Defining Anthropocene

Question 1

Anthropocene

Answer 1

humanity as the dominant influence on the planetary system (OED)

Question 2

Anthropocene -> not formally ratified

Answer 2

in 2009 Working group headed by Zalasiewicz produced (Mahli, 2017) -> all men

Question 3

Working group rejected the Anthropocene

Answer 3

based on a sample taken from crawford lake, canda (the Guardian)

Question 4

anthropocene zeitgeist -> permeated culture and politics so is not limited to science

Answer 4

also referred to as ‘Anthropo-scene’ (Lorimer, 2017)

Question 5

‘geology of mankind’ -> Nature (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000)

Answer 5

widespread support ensued (Steffen et al., 2011)

Question 6

early ideas of the Anthropocene

Answer 6

Limits to Growth 1972 and Noösphere (humans as the dominant planetary force) (Mahli, 2017).

Question 7

to formalise the Anthropocene -> stratigraphic signal required = Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point e.g. plastics, nuclear fallout, chicken bones etc… (Zalasiewicz et al., 2014)

Answer 7

Geologists want the process to go slower -> Holocene took time (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2017) but also want formalisation since term is being thrown around (Mahli, 2017)

Question 8

formalising the Anthropocene = epistemological leap = having to predict what the indication of the Anthropocene will be for the GBSS (Mahli, 2017)

Answer 8

geologists work in public eye -> due to permeation of term into culture and politics

Question 9

Earth System Science (Steffen et al., 2020)

Answer 9

interconnections between different earth systems e.g. troposphere and hydrosphere (Mahli, 2019) -> Anthropocene aided emergence

Question 10

earth -> 9 planetary boundaries (Mahli, 2019)

Answer 10

upon exceedance = planetary crisis/ collapse (Rockström et al., 2009).
exceedance of 2/9 boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009) -> ‘rupture’ from Holocene state into a new state (Mahli, 2019)

Question 11

IPCC report detailed that planetary collaboration was required before 2012 to meet the Paris Climate Agreement target, yet this has not been achieved (Davis et al., 2019)

Answer 11

Earth currently = non analog state (Crutzen and Steggen, 2003)

Question 12

Anthro – Greek prefix for ‘we’ (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2017) -> unfair as only certain actors (fossil fuel industry) produced the problem (Mahli, 2017)

Answer 12

6th mass extinction = inter-species inequalities -> biodiversity crisis -> nonhuman not considered = reemphasises the human/nonhuman divide (Crist, 2013)

Question 13

contributors to climate change

Answer 13

China is the largest emitter but the USA + Europe have overall contributed more ghgs.
- In 1850 western countries were contributing to 72.7% of global emissions but only 18.8% of global population (Malm and Hornborg, 2014)

Question 14

Capitalocene ->

Answer 14

capitalist socio-economic systems produced environmental crises -> based on private ownership and free markets (OED, 2020)

Question 15

Capitalocene proposed start dates

Answer 15

Industrial Revolution (Crutzen, 2002) = steam engines and trains for water to be used in industrialised coal mining (Malm and Hornborg, 2014)
Great Acceleration (mid-20th century) -> After WWII and Cold War and radionuclide stratigraphic evidence e.g. ‘Bomb Spike’ e.g. plutonium (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2017a; Hamilton, 2017)

Question 16

Harvey and Smith = eco-marxists

Answer 16

argued for metabolic shift in which nature is taken and commodified -> exploitation of the environment

Question 17

capitalism is contradictory

Answer 17

destroys the material conditions which are required to produce a product due to exploitation -> unsustainable (O’Conoor, 1998).
based on externality -> deal with costs later = environmental damage (Moore and Patel, 2017)

Question 18

capitalism and ‘cheap’

Answer 18

-> hidden costs = environmental damage therefore ‘cheap’ is a practice (Moore and Patel, 2017)

Question 19

capitalism and commodification

Answer 19

reinforces nature/culture binary as nature is alienated -> led to the separation of nature and society (Hornborg, 2017)

Question 20

capitalism and neoliberalisation

Answer 20

not produced meaningful solutions -> last 20 years -> is essentially greenwashing (Smith, 2006).
- ‘Sell nature to save it’ -> McAfee, 1999)
- Neoliberal biodiversity conservation -> perpetuates the nature/culture binary = exploitation (Büscher et al., 2012)
- Ecotourism -> financial gain still prioritised (Duffy, 2010)

Question 21

(Chakrabarty, 2008) -> If we lived in a more social world -> environmental crisis likely would have been reached earlier

Answer 21

(Thrift, 2005) -> Is it possible to even overcome capitalism = so deeply entrenched

Question 22

‘terminator technology’

Answer 22

Monsanto’s GM Soybeans as they are resistance to herbicides = bigger yields but subsistence farmers become reliant on the company as the seeds they are provided with are infertile -> company increases costs, but they are ‘locked in’

Question 23

Plantationocene

Answer 23

Colonialism and the globalisation that followed produced the current environmental crises (Haraway, 2015; Mahli, 2017) -> calls for reparations and provide a platform for a pluriverse (Oslender, 2019)

Question 24

proposed start date for plantationocene

Answer 24

Colombian Exchange 1610 -> death of indigenous communities due to colonialism led to regrowth of forests over agricultural regions = carbon sequestration in the climate record (Lewis and Maslin, 2015).
 Diseases spread to indigenous populations (Duncan, 2002).
 7-10ppm drop in co2 = Orbis spike (Lewis and Maslin, 2015).
 70-90% of the population were killed.
 Flattening of biodiversity as crops mass produced globally (Mahli, 2017)

Question 25

plantations constructed e.g. 1452 Sugar-Slave Complex in Madeira (Yusoff, 2018) -> set up the conditions upon which bodies and nature is currently exploited and commodified for cheap (Pulido, 2018)

Answer 25

> plantation dynamics important for understanding how power relations have permeated the modern world (McKittrick and Woods) e.g. 0 hour contracts and ‘slow violence’ as racial environmentalism (Yusoff, 2018)

Question 26

epistemicide

Answer 26

destruction of epistemologies -> no other ways to farm known (Tsing, 2019)

Question 27

refugia to western/eurocentric ideas

Answer 27

 Allotment sites or slave gardens (Haraway, 2015) -> places of resistance
 Part of ‘plantation futures’ -> multispecies approach to dealing with the current climate crisis by drawing on ways in which plantations resisted control (McKittrick, 2013)

Question 28

criticisms of plantationocene

Answer 28

-> Plantationocene is a criticism of the Anthropocene only highlighting one narrative but itself only represents a partial picture

Question 29

Chthulucene -> based on producing multispecies interactions and actively engaging with the environment (Haraway, 2016)

Answer 29

aim to decenter the human and challenge the privileging of human perspectives

Question 30

fight for the nonhuman through ‘making kin’ (Haraway, 2016)

Answer 30

 Awunjun Wampis took oil companies who wanted their land for oil extraction to court (de la Cadena, 2015).
 Máxima Acuña who defended her land – the nonhuman – against capitalist corporations which wanted it for resource extraction (de la Cadena, 2015)

Question 31

Chthulucene focuses on more-than-human

Answer 31

 Inter-species interactions important for producing us -> need to understand non-human agency for these wider problems.
 No consideration of the impact of Anthropocene on other species -> used to justify the poor treatment of animals

Question 32

geography -> needs to better account for the human-nonhuman entanglements

Answer 32

 MTHG = newer methods to do this (Highcliffe et al., 2005).
 E.g. oil pipelines -> are considered as inert and have no global implications which is not the case -> political debates ensure when they breakdown (Barry, 2010).
 ANT -> agency of the nonhuman and the assemblages they form (Anderson and MacFarlane, 2011).
 Geophysical processes dominate over human control e.g. forest fires, volcanic eruptions (Clark, 2011)

Question 33

Todd, 2016

Answer 33

need to not appropriate indigenous ontologies -> ‘cultural turn’ by Latour represented this

Question 34

ontological shift for Chthulucene

Answer 34

ideas of land being owned is incompatible with indigenous ontologies = relational approach e.g. Mapuche in Argentina -> land as an intrinsic part of local identity (de la Cadena, 2015)

Question 35

Chthulucene criticism

Answer 35

no stratigraphic marker and no outline of effective action (Hornborg, 2017)

Question 36

other proposed start periods

Answer 36

Neolithic Period with agricultural expansion and farming e.g. rice paddy fields, while other imply it to have been the use of fire by early humanity/ Late Pleistocene Megafauna Extinctions (Ruddiman, 2003; Ruddiman, 2018) -> extinctions normally neglected as there is no sufficient geological evidence (Ruddiman, 2018)

Question 37

other proposed names for Anthropocene

Answer 37

• Racial Capitalocene (Vergés, 2017) -> privileging of modernity through capitalism is to blame for marginalizing indigenous ontologies -> blend of Capitalocene and Plantationocene (Davis et al., 2019).
• Ecozoic Era -> humanity must share and live with nature (Berry, 2008)

Question 38

eco-modernism (Greenwood and Garnett, 2022)

Answer 38

Idea that technocratic fix to overcome current environmental challenges -> facilitate sustainable dwelling and conservation and other methods will be overcome

Question 39

‘Good Anthropocene’

Answer 39

that the Anthropocene provides a way to improve daily sustinable living -> overcomes the pessimism of the term (Mahli, 2017) = Sustainocene (Davis, 2016)

Question 40

origins of ecomodernism -> three waves

Answer 40

• 1870-1970s = Conservation strategies -> nature/culture binary, fortress conservation… e.g. Madagascar’s National Park Project (Harper, 2008).
• 1960s-1970s = Protest and regulation -> awareness of environmental impacts e.g. Silent Springs on DDT (Carson, 1962), NGOs emereged e.g. Greenpeace (1969), Stockholm Declaration 1972, 1992 Summit on Biological Diversity.
• 1980s-2000s = market environmentalism -> neoliberalisation and incorporation of environmental solutions with capitalism e.g. carbon offsetting, ecosystem services, green consumers

Question 41

ecomodernism in practice

Answer 41

emphasies Anthropocentrism -> impacts need to be lessened - no concern with harmonising with nature.

Question 42

geoengineering -> modify the global environment to overcome issues of C.C. (OED, 2022)

Answer 42

Two forms
Cloud seeding (increased precip), stratospheric aerosol injection (tho might switch off monsoon)
Carbon capture and storage, ocean fertilisation, afforestation.

Question 43

Nature-based solutions -> involve nature and address societal challenges to benefit humans (Seddon, 2022)

Answer 43

Nature-based co2 removal
Often chosen as viewed as more appropriate -> not always yielding the responsible solutions (Buck)

Question 44

problems with geoengineering -> run by fossil fuel industry -> could be problematic in the future

Answer 44

overcome by increasing participatory action via governance?

Question 45

defining the Anthropocene is importance since it will lead to certain decisions (Stallins, 2020).

Answer 45

e.g. switch to doughnut economics -> economic system which resides within the planetary boundary known as a safe operating space (Raworth, 2017)
how should emission responsibility be determined -> more developed nations to curve emissions more (Chakrabarty, 2016)?

Question 46

anthropocene

Answer 46

challenges the science/politics and nature/culture binaries e.g. Anthromes (Ellis et al., 2013)