discussions a much broader and much more plural set of understandings emerges around modernity, capitalism and what it might mean to conceptualize post-Holocene futures. Table 12.1 also highlights that different eco-political projects that have ostensibly entertained ecomodern future possibilities have generated very different visions of what should be considered socio-political fixed and what should be considered fluid and subject to change. They draw from very different understandings of modernity – that range from attempt to reclaim high modernism to advocacy of reflexive modernities, visions of socialist modernities to attempts to see modernity/coloniality as intimately entangled. They also address very different audiences and contain very different understandings of what constitutes the public. For example, it can be observed that not only North American Breakthrough Ecomodernists but also Bright Greens all advocate for a vast reordering of socio-ecological relations at a planetary scale. Diverse publics, though, are missing from their schemas as are ways of conceptualizing transition as a form of socio-technical politics. The view that moves to just post-carbon transitions might require not simply socio-technical change but a profound re-ordering of public institutions, political economic relations, modes of assigning cultural recognition and power relations so that publics (in all their complexity and diversity) can be hailed to engage with questions of transition is missing from this literature.

Fixity, fluidity and critical design thinking for the Anthropocene We can see then that technocratic modes of ecomodernization are persistently attempting to present sustainable transitions as largely throwing up a series of technical questions. The terrain of mainstream energy and energy-centric transition analysis which leave questions of ownership and control or broader arguments of the need for full systems innovation out of the discussion provides a particularly powerful example of transition thinking which has taken on a distinctly post-political form (see Aronoff 2016). The implicit logic of technocratic and centerist traditions of ecomodernism advocated by institutions like the Breakthrough Institute is that we must decarbonize the status quo. Much like the third way politics of Clinton and Blair, this argument is premised on the claim that there is no other alternative. The role of the critical social sciences here has to be to push back against this claim and remind us that questions of transition always have to confront questions of power, justice, ownership and voice. A purely socio-centric response to the challenge of techno-centric transition thinking is also clearly completely inadequate. A post carbon transition in the hybrid worlds of the Anthropocene requires that we fully acknowledge we need a socio-technical politics that allow us to debate new visions of possible sustainable socio-technical political futures. The Anthropocene is, in part, going to involve attempts to engage in critical designs for sustainable futures (see

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White 2015a, 2015b), in which we are immediately forced to address the following questions: Are we advocating critical design for publics? Are we advocating critical design with publics? Or are we attempting to construct and design institutions and build relations between experts and lay people that allow for the transfer of different kinds of knowledge and that allow for agonistic dialogue and dissensus? The proposition that just transitions are inevitably going to become entangled with the need for a critical design politics will raise alarm bells for some. Certainly if we understand this claim through a high modernist lens, it invites the fear that what is being championed is a Promethean politics of high design for the biosphere. Something like this vision underpins many current geo-engineering strategies to be sure. A rather different vision for a design politics for the future though can draw inspiration from the multiple forms of democratic prefiguring and modes of redirective practice that have run through the popular and critical traditions of design (see Fry 2009; Manzini 2014; Irvin, Kossoff and Tonkinwise 2015; White 2015a, 2015b; Escobar 2016). Here, a call for a critical eco-design politics is no more a call for a politics led by designers than the demand for single payer healthcare is a call for a future healthcare system led by the worldview of doctors. It is an argument though that takes the tools, modes of pedagogy and pre-figurative imagination of critical design seriously. And it is also clearly an attempt to suggest that transition thinking could get further still by embedding these conversations in a richer historical and institutional frame (see Wissenberg, this volume). Critical forms of contemporary design more fully engaged with currents of the reconstructive environmental sciences and social sciences, urban theory and political ecology could become an important site for pushing back against the limited understandings of fixity and fluidity that inform end times ecology and technocratic ecomodernisms (see White 2015a). The central concerns of the critical environmental social sciences for historical/socio-ecological contextualization, analysis of power relations, attention to difference and the possibilities for deconstruction are vitally important. There are reasons to believe that their transformative potential has long been stymied by a hesitation to embark on what Erik Olin Wright (2010) has referred to as “real utopias”. The experimental sensibilities of Wright’s critical social science and the reconstructive concerns of critical design with prototyping, prefiguring, speculative thinking, doing things differently, failing and then starting again could open up new possibilities. Table 12.2 seeks to highlight the proposition that critical transition studies should (i) play with institutional forms and spatial relations; (ii) play with built forms and experiment with social and material cultures; (iii) play with topography, ecology and models of ownership and control; (iv) ultimately emphasize how, by experimenting with all these activities attending to power relations in all their intersectional complexity, multiple modes of critical design futures can be entertained. The virtues of mapping out and opening up considerations of the range of modes of social institutionalization and modes of critical design futuring that might inform the just transition has advantages. It allows us to make explicit what is

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presently constructed as fixed, and what is constructed as fluid, in our mainstream socio-political discussions. It allows us to reflect on just how carefully policed many current forms of critical eco-design futuring are. Generally, it can be said, a broad range of modes of design futuring are entertained but modes of social institutionalization largely linger around the first four market friendly approaches displayed in Table 12.2, column 2. Acknowledging a much broader array of modes of social institutionalization that could be brought together with modes of design futuring opens up the possibility for much broader public discussions to take place about who/what should be disrupted and who/what should be maintained to bring about a post-carbon transition. For example, if we understand production to be “a problem”, what kinds of production might we judge problematic: the production of bicycles or nuclear weapons; plastic bottles or water fountains (see Schwartzman 2012)? What sense is there in continuing to support cradle to grave production where 80 per cent of products are discarded after a single use or where 99 per cent of the original materials used in the production of goods made in the USA become waste after six weeks of sales (Von Weizsäcker et al. 1998).Alternatively, imagine an eco-industrial policy that aspired to craft socially useful forms of production underpinned by TABLE 12.2 Fixity and fluidity in critical design studies for just transition

Modes of design futuring

Modes of institutionalization

 Design for energy efficiency  Design for dis-assemblage, recycling, reuse and repair/remanufacturing  Sustainable adaptive reuse and retrofitting  Unbuilding  Design for ecological restoration  Ecologically regenerative design  Emotionally durable design  Post-object/service design  Eliminative design  Participatory design,  Design, architecture and planning for/with/by communities  Public interest architecture  Anti-racist eco-design  Eco-design for gender equity  Worker-orientated eco-design  Post-humanist design (design for non-humans)  Socially useful production  Closed loop production & the circular economy

                       

Free markets Social entrepreneurship Ethical production and consumption Regulated markets Socialized markets Regulation Taxation Public Procurement Universal basic income Barter and the commons Networked Co-ordination and the commons Mutualism and co-operatives The gift and free-ganism Participatory budgeting Neighborhood or communal self management Syndicalism, worker self management Green unionism Popular Planning Municipal planning Regional planning Central Planning The right to the city Autogestion (worker control) Autogestion generalisee (urban self determination)  Confederal Municipalism  Parecon (participatory economics)

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circular/cradle to cradle production that, according to recent estimates, could cut carbon emissions by 40%? If consumption is seen as a problem for envisaging postcarbon futuring, we can ask further questions. Is the problem with consumption, in general, “Western Consumption”, consumption driven by status anxiety, or the consumption patterns of the top 1%? Does a discussion of redesigning our energy future require that we pay some attention to “the diversity of things that different groups want energy for” whether this is “cooking food for your family” or “extracting more surplus from workers”, running schools or bombing hospitals (see Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton 2012).

Hybrid labor, hybrid design and the just transition Critical design strategies may have their possibilities. It is a field that has its limitations as well though and they need to be more fully acknowledged so that we can move forward. Sustainable and just transitions are going to require systematic changes to our socio-ecological infrastructures, modes of planning, agro-food systems, political-economic institutions, culture, work and productive processes and beyond. This is going to require new configurations of diverse expert knowledges, new configurations of expert-lay relations and new configurations of institutionalized political power operating at many different spatial scales. Many critical design discussions though lack any kind of political sociology of transition. Indeed, a singular focus on bottom up transformation has ensured that design as a whole has surprisingly little to say about the inevitable role that government institutions, agencies and administrative actors at different spatial scales – from the federal and regional, to city and municipal levels will have to play as partners in transition (see White 2015b). The complex relations and coalitions that will have to be brokered between communities, social movements, diverse modes of transition design, other kinds of expert knowledge and a transition state to achieve a just low carbon future is nowhere theorized in the critical and transition design literature. Design is frequently asked to do too much. More generally, agencies are everywhere in critical design but the potential creativity of labor is almost completely missing from a great deal of the discussion (see Wark 2015; Goldstein 2018). By referencing labor, of course, I take it as given that we cannot understand this in the traditional singular and masculine fashion that would take us back behind the gains and insights of feminist, queer, post-colonial political economy or political ecology. Our labor is always hybrid (enrolling humans and non-humans) and queer in being simultaneously classed, gendered, racialized, bound up in the dichotomies of first/third world, able/disabled and other modes of social domination and subordination (Moore 2015; Battistoni 2016). A coherent accounting of labor in worlds torn between industrial and post industrial economies must acknowledge how it is material and immaterial, direct and affective, physical, cognitive and emotional. Our socio-natural reality is a product of constant hybrid organism-environment-interactions where all organisms, including humans are in a process of actively making their worlds (Harvey

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1996; Arias-Maldonado 2015; Wark 2016; White, Rudy and Gareau 2016). But nevertheless, the relations between critical design and labor need to be carefully explored for an Anthropocene politics that is committed to the just transition. Much critical design futuring to date has placed a great deal of attention on everyday life as the site for transition experimentation (see Fry, 2009; Manzini 2014; Irwin, Kossoff and Tonkinwise 2015). This has value, but a credible vision of the just transition has to acknowledge the extent to which many of our fellow working men and women across the planet find themselves in conditions of servitude at work. There are debts to be paid, childcare to be done, eldercare to engage with, bosses to please and all manner of other modes of subordination to carefully negotiate as we make our way through everyday life. Unless we grapple with the way so many of our fellow citizens are effectively still feudal subjects “in the family, the factory and the field” (Robin 2011:15), we will not only delimit the audience for transition futuring but underestimate the forces that press against the possibility of having the time or energy to be involved in civic experiments to enable just and democratic transition futures. Critical forms of design futuring must address the question of work simply because the workplace and control over terms and conditions in the workplace will continue to be a critical site for political struggle for the foreseeable future as will the demand for more leisure (see White 2015b).

Conclusion This chapter has sought to argue that if we wish to move towards a just transition, we need political imaginaries that can take us beyond the technocratic politics of the good Anthropocene and the melancholic paralysis offered by the it’s-too-late-o-cene. It has been argued we need to pluralize discussions of ecological modernities. It has argued that an alternative transition politics has to be imaginative, iterative and inventive. We need a transition politics that can start a conversation between the most thoughtful currents of design and the critical social sciences. This politics needs to acknowledge the irreducible hybridity of the worlds we are going to make, the scalar complexity of transition and also attend to the needs of the laboring subject and diverse communities in all their complexity. A low carbon future is, by necessity, going to entail a vast transformation not simply of our energy systems but of our systems of production and consumption, systems of culture and valuing, mobility and travel, work, leisure and life. We will have to experiment with new urban forms and new agro-food systems. Whole industries will need to be closed down. Other industries will have to be systematically retrofitted to allow for redesign of these systems of production and manufacturing. We will have to build resilient and adaptive cities and sustainable climate smart infrastructures, construct affordable housing, provide new high quality public goods, sumptuous parks and gardens and so on. This chapter then has used design to draw attention to the extent to which a just transition is not simply about energy transition but has to address much broader socio-technical and political

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matters. Transition will, in short, require the deployment of new sources of postcarbon energies but locate the source of new political energies. The politics of the just transition is in part going to be drawn irreducibly to design and will have to ask questions about how we think about a politics of design and redesign. But in addition, design must be rethought in relation to the matter of labor. We need visions of just transitions informed by a view of the potential creativity of labor because we should not simply aspire to render work, production and manufacturing less environmentally impactful but more free.

Note 1 By provincializing discussions, I am essentially suggesting that we should move away from the tendencies of both advocates and critics of ecological modernities to see these discourses and material propositions as offering singular and general universal solutions to our socio-ecological problems. Pluralizing these discourses, attending to their political diversity and often regional specificity allows us to understand the strengths and the weaknesses of different kinds of ecomodern discourse in more subtle ways and may allow us to think more carefully about what needs to be abandoned and what could still be appropriated (see White, Rudy and Gareau 2016). Of course, this call to provincialize ecomodern discourse here is itself limited by its focus on Euro-American discourse. As Danah Abdulla et al. (2010), Escobar (2015) and Chakrabarty (2009) have argued, the next move has to involve more fully investigating the relations of modernity/coloniality in Euro-American ecomodern discourses.

References Arias-Maldonado, M. (2015). Environment & Society: Socionatural Relations in the Anthropocene, Cham: Springer. Aronoff, K. (2016). “How to Socialize America’s Energy” Dissent. Vol. 63 no. 2, pp. 38–47. Asafu-Adjaye, J. et al. (2015). “An Ecomodernist Manifesto.” Available: http://www.ecom odernism.org/manifesto-english/. Battistoni, A. (2017). “Bringing in the Work of Nature from Natural Capital to Hybrid Labor” Political Theory. Vol. 44; no.1. Barry, J. (2012). The Politics of Actual Existing Unsustainability. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chakrabarty, D. (2009). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cohen, D. A. (2017). “The Other Low-Carbon Protagonists: Poor People’s Movements and Climate Politics in Sao Paulo.” In M. Greenberg and P. Lewis (Eds.), The City is the Factory. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Connolly, W. (2017). Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming. Durham: Duke University Press. Danah Abdulla, E.C., Keshavarz, M., Kiem, M., Oliveira, P., Prado, L., Schultz, T. (2016). “Decolonising Design.” Available: http://www.decolonisingdesign.com/general/2016/ editorial/. Escobar, A. (2015). “Transiciones: A Space for Research and Design for Transitions to the Pluriverse” Design Philosophy Papers. Vol. 13, pp. 13–23. Fry, T. (2009). Design Futuring. Oxford: Berg.

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Goldstein, J. A. (2018). Planetary Improvement: Discourses and Practices of Green Capitalism in the Cleantech Space. Cambridge: MIT Press. Head, L. (2016). Hope and grief in the anthropocene: re-conceptualising human-nature relations. London, New York: NY Routledge. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Durham: Duke University Press. Hildyard, N., Lohmann, L., and Sexton, S. (2012). “Energy Security For Whom? For What?” Available: http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/energy-security-whom-what. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2017). “IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Observed Climate Change Impacts Database, Version 2.01.” Palisades, NY: NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). https://doi.org/10. 7927/H4FT8J0X. Irwin, T.; Kossoff, G., and Tonkinwise, C. (2015). “Transition Design Provocation” Design Philosophy Papers. Vol. 13, no. 1: pp.3–11. Jamieson, D. (2014). Reason in a Dark Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manzini, E. (2014). Design When Everyone Designs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life. London: Verso. Newell, P. and Mulvaney, D. (2013). “The Political Economy of the Just Transition” The Geographical Journal. Vol. 179, No.2, pp. 132–134. Robin, C. (2011). The Reactionary Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sassen, S. (2014). Expulsions. Cambridge MA: HUP. Schwartzman, D. (2012). “A Critique of Degrowth and its Politics”, Capitalism Nature Socialism. Vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 119–125. Scranton, R. ( 2015). Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. San Francisco. City Lights Books. Steffen, A. (2016). “Heroic: Why a world without imagination puts your future at risk” Medium, Feb. 26,. Available: https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/heroic-7556bf2c19f9. Tonkinwise, C. (2011). “Only a God Can Save Us–Or at Least a Good Story: I♥ Sustainability (because necessity no longer has agency)” Design philosophy papers. Vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 69–80 Wark, M. (2015). Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene. London: Verso. Wright, E. O. (2010). Envisaging Real Utopias. London: Verso. White, D., Gareau, B. J. and Rudy, A. (2017). “Ecosocialisms, Past: Present and Future” Capitalism Nature Socialism. Vol. 28, no. 2. White, D. F., Rudy, A. P., and Gareau, B. J. (2016). Environments, Natures, and Social Theory: Towards a Critical Hybridity. London: Palgrave. White, D. F. (2015a). “Critical Design and the Critical Social Sciences – Or Why we need to engage in multiple, speculative critical design futures in a post-political and post-utopian age”. Available: http://www.cd-cf.org/articles/critical-design-and-the-critical-socia l-sciences/. White, D. F. (2015b). “Metaphors, hybridity, failure and work: a sympathetic appraisal of Transitional Design” Design Philosophy Papers. Vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 39–50. Whyte, K. P. (2016). “Our Ancestors’ Dystopia Now: Indigenous Conservation and the Anthropocene” in Heise, Ursula K. et al. (Ed.). Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities. London: Routledge.

AFTERWORD The Anthropocene or welcome to our fluxed futures John Barry

‘The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed’ William Gibson

Introduction The Anthropocene is usually understood as a new discourse, frame or project that has emerged in the face of and as a possible solution to the 21st century global and dangerous context of a climate changed and carbon-constrained world. But to add another ‘c’ to the equation here…this is also a capitalist world. Hence the demand by some, such as Jason Moore (though also reflected in some contributions to this book), that we talk not of the ‘Anthropocene’, of ‘humanity’ as an undifferentiated whole operating now as a ‘telluric force of nature’, but of the ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore, 2015, 2016). For along with ethical/philosophical debates around humannature relations, the ‘death of nature’ and ‘socio-natural entanglements’ (a term almost synonymous with the Anthropocene itself), perhaps the clearest and most enduring fault line in debates about the Anthropocene (and especially arguments for a ‘good Anthropocene’) are over its connection or not to capitalism and its preservation. While all contributors to the Anthropocene debate, whether positive or negative (it’s hard to discern neutral positions) all proclaim to ‘preserve nature’ (though the substance and status of that ‘nature’ is moot); it is the dividing line between those who wish to also preserve capitalism (either on normative or strategic grounds) and those for whom global capitalism needs to be overcome or radically transformed, that constitute the majority of the distinctly political debate around the Anthropocene. What this volume does is not just offer a welcome collection of competing and divergent interdisciplinary accounts, analyses and evaluations of the ‘Anthropocene’,

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but also examines the work that that concept, project or plan is doing. That is, what is at stake here? Or to paraphrase Mike Hulme (2009) – it’s not what we can do for the Anthropocene, but what the Anthropocene is doing to and for us. Beyond geological or historical debates about when this new age begins or began, and what evidence can be provided for a new geological age, the real import of the Anthropocene is the story it is telling. And this volume provides ample evidence that there is no single story, and therefore much contestation around its ontological, epistemological, political and normative character and import. A rather fitting reflection of the ineliminable flux, change, provisionality and dynamism that the Anthropocene heralds for our present and future socio-natural condition.

The socio-ecological condition our socio-technical condition is in Life in the post-Holocene, as White perceptively notes in his chapter, will be dynamic, restless and thoroughly hybridised and composed of coupled systems and entwined socio-natures. This is not particularly new: even ‘old’ green political theory (well, those elements that were influenced by Marxism, anarchism and feminism) accepted that sustainability never meant a settled and ‘once and for all’ solution to human-nature metabolic and cultural relations (Barry, 1999). But in the context of the ‘Anthropocene wars’, White’s point is well made in the sense that any informed analysis of the current ‘human condition’ should include responses that are characterised by terms such as ‘impermanence’, ‘provisionality’, ‘creativity’, ‘tinkering’ (Kostas 2017), ‘mending and making do’, ‘experimenting’, ‘playing’ (a point around creativity I return to towards the end). Crucial here is extending innovation beyond the technical sphere to include social innovations in, for example, new low carbon, high flourishing ways of living, sustainable communities and urban sociotechnical experiments. In this way White’s inspiring proposals echo Mike Hulme’s view (2009) that it is not what we can do for the climate but what the climate is doing for us, in terms of the imaginative possibilities made possible by coping with the dynamic and urbanised responses to the ‘socio-ecological condition our socio-technical condition is in’. In between the (extremely Eurocentric and white) apocalyptic Anthropocene and the ecomodernist ‘good Anthropocene’ (of which more anon), White suggests ‘just transition’ pathways beyond unsustainable and high carbon development. He is inspired by localised, contextualised, thoroughly material-practical and democratised forms of critical design that create the possibility of new democratic urban sociotechnical ecological modernities. And while not neglecting the growing scientific evidence of our worsening global ecological crisis, White does remind us of not just the pleasure but also freedom (something also discussed by other authors such as Wissenburg and Fremaux) and indeed emancipation, that ought also to mobilise and inspire just sociotechnical and socio-natural transitions. But while fully embracing human creative and technological capacities, White is also acutely aware of the political and ethical implications of the choice of which technology, and who controls it (hence sociotechnical not just ‘technological’). And his balanced and hopeful

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political perspective is compatible with Heidegger’s insight (and one also shadowing the contributions of Fremaux, Ariffin and Pellizzoni) that, ‘Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing’ (Heidegger, 1977: 5; emphasis added).

Techno, techno, techno Mega-technological (by which is meant planetary scale) geo-engineering, discussed in both Wissenburg’s and Fremaux’s chapters, is one example of what Anthropocene critics view as the arrogant anthropocentrism and fatal hubris at the heart of what might be termed ‘Project Anthropocene’. Wissenburg asks what are we to make of proposals to ‘manage the planet’, or what might be termed ‘the Anthropocene on steroids’ or ‘biofuelling the hummer’ (Barry, 2016a)? What are the implications for human freedom and democratic governance of the institutionalisation of such planetary forms of action? Can they be governed or governed democratically he asks? While Wissenburg concludes it would be irrational not to participate in the design and technological development necessary for geo-engineering such as solar radiation management, including the governance arrangements of geo-engineering initiatives, others, including this author, would disagree. On the one hand we have Pierrehumbert’s view that ‘the idea of “fixing” the climate by hacking the Earth’s reflection of sunlight is wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad’ (Pierrehumbert, 2015), to more measured views of the likes of Hulme for whom geo-engineering solutions such as Stratospheric Aerosol Injection are ‘undesirable, ungovernable and unreliable’ (2014: xii) After all, ceteris paribus, withdrawing support or actively opposing and rejecting geo-engineering is equally as rational as supporting it, even in the face of arguments for such mega technologies as ‘insurance policies’. And doing so does not make one a Luddite.

‘The question concerning nature’ Baker and Fremaux in different but complementary ways make a strong case for the ontological and normative status of an independent (and valued, dynamic and agential) more than human world. Baker’s careful analysis of ‘novel ecosystems’, those ecosystems, biomes, landscapes and their entities and processes which come into being as a result of human agency (conscious or not) is an interesting investigation of the ontological and metabolic bases for evaluating some of the ontological and normative claims of the Anthropocene as the age of the human. Echoing the view of White to some extent, Baker also highlights the dynamic, far from equilibrium, panarchical and ever changing character of coupled socio-ecological systems, producing non-analogue futures. And as her discussion points out, novel ecosystems, while bearing the imprint of human influence, do not mean these ecosystems, land/built/ hypoxia ‘scapes’ of a ‘ragamuffin earth’, are, as some dominant ecomodernisation and techno-optimist accounts of the ‘good Anthropocene’ insist, manageable and controllable by humans. We have not entered a ‘post-natural’ era (Fremaux and Barry,

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2018), even if these dominant accounts of the Anthropocene do tell us we have entered a ‘post-political’ one (which we have also not entered). Baker’s concern is the ‘disciplining and domesticating’ aims of dominant accounts of the Anthropocene and ‘new conservationists’, who see in the global ecological crisis the opportunity and rationale to ‘remake’ (and where it suits, ‘rewild’) nature, but a nature largely constructed if not in our own image, then most definitely for our own purposes. Whereas Adam in the Judeo-Christian Bible story displayed what could be termed the original (sin?) ‘arrogance of humanism’ (Ehrenfeld, 1978) in naming the animals brought before him by God, Baker is concerned new conservationists and ‘Anthropocene boosters’ go one step further in displacing God and making and not simply naming the animals and the ecological conditions within which they evolve, survive and thrive.

The good, the bad and the ugly Anthropocene Arias-Maldonado makes the claim for an ambiguous and open-ended conceptualisation of the Anthropocene, emphasising, as do others in this book, the dynamism, contingency, provisionality and ‘permanent impermanence’ of our ‘fluxed future’. He himself chooses a less ambiguous reading and offers a defence of the ‘good Anthropocene’ against its critics. His strategy can be summarised as firstly, to detach the ‘good Anthropocene’ idea from its ecomodernist origins and then secondly consider and reject green political critiques of it. And the bar is set extremely high by Arias-Maldonado for those critiquing the ‘good Anthropocene’. We are told that to remove any good in the Anthropocene it must be shown that it is ‘seen as a planetary threat of such magnitude that it forces human societies to dramatically shrink because there is no alternative to a dismantling of liberal-capitalism if we wish to survive’. But, leaving to one side technical feasibility, a good bulk of the critiques of the good Anthropocene relate to its philosophical/ethical assumptions and implications (arrogant anthropocentrism, denying nature’s agency etc.) or its liberal-capitalist character. These are not directly concerned with the survival of the human species, but with the ideological assumptions of those promoting a ‘good Anthropocene’. It’s the capitalism stupid, as it were. If the Anthropocene is an unintended side effect of human activity to meet human ends, as he suggests, then a lot of humans have been short-changed in not having those ends met, while a minority have done exceeding well out of the structural arrangements that brought it about. Not that these are discussed by him unfortunately. This extends to a curious outline of the causal mechanisms that led to the Anthropocene. We are told it is the result ‘of individual and social choices’ (indeed these choices are the foundation for the Anthropocene as a moral issue we are told), and the rise in ‘social activity’ as a result of the post-WWII ‘great acceleration’, but not of institutions and structures. The political economy of global capitalism is missing. Uneven power relations, class, gender and race are all compacted within the great anthropo-homogenising ‘human choices’, thus nicely

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bookending the homogenisation that critics claim advocates of the ‘good Anthropocene’ promote. Politics and power, the very quintessential expressions of human agency, are curiously missing or at least corralled into a narrow set of possibilities. This downplaying of this dimension of human agency stands in contrast to AriasMaldonado’s critique of ‘romantic’ green politics, which he accuses of neglecting human agency, and in their dys-ecotopian resigned hopelessness, rendering humanity passive – a muted Greek chorus to the agency of nature. Here I would question his claim that those who view the Anthropocene as heralding planetary collapse somehow ‘deny human agency’, given human agency (in the form of some humans and specific political-economic structures) have caused the ‘capitalocene’. This then raises a question: if human agency over nature and transforming it into socio-natures via technology is acknowledged and foregrounded as central, why not human political agency? And here it seems that while he has much ‘optimism’ for such non- or apolitical technological forms of human agency, he seems to have little hope for human political agency, not least in transforming political and economic structures. Perhaps a mark of the high stakes involved and passions (as well as reasoned arguments) that debates around the Anthropocene – good bad or ugly – evoke (here Ariffin’s stress on the emotional content and character of such debates is spot on I think), there is a tendency to stereotyping and caricaturing. For example, I found Arias-Maldonado’s account of green thinking variously described as ‘frugal’ ‘ecotopian’, ‘hope denying’ and ‘apocalyptic’, and rejecting the idea that the tools of modernity can help in solving our problems, simplistic and more a version of ‘deep ecology’ than more recent accounts of green thinking. Yet perhaps this is to be expected in terms of his accusation of critics of ecomodernism such as Clive Hamilton as presenting a ‘straw person’ version of the latter. It may be that such caricaturing is both catching and an inevitable element of the early stages of a contentious, important and high stakes debate. And an apocalyptic frame might be useful (as Ariffin notes below in defending the need for techno-pessimism) if one views it as ‘analytical’ and a way of ‘revealing’ (in its original Greek sense), rather than as an empirical statement about collapse and the coming ‘end times’. Or even, here thinking of Hammond and Ward’s chapter, as an artistic, aesthetic or creative invitation to reimagine possible futures. While suggesting that the ‘good Anthropocene’ is suffused and motivated by ‘hope’ (against negative, ‘doomster’ ‘romantic greens’ with visions devoid of hope), I think optimism is the more accurate term for ‘good Anthropoceners’ such as AriasMaldonado. And it is perhaps this optimism, allied with a support for the status quo, that is the object of suspicion for those who are suspicious. It is for this reason terms such as ‘technological optimism’ couple themselves to ecomodernist visions of a ‘good Anthropocene’ rather than ‘technological hope.’ As Vaclav Havel wisely pointed out there is a fundamental difference between ‘hope’ and ‘optimism’. As he puts it in his poem ‘On Hope’: ‘Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.’ In this sense the

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(techno-) optimism that I think permeates the ‘good Anthropocene’ in fact aligns with its reformist, ‘greening business as usual’ stance, unlike the more difficult articulation of ‘hope’ found in authors such as Ariffin, Fremaux, White, Barak and Hailwood. And hope is more difficult because it may require the more politically arduous and risky task of structural political and economic transformation, rather than a technological (or even socio-technical) energy transition. Unlike Arias-Maldonado, Barak does foreground structures and political-economic systems, and analyses issues such as the commodification of nature under capitalism – including an account of the ‘capitalist mode of urbanisation’ (drawing on the work of Marxist geographer David Harvey). His chapter also nicely connects to the concerns of both White and Trachtenberg in that Barak views ‘cities as hybrid socio-natural entities’, the products of human niche construction on a meso-scale. He makes the point that cities have a good claim to be our species’ niche, and his ‘City-Nature-Theses’ opens up a dialogue with both Trachtenberg’s ‘human niche construction’ argument and White’s emphasis on urban socio-technical modernities and material practices. There is also something Arendtian in Barak’s vision, by which I mean his analysis and vision is both tough, conceptually rigorous and at the same time hopeful and prioritises the political and political agency. He offers a hopeful, non-ecomodernist, green political urban/city-based sustainability. His position eschews both dualism – the ‘nature-human’ divide, but also naïve and misleading strategies of ‘reading off from nature’ either our normative or design principles. He thus rightly rejects confining any normative judgement of the uniquely human artefact that is the city, within degrees of ‘naturalness’. Instead he identifies the complex and complexifying inter-relatedness of the more than human and the city. Barak’s vision is also rightly localised and contextualised, offering no easy (a- or non- political) ‘one size fits all’ solution and embracing the ineradicable political and discursive processes by which city-urban organised human communities navigate and negotiate sustainability both metabolically and democratically. He wisely cautions that ‘naturalizing politics implies the impossibility of politics’, just as, returning briefly to the tête-a-tête with ‘good Anthropoceners’, technologising the Anthropocene implies the eradication of politics. Barak, to return to my description of his thinking as ‘Arendtian’, offers a distinctly republican sense of the possibilities for the future, here joining a small but growing ‘green republican’ school of thinking in green political theory (Barry, 2018, Cannavò, 2016). In this way for Barak any good Anthropocene or ‘good in the Anthropocene’ is viewed as a political challenge to each ‘civic community’s conception of the good’. And with this there is the expectation and active encouragement of dissent, challenging both state power, the economic status quo and depoliticising practices of techno-managerialism. For him, there is no ‘good Anthropocene’ without each ‘Anthropocening political community’ deciding what and how its collective good is shaped, challenged or furthered by those processes. Like White, in viewing and presenting the Anthropocene as an invitation for an urban-turn in green political theory Barak is, in my estimation, right to think that this may deepen its focus on radical political change rather than the opposite.

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Realism, moralism and green politics in the Anthropocene Hailwood’s sophisticated interrogation of the Anthropocene through the ‘realism vs. moralism’ debate in political theory is an important contribution to this volume. It deconstructs naive moralistic positions that place some a priori conception of morality (or key moral principles) as prior to and superior to politics (which is part of the charge Arias-Maldonado makes against green political theory). As I know only too well as a ‘recovering politician’, political debate and campaigning is not an academic seminar! Hailwood reminds us that politics is not simply ‘applied morality/applied moralising’. But he also cautions against the ‘straw man’ (another one!) presentation, by what he calls ‘strong Anthropocene advocates’, of traditional green/environmental ethics/political theory as ‘moralistic’ and therefore ‘unrealistic’. Hailwood, in stressing the disagreement and pluralism that is central and constitutive of modernity (inspired by Bernard Williams), follows Barak in suggesting a ‘republican turn’ in green thinking as a result of its engagement with the Anthropocene, specifically on how to secure legitimacy amidst disagreement, and without lapsing into either a realistic or moralistic politics. This suggests that a green republican politics can be summarised as ‘environmental ethics meets political power’ – a very different picture from the ‘utopian’ caricature painted by some. What Hailwood seems to suggest are these important points: politics is not morality and green politics is not ‘abstract moralising’ or ‘utopianising’. Hailwood stresses the intertwining of politics and ethics (as do others such as Meyer, Trachtenberg, Fremaux, Ariffin, Arias-Maldonado) and rightly suggests, continuing this line of entwining, that ‘traditional environmental preoccupations with respecting nature, wilderness conservation and so on’ are not inconsistent with ‘Anthropocene talk’ of ‘socio-natural entanglements’ and coupled nature-social relations. Simply put, presenting these traditional (‘pre-Anthropocene’) commitments as somehow ‘out of date’, reactionary, ‘romantic’ or at odds with non-dualistic descriptions of humannature realities simply cannot be sustained. And here, Hailwood reveals and pokes at the distinctly ideological commitments of strong Anthropocene advocacy in its compulsion to present ‘traditional’ green political theory and environmental ethics as forms of simply ‘untenable’ commitments, based (as it presents them) around ‘purity’, ‘wilderness protection’ and a strict(ish) separation of ‘humanity’ and ‘nature’. In his analysis strong Anthropocene advocacy ‘does look like an exercise in ideological moralism’, where alternatives to the ‘good Anthropocene’ are, inter alia, either ‘irrelevant’, ‘cognitively dissonant’, ‘hopeless’, ‘romantic’, ‘colonial’ etc. So perhaps one response to Hailwood’s critique here by strong Anthropocene advocates, and those promoting the ‘good Anthropocene’, is to ‘come clean’ about their own moralism and moralising proselytising. It is not just ‘old-fashioned’ environmental ethicists and green political theorists, who are doing this: thoroughly ‘modernised’ hope-dispensing, techno-inspired, planetary managers are also at it, but pretend they are not. But perhaps this is ‘sustainability realism in the good

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Anthropocene’ – outwardly presenting as realistic (scientific) what one knows is moralistic (anthropocentric)? Or, to use another idiom Hailwood and others highlight, presenting as ‘humanity’ an undifferentiated homogenous whole, facing an equally homogenous and undifferentiated ‘planet’, when what one knows to be a class, race, and gender divided humanity is in fact dynamically interlinked with a complex, diverse collection of coupled ecological systems, biomes and living and non-living non-human systems? And, as Hailwood points out, it is politically significant that ‘good Anthropoceners’ would rather talk about homogeneity facing homogeneity than about heterogeneity facing heterogeneity, i.e. about ‘a singular geological truth’ rather than ‘differentiated and diffuse power’.

When to love and when to abort our monsters …Marx(ing) towards a precautionary Anthropocene Fremaux picks up on some of the problems of asserting a singular geological truth in highlighting the identity thinking that often characterises it. The identity thinking of dominant conceptualisations of the good Anthropocene, or as she prefers to present it as the ‘Capitalocene’, sees in the entwining of nature and humanity a denial of nature’s otherness, leading it to proclaim that nature is dead. For her, ignoring the ‘non-identity of nature’ results in the ‘return of the repressed’ as nature ‘pushes back’ against the appropriation and domination project of the Anthropocene in ecological problems and catastrophes. She calls instead for a more modest and humble disposition (here echoing my interpretation of Ariffin’s ‘precautionary Anthropocene’), as opposed to the arrogant Prometheanism (a term, image and myth than shadows much Anthropocene talk, and this volume is no different) in prominent ‘good Anthropocene’ discourses offered by ecomodernists and ‘bright Greens’. Here Pellizzoni’s discussion of the ‘new materialism’ might provide other grounds for Fremaux’s humble and human-vulnerability centred green politics. As Pellizzoni notes, if we follow the new materialists and accept that everything in the world is active, generative, and has agency, human agency may find its ontological and normative superiority and centrality is overturned. If our agency is itself constituted by assembling with and disassembling from nonhuman entities (here I also think Trachtenberg’s ‘niche construction theory’ is connected) this may mean, or should mean, Pellizzoni suggests, that the Anthropocene heralds a more ‘modest, careful and responsible’ conception of human agency. Which is very different from the ‘dominating master’ image found in some Anthropocene debates. Ariffin’s concerns overlap with Fremaux’s in his caution against dreams of unproblematic human domination and control of the earth, which like Fremaux, he sees as the animating project of Anthropocene boosters. He conjures up the emergence of new Promethean figure within the Anthropocene – the rather fearsome sounding ‘Governator’, ‘half terminator of pristine nature, and half governor of a nature gone mad by his own labours’ (Fremaux’s ‘return of the repressed’). Where anthropoceners see environmental change, critics see environmental

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degradation, where one sees sustainable management the other sustainably damaging the nonhuman world. Both are descriptive of the same phenomenon but are based on completely incompatible evaluative bases. Ariffin offers an interesting analysis, namely that the Anthropocene may be a necessary phase, and one that might not be pleasant, but necessary nonetheless for a greater, brighter future – just as Marx viewed capitalism as the necessary precondition for communism (Marx also makes another appearance in Trachtenberg as discussed below). He concludes that we need both techno-optimists (the productive, hopeful governor) and techno-pessimists (focused on termination). He goes on to suggest synthesising these so as to terminate unplanned socio-natural hybrids (sometimes aborting instead of ‘loving our monsters’?) and ‘extending alliances with the non-human world’. In outlining this balance Ariffin stresses an important point about the practical dangers of the arrogance as much as moral risks/hazards of anthropocentrism that permeates some dominant accounts of the ‘good Anthropocene’, such as ecomodernisation. And in this he echoes Scranton who notes that: civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today – it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent….the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence. (Scranton, 2015, 22; emphasis added) Ariffin like Scranton sees in the ‘techno-pessimistic’ (which, as suggested above can be a non-luddite political innovator seeing non-economic/market ‘disruption’) a necessary corrective to the perils of hubris and blind confidence. After all as St Thomas Aquinas wisely noted, ‘It is better for a blind horse that it is slow’. This seems to suggest a more precautionary and modest version of a ‘good Anthropocene’ in contrast to arrogant, dominating and crudely anthropocentric versions. Although a moot issue here is whether a ‘precautionary good Anthropocene’ is not a contradiction, and that what Ariffin is suggesting is something beyond the Anthropocene? Unlike Ariffin’s ambivalence, Trachtenberg is firmly rooted within and begins from a commitment to the Anthropocene concept, though with a twist. He views it as a prompt for explicit political theorising on the human condition, specifically the organic/biological quest for survival. As he puts it, attending this directs our attention to the ‘evolutionary notion of “niche construction” – the idea that organisms reorganize their surroundings to fashion an environment that provides for their metabolic needs’. Reminiscent of Aristotle’s view of humanity as ‘zoon politikon’, political animals, Trachtenberg rightly emphasises attending the political significance of humans not just being like animals but being animals, and in particular we are niche constructing social primates. This niche construction, while not

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unique to our species, is especially significant given that humanity is the species evolution did not specialise and, inter alia, our tool using capacities coupled with sociability mean we do not have one, set ‘ecological niche’ but multiple possibilities (Barry, 1999). Trachtenberg highlights the normative significance of ‘small a’ anthropocene: the ‘early Anthropocene hypothesis’, as ‘a basis for a causal explanation of the Anthropocene that is informed by biological as well as social accounts of human life. It offers the prospect, I think, of placing the Anthropocene into the context of the deep history of human beings’ presence on Earth’. For proponents of the early Anthropocene, the Anthropocene does not represent a new geological epoch at all, but is ‘coeval with the Holocene’ (Smith and Zader, 2013). Proponents of the early Anthropocene recognise historical phenomena such as the Industrial revolution, the use of fossil fuels, the use of nuclear weapons and the post-WWII ‘great acceleration’ (all of which give different dates for the start of the Anthropocene). But Trachtenberg sees these as but steps or stages that are part of a much older, longer and more gradual trend (Glikson, 2013). Trachtenberg essentially ‘biologises’ and ‘evolutionises’ (discussing the Anthropocene as nothing if not an opportunity for new concepts and neologisms for this new age!) what is largely a dominant ‘geological’ reading of the Anthropocene. In so doing he offers a conceptualisation of politics in terms of human transformation of their physical surroundings, which he articulates as ‘human niche construction’. Just as I detect Arendt in Barak’s chapter I detect Marx (and Rousseau) in Trachtenberg’s, thus demonstrating that even though the ‘Anthropocene’ is very recent, old political theory can be rather useful in helping us make sense of it (a point Meyer’s chapter makes strongly). I would describe Trachtenberg’s Marx as Marxian as opposed to Marxist (here returning to the point made at the start in terms of the pro and anti-capitalist division in Anthropocene debates). Trachtenberg discusses Marx in terms of niche construction perhaps as an expression of our ‘species being’. And Marx was clear that the deliberate, intentional modification of the natural world defined our species. As he put it, ‘It is as clear as noon-day that man, by his industry, changes the forms of materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him’ (Marx, 1844/1961: 71; emphasis added). Indeed, it is worth remembering (especially by left-wing critics of the (good) Anthropocene), that Marx viewed this transformation of the more than human world as so successful in his own time (as a result of capitalist industrialism think here of the famous passage in the Communist Manifesto praising the transformative capacity of this mode of production), that nature untouched by human labour had vanished ‘except perhaps on a few Australian coral islands’ (Marx and Engels, 1998: 46). So it is not just ecomodernists who suggest the ‘end of nature’. And it would be interesting for niche construction, which seems to me basically correct (but then I am a well known Marxist-Lentilist) to extend into the specifically political economy and socio-economic power dimensions of that human, evolutionary process. In other words Trachtenberg could extend his evolutionary and Marxian analysis of human niche construction into an historical and Marxist one. Come to the critical side… we have no chains….

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Knowledges for other possible Anthropocenes – more political theory, poetry and less management? Meyer, Pellizzoni, Hammond and Ward in different ways sketch out key features of the epistemological terrain for helping us interpret, understand and use or dismiss the Anthropocene. Meyer outlines the interdisciplinary epistemological conditions for appropriate knowledge production related to the Anthropocene, and rightly identifies and challenges the knowledge hierarchy implicit and explicit in much Anthropocene talk. As he puts it, there is ‘an explicit or implicit hierarchy with physical scientists at the top, with their forms of knowledge regarded as primary’. He goes on to suggest that the starting point for any politically or ethically meaningful engagement with the Anthropocene itself or its proposed components or signifiers such as climate change, means rejecting this hierarchy. Otherwise we are left with natural science-based, expert accounts that are blind to the, inter alia, social (class, race, gender etc.) dynamics, political economy features and normative and cultural contestation around the causes and meanings of the Anthropocene (Castree et al, 2014). But not only that. Meyer makes a strong case that without the contribution of political theory, grounded as it is (like other social science and humanities disciplines, with the exception he notes of economics), we miss the essential critical, contestatory and reflexive (something also picked up on by Hammond and Ward) thinking and interrogation needed to make full sense of the Anthropocene. Meyer reminds us that political theory is after all a discipline of questioning and challenging settled views and established orders. Meyer makes the case for the role of political theory in terms of interdisciplinary knowledge production, in relation to its ‘disciplinary bridge building’ and ‘translation’ capacities. In highlighting the capacity for political theory to engage in what I have termed elsewhere ‘intellectual promiscuity’ (Barry, 2016b), he shows how political theory and a fortiori, environmental/green political theory, is well placed for trans-, multi- and interdisciplinary conversations about the Anthropocene. And yet, it is relatively invisible he claims in these conversations, even in publications and research on climate change which are heavily social science and humanities based. Here we can see a role for green political theory, itself already linked to other natural sciences and humanities in a way other forms of political theory are not (Barry, 2014). Cometh the Anthropocene, cometh green political theory perhaps? And given the contestation and deep questioning needed and provoked by the Anthropocene, I would make a special case for the usefulness of the emerging sub-school of green republican political theory (Fremaux, 2018; Barry, 2018; Cannavò, 2016). Pellizzoni analyses how the Anthropocene collapses the dualism of ‘nature’ on the one side and ‘humanity’ on the other, and discusses how the ontological and materialist turn in social sciences and humanities can help make sense of that. Here, there is a possibility of this ontological-materialist turn acting as one of the ‘bridges’ green political theory can build between different disciplines, though I would like to be a fly on the wall when civil engineers or economists are introduced to the

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idea of ‘agential matter’! He notes that non-dualistic thinking, something promoted by critical and emancipatory thinkers, especially green ones, is no guarantee of, nor a necessary precondition of claims for radical transformation. As he cautions ‘nondualist thinking is increasingly central to capitalist socio-material relationships’, adding that it is curious indeed that Anthropocene advocates who celebrate contingency and change, posit capitalism as the one unalterable phenomenon in a churning sea of dynamism. It is the stone in the river as it were, where a resilient capitalism leads to limited transformative openings and the perfunctory dismissal of transformative politics as unrealistic, hopeless (in more than one sense) and romantic. Hammond and Ward argue for a conception and institutionalisation of ‘deliberative democratisation’ to keep societal development as ‘open and reflexive as anthropocenic conditions demand’. In this way their analysis again pushes back against the (stereotypical/caricature?) managerial, top-down, expert-led approach to ‘steering’ human development in the Anthropocene. They also make a case for the arts as a key, but neglected, dimension to aid this societal deliberation (perhaps both green political theory and the arts are connected in a shared ‘Cinderella’ status, pace Meyer’s chapter?). They conceptualise sustainability in the Anthropocene, here connecting to some of the insights of White on this same issue, as meaning ‘aligning the fundamental patterns of a society’s on-going evolution to being responsive to the underlying ecosystemic changes’, thus based on the coupled socio-natural, dynamic and unpredictable ‘condition our condition is in’. While they presented this as new for green politics, in the sense that such irreducible unpredictability and contingency mean there cannot be a stable ‘sustainability’, such a recognition of the illusion of a ‘final and once and for all’ sustainability relation/coupling between humanity and nature has long been present within some forms of green thinking, where for example developing provisional ‘coping mechanisms’ as opposed to permanent ‘sustainability solutions’ are key (Barry, 1999). Here, and looping back to the Arendtian character of Barak’s chapter, such permanent solutions echo Arendt’s view of the pre-political conceptualisation of human ‘labour’ in which humanity can ‘swing contentedly in nature’s prescribed cycle, toiling and resting, labouring and consuming’ (Arendt, 1959: 92), premised on the nature as the ‘great provider’ (ibid.: 116), a rather naive view of an ‘Edenic nature’ as Trachtenberg points out. Hammond and Ward are right to focus on the arts as an overlooked medium and mode of experience for addressing and working through the Anthropocene, not least in cultivating empathy. For empathetic listening amongst citizens contributes towards better deliberation, as well as fostering better coping mechanisms and indeed stories of the Anthropocene. Another positive outcome of arts education and experience of the arts is imagination and creativity, human dispositions and character traits that will be needed to navigate, negotiate and read the choppy, unpredictable waters of the coming century. This is seen not least in the arts connecting to and engaging our emotions as well as our creativity, and thus helping to form the basis of hope for a better future. Art is an important way to engage

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publics with climate science, social science and its consequences, and here (green) political theory (pace Meyer) could learn from cultural geographers (Hawkins, 2013; Miles, 2010), philosophical anthropological analysis of ‘radical hope’ in the face of cultural devastation (Lear, 2006), and even more ‘end times’ and ‘apocalyptical’ cultural work of ‘recovering environmentalists’ (Hine and Wheeler, 2017). And here we come back to the managerial, post-political, Promethean, Governator ‘folk devils’ of ‘good Anthropoceners’. Plato infamously banished the poets in Book X of the Republic, his ideal, top-down, expert-run polity, because the poetry was not a ‘true’ reflection of the human condition, and the human experiences they articulated and provoked could not be controlled and managed (rather like the ‘return of the repressed’ argument about the ‘rebellion of nature’ in Ariffin and Fremaux). And poetry was potentially subversive and could undermine the ‘gravity, decorum, and courage’ Plato thought a well-ordered republic required of its citizens. Hammond and Ward rightly reverse this Platonic, authoritarian logic. For it is more poets and the poetic we need not less, since Plato was wrong in thinking imagination and the arts undermines courage. The Anthropocene requires courage and critique (as Meyer reminds us) as much as technology. Perhaps more so. More poetry, less management. Now there’s a possible hashtag for a ‘good Anthropocene’. Or if we are to talk of management, how about this? What may need to be managed and controlled in the Anthropocene is not nature per se, or socio-nature, or a geo-engineered climate and planet (or human biology climate engineered), which seems to be the position of those less critical of the Anthropocene concept, and a fortiori those urging us to ‘love our monsters’ and work towards a ‘good Anthropocene’. Rather we also have to consider the point made in different ways by those critics and sceptics of the concept, that maybe what needs to be the object of our attention is how to manage, control and transform not nature but rather our relationship/s to nature. And thus we are thrown back upon ourselves and the unavoidability of political and moral choice in seeing that our attitudes towards the Anthropocene are always already normatively informed. We might follow the advice of the Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray when he urges us to ‘Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation’. After all we cannot leave the story of the Anthropocene to engineers and scientists; for hopeful, and not simply optimistic, futures we also need real storytellers.

References Arendt, H. (1959). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Barry, J. (2018). ‘Post-Growth Economics, Sustainability and Equality: Towards a Green Republican Political Economy’, Presented at ECPR 2018 Joint Sessions workshop, ‘Green Politics and Civic Republicanism: Green Republicanism as a Response to the Environmental and Political Crises of the 21st Century’, Nicosia, Cyprus, April 10–14, 2018, available at: https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/c9ec1a4f-fbaf-427d-bab7-1a 764dde7e74.pdf (accessed 29/5/18). Barry, J. (2016a). ‘Bio-fuelling the Hummer? Transdisciplinary Thoughts on Techno-Optimism and Innovation in the Transition from Unsustainability’, in Byrne, E., Mullally, G.

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& Sage, C. (eds.), Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Transition to Sustainability. London: Routledge, 106–124. Barry, J. (2016b). ‘In Praise of Intellectual Promiscuity in the Service of a ‘Passion for Sustainability’, in Byrne, E., Mullally, G. & Sage, C. (eds.), op cit., 234–237. Barry, J. (2014). ‘Green Political Theory’, in Geoghegan, V. & Wilford, R. (eds.), Political Ideologies: An Introduction. 4th ed. London: Routledge, 153–178. Barry, J. (1999). Rethinking Green Politics: Nature, Virtue and Progress, London: Sage. Cannavò, P. F. (2016). ‘Environmental Political Theory and Republicanism’, in Gabrielson, T. et al (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 72–88. Castree, N. et al (2014). ‘Changing the Intellectual Climate’, Nature Climate Change, 4:9; 763–768. Connor, L. and Marshall, P. (2016). ‘Ecologies, Ontologies and Mythologies of Possible Futures’ in Marshall, P. and Connor, L. (eds), Environmental Change and the World’s Futures: Ecologies, Ontologies and Mythologies. London: Routledge. Ehrenfeld, D.( 1978). The Arrogance of Humanism. Oxford:Oxford University Press. Fremaux, A. (2018). Towards a Critical Theory of the Anthropocene and a Life-affirming Politics. A Post-Anthropocentric, Post-Growth, Post-(neo)Liberal Green Republican Analysis, unpublished PhD thesis. Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast. Fremaux, A. and Barry, J. (2018/in press). ‘The “Good Anthropocene” and Green Political Theory: Rethinking Environmentalism, Resisting Ecomodernism’, in Biermann, F. and Lovbrand, E. (eds), Anthropocene Encounters: New Directions in Green Political Thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Glikson, A. (2013). ‘Fire and human evolution: The deep-time blueprints of the Anthropocene’, Anthropocene, 3:1; 89–92. Hawkins, H. (2013). For Creative Geographies: Geography, Visual Arts and the Making of Worlds. London: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (1977). ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, in his The Question Concerning Technology and other Essays. New York and London: Garland Press, pp. 3–36. Hine, D. and Wheeler, S. (eds) (2017). Sanctum: Dark Mountain Issue 12. Totnes, Devon: Dark Mountain Project. Hulme, M. (2014). Can Science Fix Climate Change?: A Case Against Climate Engineering. Cambridge: Polity. Hulme, M. (2009). Why we Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. KostasL. (2017). ‘Makeshift Engineering: Practicing the craft of locally manufactured small wind turbines’, paper presented at ‘Radical Hope’ conference, Rachel Carson Center, LMU, Munich. Available: https://seeingthewoods.org/2017/07/26/radical-hope-insp iring-sustainability-transformations-through-our-past/. Lear, J. (2006). Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Princeton: Harvard University Press. MarxK. (1844/1961). Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. MarxK. and EngelsF. (1998). The German Ideology, including Theses on Feuerbach. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Miles, M. (2010). ‘Representing Nature: Art and Climate Change’, Cultural Geographies, 17:1; 19–35. Moore, J. (2015). Capitalism in the Web of Life. London: Verso. Moore, J. (ed) (2016). Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Oakland, CA: PM Press.

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in bold type refer to tables Page numbers in italic type refer to figures Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes a-historicism 42 action: collective 146; human 5, 20, 30, 60, 68, 130, 143; moral 158 activism, new forms 41 adaptation 155 Adorno, T.W. 20, 29 advocacy (Anthropocene) 124, 126, 129–132, 154–156; geo-engineering 154–156; strong Anthropocene (SAA) 13, 127–129, 131, 132–134, 207 Aeschylus 114, 120n2 affective empathy 171 Age of Man 29 agency 77, 134, 161; human 9–10, 39, 54, 55, 57, 60, 137, 205, 208; nature 28, 30 agential realism 38 agents, ecological 143 Alaimo, S. 9 Amazon jungle 100 Amerindian ontologies 39 analysts, engaged 70 animal cruelty 173 anthromes 116 Anthropocene: discussions 7–8; doing 134; emotive meanings 116–120; practical responses 13–14; start dates 2, 6, 83–84, 119; thesis 37–38, 42, 44, 46; two-phase 84 Anthropocene Review, The 7 Anthropocenologists 23–24

anthropocentrism 129, 131, 203, 209 anthropodicy 25 Anthropogenic nature, beyond 55–58 anthropology, criticism 47n4 anthropos 5, 7, 30, 77, 144 anti-capitalist politics 45 apocalyptic Anthropocene 14, 181–184, 186 applied ethics 123 Arendt, H. 212 Arias-Maldonado, M. 13, 20, 25, 26, 28, 116, 127, 137–150, 204, 205; and Trachtenberg, Z. 1–16 Ariffin, Y. 12, 111–122, 208–209 Aristotle 209 arts 8, 14, 114, 170–177, 212–213; critical openness 173–176; deliberative reflection 170–176; education 171–172, 212; empathetic listening 170–173; empowerment 175 Asafu-Adjaye, J., et al. 21, 24, 60, 139, 141 authenticity 99–100 Authoritarian Populisms 181–182 autonomy 159; non-human 128, 130–131, 134 Baker, S. 11, 51–64, 203–204 Barad, K. 38, 39 Barak, N. 12, 94–107, 206 Barry, J. 14–15, 21–22, 32n14, 201–215 Beatley, T. 95

Index 217

beavers 86, 89 Beck, U. 24, 48n12 Benford, R., and Snow, D. 118 Berlin, I. 159 binaries 38, 39 biodiversity 55, 57, 58–59; loss 6, 23, 51, 54; re-wilded landscapes 52–53 biology 39, 83 biomass 57 biophysical world 41 biopolitics 92n1 biotech 41 Bloom, P. 171 Boltanski, L., and Chiapello, E. 43 Bonneuil, C. 24; and Fressoz, J.-B. 23–24, 32n14; Gemenne, F. and Hamilton, C. 144 boosters, Anthropocene 33n21, 208 Brand, S. 24 Braun, B. 42–43 Breakthrough Institute 45, 47n9, 183, 194 Brecht, B. 174 bridge-building 75–77 built environment 104n2 Cafaro, P. 27 Callicott, J.B. 99 capital 43, 175; accumulation 38, 43, 44 capitalism 2, 14, 15, 21, 31, 33n22, 41, 42, 46, 119, 138, 201, 209, 212; carboniferous 23; exploitation 120, 140; green 21; institutions 129; knowledge 44; liberal 137, 140, 142, 145, 146, 204; neoliberal 27, 42; popular culture 173–174; post-Fordist 43; relations 40 Capitalocene 2, 7, 9, 19–36, 201, 208 carbon 41–42, 197 carboniferous capitalism 23 Castree, N. 67, 68, 69, 70, 74 catastrophe 23, 29–30, 94, 144, 145, 146, 208 catastrophism, eco- 148 causal ideas 119, 120 Central Park (NYC) 97, 97 change 60; ecosystems 167; social 137 Chiapello, E., and Boltanski, L. 43 choice, human 204 Chrystostom, D. 115–116 Chthulucene 9 Cicero 114–115 cities 12, 94, 94–107, 206; climate change 94; environmental politics 94; environmental sustainability 99; green 95–96; nature in 12, 95–102, 97, 103; nature of 96, 97; planning 12, 96; politics 101; socio-economic processes 95; sustainability 94; wildlife 174

citizens 4, 9, 146; assemblies 169 City-Nature-Theses (CNTs) 95–102, 102–104, 103, 206; city and nature differences 100–102, 103; interrelatedness 95–97, 102, 103; socially, economically and politically interdependent 97–99, 102, 103 civilization 28, 113, 116, 175, 209; ambivalence 12, 111, 116, 120 Clammer, J. 175 Clark, N., and Yusoff, K. 37 class, global 101 climate 155, 156, 181, 203; emergency 32n15; policy 154, 155 climate change 6, 9, 21, 51, 54, 77, 131, 138, 143, 145, 154, 161, 209, 211; arts 170; cities 94; communication 70; conservation 59; novel ecosystems 52, 53 climate-socialism 145 coalitions 161, 162 Cobb Jr., J.B. 99–100 cognitive empathy 171 cognitive niche 87 Cohen, G.A. 135n4 Coles, R., and Schlosberg, D. 41 collective action 146 collective ethical reflection 168 colonialism 184 commodification 44, 206 commodity production 94 communism 209 complex system theory 43 conception, hyper modern 32n11 conceptual instrumentalism 104n8 conceptual space 78–79 conceptual thickness 1–2, 3 conceptualization, Anthropocene 204–206 Connolly, W. 5–6, 9, 140 conscious reflexivity 168 conservation 21, 29, 59, 130, 132; policy 54, 58–59 Conservation Ecology 59 Constant, B. 160 constructivism, socio- 20 constructivists, eco- 21, 26 consumption 51, 94, 197, 198 control 22, 23–27 Cook, I.R., and Swyngedouw, E. 94–95 Coole, D., and Frost, S. 39 cooperation 87, 88 crafting 40 Creation 113 creativity 44 Crist, E. 113

218 Index

critical design 180–200, 202; fixity and fluidity 196, 196 critical openness, arts 173–176 critical realism 33n26 Critical Theory 46 critical transition studies 195 criticism, in anthropology 47n4 critique 174, 176 Crutzen, P.J. 83; and Schwägerl, C. 24, 25, 38; and Stoermer, E.F. 32n15, 112 cultural imperialism 132 culture 8, 88, 143, 175; identity 57; and nature 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 37, 77; popular 173–174 cunning of reason 119 Cunningham, H. 101 cybernetics 43 cyborgs 28, 98, 180 Cynics 12, 111, 113, 115, 116, 118 Dalby, S. 138–139, 141 dam building 89, 90 Darwin, C. 41, 47n3 Davies, J. 5 De Chant, T. 32n7 deception, self- 140 decision-making 74, 169 deconstructor-critic 69, 70 defensive localism 40 deforestation 55 deliberative democracy 14, 166, 168–170, 176, 212 deliberative reflection, arts 170–176 deliberative sustainability governance 168–170 democracy 4, 7, 67, 155; deliberative 14, 166, 168–170, 176, 212; liberal 168 democratic Anthropocene 166–179 depoliticization 78 design, critical 180–200, 196, 202 determination, self- 162 development: economic 133; human 45, 114, 212; society 166; sustainable 169 Di Chiro, G. 160 Dickens, C. 172 Dieleman, H. 175 Dienstag, J.F. 69–70, 77 disagreement 124–125, 127 domination of nature thesis 28 Dougherty, C. 114 Drake, C. 175 Dryzek, J.S. 167, 168 dualisms 37, 40, 96, 97, 100, 206

early Anthropocene 12, 83–85, 210 Earth: Future 68, 70, 77, 79; human impact 123; Mother 39, 40; Ragamuffin 55, 56; stewardship 24, 26, 29, 38, 46, 143, 147 Earth Charter (2000) 132–133 Earth Science 155, 156, 161 Earth Science System (ESS) 5, 9, 22, 23–27, 51, 154 eco-catastrophism 148 eco-constructivists 21, 26, 32n9 eco-feminism 194 eco-industrial policy 196 eco-Marxism 22 eco-politics 183 eco-social assemblages 28 eco-socialism 194 ecocentrism 101 ecological catastrophes 23, 29, 30, 144, 145, 146, 148 ecological engineering 85, 86 ecological modernities, pluralizing and provincializing 186–194, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193 ecological politics 43, 83–92, 98 ecology 20, 27, 52, 54, 60, 86, 87, 143; governance 42; political 98, 99 ecomodernism 13, 20, 21–27, 31n2, 45, 145, 146, 148, 181, 183; critique 138–142 Ecomodernist Manifesto (2015) 31n2, 32n17 ecomodernists, eco- 26, 32n9 economic development 133 economy 43, 133; growth 129, 184; political 14, 141; steady state 43 ecosystem services 44, 51, 59, 102; payment for (PES) 44, 47n7 ecosystems 9, 23, 43, 54, 58, 87, 128, 180; change 60, 156, 167; native 58; novel 6, 11, 51–64, 58, 203; sustainability 112 education, arts 171–172, 212 effective freedom 159, 160, 161, 162, 163 Ellis, E.C. 19, 24, 32n18, 116, 128, 135n9, 141; et al. 29 Ellis, M., and Trachtenberg, Z. 142 emancipatory politics 40 emotives 116–120 empathy 170, 171, 176, 212; affective 171; arts 170–173; cognitive 171; deliberative democracy 171; fiction 172; listening 170–173 empowerment, arts 175 energy 40, 90, 155, 183, 198, 199 engaged analysts, role 70 engineering see geo-engineering

Index 219

Enlightenment 24 Entman, R.M. 112 environment 1, 4, 10, 37, 43, 70; conservation 29; degradation 184; governance 167, 169; humanities 67, 69, 74; justice 94, 98, 99, 159; modification 86, 87; policy 13, 58; political framework 99–100; political theory 88, 92; sustainability 97, 99 Environmental Political Theory (EPT) 1, 3, 5, 6, 11–12, 46, 71, 73, 74–75 environmental politics 9, 133, 160; cities 94 environmental social sciences and humanities (ESSH) 68, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77 environmentalism 27, 129, 142; modern 142; post- 25, 26, 27; radical 145; strawman 129–132; traditional 129–130, 132, 134 Epimetheus 114 Escobar, A. 40 ethical reflection, collective 168 ethics 123, 126, 144, 207; applied 123 evil 119 evolution 86, 176 exploitation, capitalist 140 feminism 194 fiction, empathy 172 fixity and fluidity 194–197; critical design studies 196, 196 foetal imaging 39 food 40, 41 Fordism 43; post- 43, 44 foresight, human 111, 114 formal freedom 159 Fox, W. 104n2 fracking 183 framing 112–113, 116, 184 freedom 13–14, 79, 153–154, 155, 202, 203; of choice 159, 160; effective 159, 160, 161, 163; formal 159; intuitive notion 156–158; liberal 160, 163; negative 159; opportunity 159–160; positive 159; refined 158–160; republican 160, 163; value of 160 Fremaux, A. 10, 19–36, 208 Fressoz, J.-B., and Bonneuil, C. 23–24, 32n14 Frost, S., and Coole, D. 39 Fry, T. 180 Future Earth 68, 70, 77, 79 futures: designing 184–186; fluxed 201–215

Gaia 9, 26, 30, 45, 140, 147 Gemenne, F., Hamilton, C. and Bonneuil, C. 144 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 41, 112 gentrification, green 99, 102 geo-engineering 13–14, 23–27, 31, 32n15, 113, 153–165, 164n2, 195, 203; Anthropocene advocacy 154–156; cost-benefit analysis 157; humanity 160–161; stakeholders 154, 156–158, 160–163; technology 161, 162, 163; Technology Assessment (TA) 156–157, 160 geo-politics 146 Geological Time Scale (GTS) 83 geology 52, 83 geoscientists 69 Geuss, R. 133–134, 135n3 Gibson, K., and Rose, D.B.F.R. 32n10 Gibson, W. 201 global class 101 global warming 19, 23, 119, 180, 182 global warming potential (GWP) 41–42 globalization 2 God 119, 204 Goldstein, J., and Keohane, R. 118, 119 good Anthropocene 8, 9, 13, 14, 181, 183–184, 186, 198, 203; and bad 142–145; critique 19–36, 204–205; towards 137–150 Goodin, R.E. 171 Görg, C. 30 governance: ecological 42; global 146 Governator 12, 208–209, 213; emergence 111–122 Grand Coulee Dam (Columbia River) 89 Gray, A. 213 Great Acceleration 2, 83, 84, 143, 204, 210 green capitalism 21 green cities 95–96 green gentrification 99, 102 green political economy 97 green political theory 206, 211, 212 green politics 205, 207–208 green republicanism 14, 206, 207 green spaces 97 green urbanism 95 greenhouse gas emissions 139 Grossi, P. 47 growth 184; economic 129, 184 Guthrie, W. 89 habitability 137, 144 Hailwood, S. 13, 123–136, 207, 208

220 Index

Hamilton, C. 6, 19, 20, 25, 26, 33n25, 84, 113, 139, 205; Bonneuil, C. and Gemenne, F. 144 Hammond, M., and Ward, H. 14, 166–179, 212, 213 Haraway, D. 9, 27–28, 31n4, 98, 180 Harvey, D. 98 Havel, V. 205 healthcare 195 Hegel, G.W.F. 119 Heidegger, M. 203 Hettinger, N. 130, 131, 135n12 history, teleological conception 20 Hobbs, R.J., et al. 54 Holling, C.S. 43, 167 Holocene 8, 23, 67, 128, 138, 142, 145; post- 14, 202 hope 205, 206; socio-natural 145–148 Hornborg, A. 113 Hulme, M. 202 human development 45, 114, 212 humanities 69, 70, 211; environmental 67, 69, 74; publics 76 humanity 83, 112–113, 128; co-evolution 167; ecological circumstance 87; geo-engineering 160–161; impacts 141; and nature 211, 212; and non-humanity 123; survival 31 humanization 60, 131 humans 22, 44, 83, 85, 113, 116, 118, 120n1; action 5, 20, 30, 60, 68, 130, 143; activity 118, 127, 154, 166, 204; agency 9–10, 39, 54, 55, 57, 60, 137, 205, 208; choices 204; cognitive abilities 87; condition 202, 213; development 45, 114, 212; and environment 1, 4, 10; influence 9, 112, 142; and nature 13, 15, 91, 211, 212; nature of 84–85, 119, 128; niche construction 206, 210; progress 25, 30; reflexivity 142–143; rigorous discipline (askesis) 115 humans-only orientation 6 hybrid labour 180–200 hybrids 22, 28, 29, 30, 118–119, 120 hyper modern conception 32n11 hyper-ecomodernists 26 hypermodernity 29 identity: cultural 57; thinking 22, 30 ideology 124, 129, 134; SAA 132–134 imagination 175 imperialism, cultural 132 industrial policy, eco- 196 industrialization 2, 84, 143 industry 114–115, 198 inequalities: power 134; social 21, 51, 140

information society 112 innovation 44, 139 institutions: capitalist 129; political 5, 85, 100, 153; social 127, 196 instrumentalism, conceptual 104n8 intellectualism, public 72, 73 intelligence 111 interdisciplinarity 69, 76 international relations 158, 161, 162 invasive alien species 58 inventor-discloser 69, 70 Irons, E. 174 it’s-too-late-o-cene 181–184, 198 Jablonka, E. 86 Jamieson, D. 135n8 Johns, D. 130 journals 7, 70, 72, 113 jungle: Amazon 100; urban 100 just transitions 180–200, 202 justice 67, 73, 79, 123, 125–126, 155; environmental 94, 98, 99, 159; social 94 Kaika, M. 96 Kareiva, P., et al. 29, 33n19 Keohane, R., and Goldstein, J. 118, 119 King, R.J.H. 104n2 Kingsolver, B. 172 knowledge 23, 88, 112, 114; production 8, 68, 211; scientific 70 labour: cognitive 44; division of 125, 126; hybrid 180–200 land 52, 55, 94; ethic 173; use 52, 53, 54 landscapes: fragmented 57; managed 55; natural 97; physical 91; re-wilded 52 language 88 Larmore, C. 125 Latour, B. 31n4, 45, 47n10, 139 Lefebvre, H. 104n12 Leopold, A. 173 Lewis, S.L., and Maslin, M.A. 92n2 liberal capitalism 137, 140, 142, 145, 146, 204 liberal democracy 168 liberal freedom 160, 163 liberalism 20 life in accordance with nature (kata phusin) 115 Light, A. 104n2 listening, empathetic 170–173 localism, defensive 40 long Anthropocene 154 Lövbrand, E., et al. 9, 77, 78 Macket, B. 132–133 McKibben, B. 19, 31n3

Index 221

Malm, A. 113 managerialism, techno- 103 Marris, E. 57, 59; et al. 29 Marx, K. 41, 47n3, 120, 208–210 Marxism 14, 22 Mascaro, J., et al. 29 Maslin, M.A., and Lewis, S.L. 92n2 mastery 23–27 materialism, new 42, 208 materiality 39, 45, 46 Meine, C. 133 Merchant, C. 19 Meyer, J.M. 11, 67–81, 89, 90, 91, 92n5, 211 mini-publics 169, 171 mobilization 40, 41, 46, 47 modern environmentalism 142 modernity 14, 22, 23, 28, 30, 124, 138, 139, 184, 194, 207; false dichotomies 27; tools 205; vices 139; Western 39, 41 modernization 183, 184, 185, 186, 209 Moore, J. 9, 201 moral action 158 moral philosophy 125 moral values 123 moralism 123, 128, 132, 207–208; political 124, 129, 132 morality 90, 125, 126, 132, 133 Morrell, M.E. 171 Mother Earth 39, 40 motorways 54–55 multiculturalism, neoliberal 47n1 multinaturalism 39 native ecosystems 58 native species 57 natural capital substitution 30 natural city 95, 99–103, 104n8 natural landscape 97 natural sciences 69, 70, 73 natural systems 142 natural, the 55 naturalism, post- 77 naturalistic fallacy 90, 101 naturalness 131, 206 nature 3, 19, 29, 54, 57, 89, 180; agency 28, 30; and capital 43; in cities 12, 95–102, 97, 103; commodification 206; constitutive role 88–92; and culture 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 37, 77; de facto management 131–132; death of 19, 27, 30, 60, 140; directive role 88–92; end of 8, 10, 19–20, 21, 26, 27–28, 55–56, 210; human embeddedness 91, 92; humanization 60; and humans 13, 15, 91, 211, 212; life in accordance with (kata

phusin) 115; moral significance 88–89; natura naturans 26; neoliberalization 40–42; non-human 128, 130; as non-identity 29–31; as Other 99; post- 25–26; preservation 27, 201; protection of 141; pure 13, 129, 131; restoration 54, 131, 135n12; return of 10, 19–36, 51–64; social construction 30; social quality 51; and society 4, 5, 56, 60; urban 96, 97, 104n4; wild 57, 128 nature-cultures 27, 28, 180 Nazism 90 negative freedom 159 Nelson, S. 42, 43, 44 neoliberal capitalism 27, 42 neoliberal multiculturalism 47n1 neoliberalism 21, 43, 45 neoliberalization, nature 40–42 new materialism 40, 42, 208 new species, management 59 Newell, P, and Paterson, M. 21 niche, socialized 87–88 niche construction 12, 83–84, 85, 87, 88, 94, 206, 209–210; directive or constitutive 88–92; human 206, 210 Niche Construction Theory (NCT) 86, 208 non-dualist ontologies 38, 41, 45, 46 non-equilibrium 43 non-human autonomy 128, 130–131, 134 non-human nature 44, 56, 118, 123, 128, 130 non-human world 27, 45 non-identity, nature as 29–31 non-urban political ecology 98 normative ideas 111–112, 118, 120 normative judgements 3, 4, 88 normative political theory 89 normative thinking 91–92 novel ecosystems 6, 11, 51–64, 203; climate change 52, 53; interests and value 57–58, 58 novelty 54, 56 nuclear energy 183 nutrient cycling 57 ontological politics 37, 40–42 ontological turn 10–11, 37–50, 38–40 ontologies 42; Amerindian 39; non-dualist 38, 41, 45, 46 opportunity freedom 159–160, 162 optimism 205; techno- 118, 119, 120, 205–206, 209 Other, nature as 99 ozone depletion 19, 119 Pachamama (Mother Earth) 39 panarchy paradigm 53

222 Index

partnerships 169 passions 119 Paterson, M., and Newell, P. 21 path dependencies 168 payment for ecosystem services (PES) 44, 47n7 peace 133 Pearl Harbour 117 Pellizzoni, L. 10–11, 37–50, 208, 211–212 pessimism, techno- 12, 118, 119, 120, 205, 209 phenomena 38–39 philosophy: moral 125; political 3, 75, 123–125, 126, 127, 132 physics 90 Pierrehumbert, R. 203 Pinker, S. 87 planetary change 5, 6, 8, 13, 24 planetary control 24 planetary governmentality 6, 147 planetary trajectories 142 Plato 114 Plumwood, V. 25 pluralism 124 poetry 213 policy: climate 154, 155; conservation 54, 58–59; eco-industrial 196; environmental 13, 58 political economy 14, 97, 98, 141 political institutions 5, 85, 100, 153 political judgement 124 political moralism 124, 129, 132 political philosophy 3, 75, 123–125, 126, 127, 132 political realism 123–126; strongest (SPR) 124, 128, 129, 132 political science 70, 71–72 political theory 3, 13, 67–81, 98, 99, 153, 158, 211; audience 71–72, 73; broad interdisciplinary engagement model 73–74; goals 72, 73, 78–79; green 206, 211, 212; normative 89; public intellectual model 72–73; scholarship model 71–72; vocations 70–71, 74, 75 political values 123 politics 4, 5, 12, 79, 124, 126, 146, 175, 205, 207; anti-capitalist 45; biological language 83; city 101; critical design 195; decision-making 169; eco- 183; ecological 43, 83–92, 98; emancipatory 40; environmental 9, 94, 133, 160; eradication 206; and ethics 207; geo- 146; green 205, 207–208; naturalizing 102; new materialist 40; ontological 37, 40–42; power 4, 197; real Anthropocene 123–136; socio-technical 181, 194, 202–203; of swarming 9

pollution 55 popular culture, capitalism 173–174 positive freedom 159 post-environmentalism 25, 26, 27 post-Fordism 43, 44 post-Holocene 14, 202 post-natural claim 77 post-nature 25–26 post-normal science 6, 8, 22, 24 post-political claim 77–78 post-social claim 77 postmodernity 21, 28 Poupeau, F. 47n1 poverty 172 power 3, 5, 9, 11, 204, 205; counterflows 41; critique 132, 133; human 67; inequalities 134; political 4, 197; social 4, 113; steam 83 precautionary Anthropocene 208–210 prescriptive ideas 111 preservation, nature 27, 201 production 196, 198 Prometheanism 26, 113, 208 Prometheus 12, 111, 114, 115–116 property 46–47 Protagoras 114 protection, of natural world 141 public intellectualism 72, 73 publics 194, 195 pure nature 129, 131 purity 126 radical environmentalism 145 Ragamuffin Earth, nature 55, 56 Rancière, J. 175, 177 Raphael, D. 3 Raworth, K. 9 re-wilding 52–53, 185 real Anthropocene politics 123–136 real utopias 195 realism 123, 126, 128, 207–208; agential 38; critical 33n26; political 123–126; strongest political (SPR) 124, 128, 129, 132; subtle 33n26 reality 28, 175; novel accounts 37, 38, 40; postmodern 28; socio-natural 197 reason, cunning of 119 Reddy, W. 116–117 reflection: collective ethical 168; deliberative 14, 166, 168–170, 176, 212 reflexive capital 175 reflexivity 142–143, 169, 177; conscious 168; human 142–143 reforestation 183 regulation, self- 25

Index 223

republican freedom 160, 162, 163 republican turn 207 republicanism, green 14, 206, 207 research 67, 68, 73, 77, 78 resilience 45 restoration, of nature 54, 131, 135n12 Revkin, A. 138–139 right to the city notion (Lefebvre) 104n12 rigorous discipline (askesis) 115 Robin, C. 198 Rockström, J., et al. 9 Rolston, H. 100 Roosevelt, T. 117 Rorty, R. 146–147 Rossi, E., and Sleat, M. 132 Ruddiman, W. 12, 84 ruralism 96, 101 Sandel, M.J. 72 Scharper, S.B. 100 Schlosberg, D., and Coles, R. 41 scholarship, Anthropocene 69–70, 75–77 Schwägerl, C., and Crutzen, P.J. 24, 25, 38 science 1, 7, 23, 42, 70; Earth 155, 156, 161; natural 69, 70, 73; political 70, 71–72, 76; post-normal 6, 8, 22, 24; social 69, 70, 73, 74, 76, 125, 194, 211 scientism 42 Scranton, R. 209 self-binding 14, 163 self-conscious rearrangement 5, 148–149, 160 self-deception 140 self-determination 162 self-organizing 43–44 self-regulation 25, 45, 53 self-sufficiency (autarkeia) 12, 115 self-understanding 175 Sen, A. 159 sentient creatures 173 services, ecosystem 44, 51, 59, 102 short Anthropocene 154 Skees, M.W. 174 Sleat, M., and Rossi, E. 132 Smith, A. 86–87, 120, 171 Snow, D., and Benford, R. 118 social assemblages, eco- 28 social change 137 Social Darwinism 90, 101 social hope 147 social inequalities 21, 51, 140 social institutions 127, 196 social justice 94 social mobilization 46 social power 4

social processes 51 social science 52, 69, 70, 73, 74, 76, 125, 194, 211 social systems 142 social theory 8, 10–11 social-ecological evolution 176 socialism, eco- 194 socialized niche 87–88 society 30; development 166; evolution 167; information 112; and nature 4, 5, 56, 60; physical setting 3; reflexive openness 167–168 socio-constructivism 20 socio-ecological collapse 182 socio-ecological condition 202–203 socio-ecological relations 194 socio-ecological systems 52 socio-natural entanglements 116, 127, 130, 142, 201, 207 socio-natural hope 145–148 socio-natural management 147–148 socio-natural reality 197 socio-natural relations 3, 4, 5, 9, 138, 139, 141, 145, 147, 148 socio-technical politics 181, 194, 202–203 sociology 76 Sophists 12, 111, 113, 114, 116, 118 Soulé, M. 59 sovereignty 67, 162 space, conceptual 78–79 species 52, 53, 54, 59, 87, 210; invasive alien 58; native 57 spiritual, and material 39 stakeholders: geo-engineering 154, 156–158, 160–163; governance 169 states: effective freedom 161, 162; opportunity freedom 162; republican freedom 162 steady state economy 43 steam power 83 Stefanovic, I.L. 99, 101 Steffen, A. 181 Steffen, W., et al. 112–113 Stephens, P.H.G. 129 Stevenson, C.L. 117 stewardship, Earth 24, 26, 29, 38, 46, 143, 147 Stoermer, E.F., and Crutzen, P.J. 32n15, 112 Stratospheric Aerosol Injection 203 Strauss, L. 3 strawman environmentalism 129–132 strong Anthropocene advocacy (SAA) 13, 127–129, 131, 132–134, 207 strongest political realism (SPR) 124, 128, 129, 132 subtle realism 33n26

224 Index

suburbanization 101 sufficiency, self- 12, 115 survival 86, 87 sustainability 14, 38, 44, 45, 78, 137, 138, 141, 144, 159, 181, 202, 212; cities 94; ecosystems 112; goals 168; reflexive openness 170; science 70; urban 94, 96, 102 sustainability governance 166–179; deliberative 168–170 sustainable development 169 Swift, A. 125–126 Swyngedouw, E., and Cook, I.R. 94–95 technical sphere, social innovation 202 techno-centric transition 194 techno-managerialism 103 techno-nature 31n4 techno-optimism 118, 119, 120, 205–206, 209 techno-pessimism 12, 118, 119, 120, 205, 209 technology 21, 23, 25, 28, 141, 202–203; destructive 32n12; geo-engineering 161, 162, 163; innovation 21–22, 139; intensification 45, 137, 143 Technology Assessment (TA) 156–157, 160 technonatures 27, 31n4, 180 technosols 53 television programming 174 thinking, normative 91–92 tipping point 23 TOAD sites 54 Tolstoy, L. 170 Trachtenberg, Z. 11–12, 82–93, 208, 209, 210; and Arias-Maldonado, M. 1–16; and Ellis, M. 142 trade, global 52 traditional environmentalism 129–130, 132, 134 translator 73–74 Tully, J. 73 understanding, self- 175 United Nations (UN) 161; Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 59

United States of America (USA): Central Park (NYC) 97, 97; Grand Coulee Dam 89; no net loss of wetlands regulations 53; Wilderness Act (1964) 130 unsustainability 138, 140 urban environmental ethics 102 urban jungle 100 urban modernization 185–186 urban nature 96, 97, 104n4 urban political ecology 98, 99 urbanism: green 95; sustainable 94, 96, 102 urbanization 58, 94, 98, 185; capitalist mode 206; cyborg 98; global 101 utopias, real 195 values 141, 167, 168; moral 123; political 123 vitality, as a capture dispositif 44–46 Voltaire 24 Waldon, J. 85 Walzer, M. 70–71 Ward, H., and Hammond, M. 14, 166–179, 212, 213 wars, Anthropocene 202 water management 155 weeds 174 Western modernity 39, 41 White, D. 14, 180–200, 202–203 wild nature 57, 128 wild, the 54, 55 wilderness 56–57, 58, 129, 130, 131, 133; conservation 130, 132 wildlife, cities 174 Williams, B. 124 Wissenburg, M. 13–14, 153–165, 203 Wolin, S.S. 72, 78 Wolke, H. 130 world, knowing 68 worldviews 111, 118, 120 Wright, E.O. 195 Ypi, L. 174–175 Yusoff, K., and Clark, N. 37 Zalasiewicz, J., et al. 119