Dear Friends,
Part II is here;
Be Well.
David
By Keith Kloor | January 29, 2013 3:10 pm
It’s not often that an aging social movement gets a
chance to redefine and reinvigorate itself. Environmentalism has that
opportunity now, with the Anthropocene, which National Geographic has dubbed, The Age of Man. What does that mean? As
I recently wrote in Slate, the Anthropocene
represents a growing scientific consensus that the contemporary
human footprint—our cities, suburban sprawl, dams, agriculture, greenhouse
gases, etc.—has so massively transformed the planet as to usher in a new
geological epoch.
This sounds like The Age of Man is
bad for humanity and the earth. But that’s too simplistic. As The
Economist noted in its 2011 cover story:
The advent of the Anthropocene promises more, though,
than a scientific nicety or a new way of grabbing the eco-jaded public’s
attention. The term “paradigm shift” is bandied around with promiscuous ease.
But for the natural sciences to make human activity central to its conception
of the world, rather than a distraction, would mark such a shift for real.
The question is, what would this new paradigm shift
signify? Might it offer a fresh new lens to view the future? Or will it merely
reinforce the bleak view that environmentalists have held for the past 40
years?
The answer to that rides on the narrative that emerges
from the public discourse on the Anthropocene.
This is where environmental scientists, green
activists and eco-minded writers come in. They are the ones that shape the
meta-narrative, which the media picks up on and amplifies. By that measure, the
chances for a re-imagined environmentalism are small.
As I said in that Slate piece,
leading earth scientists
publish high-profile papers warning “that population growth, widespread destruction
of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth” to an
irreversible tipping point. They issue reports from prestigious science societies warning about
a finite planet being run into the ground. Some hold glitzy, international symposiums that put humanity on a mock trial for the global
imprint of its civilization.
The common thread: The Anthropocene is an
unmitigated disaster. Humans are planet wreckers. Time is running out for
us.
This was the general picture that Will Steffen portrayed in his keynote speech at the recent Anthropocene
Project conference
in Berlin. (I love that title; it sounds like a Robert Ludlum thriller.)
Steffen, to his credit, didn’t overplay the collapse theme.
He didn’t say doomsday was knocking at the door. However, he did make it clear
that he believed the ominous footsteps of peak oil, resource scarcity, runaway
climate change, and the “sixth
extinction”
were edging closer and that we should not ignore them.
Steffen is actually much sunnier than the grim voices
that tend to frame environmental discourse.
Like that of Chris Hedges, who, several years ago, wrote in the magazine that triggered Occupy Wall
Street:
We stand on the cusp of one of the bleakest periods in
human history when the bright lights of a civilization blink out and we will
descend for decades, if not centuries, into barbarity.
Unlike many other critics of the technosphere, who are
busy churning out books and doing the lecture circuit and updating their
anarcho-primitivist websites, [Ted] Kaczynski wasn’t just theorizing about
being a revolutionary. He meant it.
He sure did!
You have to admit, it doesn’t sound as if people like
Hedges and Kingsnorth are keen on the Anthropocene. Are they outliers or merely
representative of a darker strain of environmentalism? Perhaps for a larger
perspective we should turn to a respected elder statesman, someone with stature
in the Big Nature world– like David Attenborough, who recently called humanity a “plague on the earth.”
Oops. Let’s move on.
Maybe the UK’s Royal Society, an august scientific
institution, can inject a little sanity into this discussion. It just so
happens that Paul and Ann Ehrlich have recently posed a relevant question in a
paper the Royal Society published. It’s called, “Can a collapse of global civilization be
avoided?”
That would be important to know. Let’s find out what
they have to say:
Environmental problems have contributed to numerous
collapses of civilizations in the past. Now, for the first time, a global
collapse appears likely.
Damn. Maybe Kingsnorth in his Orion piece
isn’t such an outlier, after all. He writes:
Our civilization is beginning to break down. We are at
the start of an unfolding economic and social collapse, which may take decades
or longer to play out—and which is playing out against the background of a
planetary ecocide that nobody seems able to prevent.
At this point, you might be asking: Are there any
signs of light in this dark and utterly depressing view of humanity’s future?
Fortunately, there is, as I discussed here. I’ve also become enchanted with a group of young scholars at Stanford, who are not
taking predictions of doomsday at face value. Bless their hearts, they even seem to think that “the narrative of apocalypse has changed in
the shadow of the Anthropocene.”
If only.
[This is the first of a two-part exploration of the
Anthropocene discourse. Part two will be posted tomorrow.]
CATEGORIZED UNDER: ANTHROPOCENE, CLIMATE CHANGE, ECOCIDE, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENTALISM
MORE ABOUT: ANTHROPOCENE, CLIMATE CHANGE, COLLAPSE, DOOMSDAY, ECOLOGY,ENVIRONMENTALISM
Part II
By Keith Kloor | January 30, 2013 3:06 pm
Nearly two decades ago, an environmental historian
published a scholarly essay that enraged the environmental community. William Cronon,
author of the seminal Changes in the Land (a book that deeply influenced me and manyothers) and the brilliant (equally influential) Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great
West, began his provocative essay this way:
The time has come to rethink wilderness.
This will seem a heretical claim to many
environmentalists, since the idea of wilderness has for decades been a
fundamental tenet—indeed, a passion—of the environmental movement, especially
in the United States. For many Americans wilderness stands as the last
remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully
infected the earth. It is an island in the polluted sea of urban-industrial
modernity, the one place we can turn for escape from our own too-muchness. Seen
in this way, wilderness presents itself as the best antidote to our human
selves, a refuge we must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet. As
Henry David Thoreau once famously declared, “In Wildness is the preservation of
the World.”
But is it? The more one knows of its peculiar history,
the more one realizes that wilderness is not quite what it seems. Far from
being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite
profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human
cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine
sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still
transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered
without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it’s a product of
that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which
it is made. Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the
more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds
up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we
see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires. For this reason,
we mistake ourselves when we suppose that wilderness can be the solution to our
culture’s problematic relationships with the nonhuman world, for wilderness is
itself no small part of the problem.
It’s a long, trenchant piece that was first excerpted
(clumsily, I believe) in theNew York Times magazine. It immediately
triggered a furor (which I have previously discussed). Since then, a modernist green perspective has
emerged, further challenging outdated environmentalist metaphors and orthodoxy.
As I wrote in Slate last month, this
modernist green outlook has a “broader ecological view.”
It is unclear if traditional, mainstream
environmentalists (who drive the environmental discourse and agenda) will be
able to escape their nature-centric legacy and put the needs of people on an
equal footing. This is not to say that environmental groups ignore
important societal concerns. Obviously, public health issues (such as
pollution) are a big part of environmental activism.
But make no mistake, groups like the Nature
Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council,
the Sierra Club, and the Wilderness Society are in the business of protecting
nature. Mind you, I think that’s important business. There should be devoted
watchdogs with clout who are looking after nature. After all, this often
translates into the protection of vital ecosystems, watersheds, prairies,
forests, rivers, animals and plants. And yes, wilderness, too–even if that is
something we created as an unnatural sanctuary to commune with nature. I like
to escape to wild places, either via a raft or a meandering hike. I like vacationing inCanyonlands and Yosemite with
my family. I spent a sizable chunk of my career as an editor at an environmental magazine.
So I don’t want environmental groups to go out of
business. I don’t want them to stop caring about nature.
But, paraphrasing Cronon, I would like them to rethink
nature for theAnthropocene. It’s not my job to say what nature should mean in a
world shaped primarily by humans–I’m still working it out, myself–but I knowothers feel this is a discussion we should be having. I’m also not the only one
who thinks environmental discourse and policy should stop being dominatedby “horror stories.”
Why is this important for the future of environmentalism,
as I recentlyindicated? The journalist Paul Voosen scratches the
surface here:
Over the past few years, the Anthropocene has become a
defining idea of environmentalism. It does much in little space. It ends the
separation of humanity from nature. It changes the discussion for a politicized
electorate weary of global warming. It broadens the tent, encircling a host of
realities: biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, population growth.
In other words, the nature/human dichotomy that has
animated environmentalism since its inception no longer applies. This is a
point that I made recently to Jon Christensen’s UCLA class, Environmental Communications in the Anthropocene, when I visited there several weeks ago.
What this entails is something that I think
environmentally-minded people are grappling with at the moment. There’s an
ambivalence about the Anthropocene that is palpable. I saw it in Jon’s class
when the subject of my controversial Slate essay came up and he asked students if they considered
themselves modernist or traditionalist-minded greens. The ratio was split
roughly 50-50. As Andrew Revkin said in his New York Times Dot Earth
blog:
Taking full ownership of the Anthropocene won’t be
easy. The necessary feeling is a queasy mix of excitement and unease.
This is made all the more difficult because many of us
have a complicated relationship with science and technology. The Anthropocene
forces us to think hard about genetically modified crops, nuclear power, and
perhaps most important of all, an underlying tenet of contemporary
environmentalism–the precautionary principle, which the French
sociologist Bruno Latour and others believe we should reconsider. How many environmentalists are ready to go that far?
I’m betting not many.
Jon Foley, the director of the Institute on the
Environment at the University of Minnesota, has a new essay that challenges the strategies and priorities of
environmentalists. He starts off:
We are supposed to be in the business of changing the
world. The question is: Are we?
I think an even better question–perhaps one Jon will
take up in a future essay–is: What do we want to change the world to? That’s
the million dollar question the Anthropocene suggests to me.
[This is the second of a two part meditation on the
Anthropocene. Part one is here.]
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