Defining Anthropocene Flashcards
Anthropocene
Anthropocene
humanity as the dominant influence on the planetary system (OED)
Anthropocene -> not formally ratified
in 2009 Working group headed by Zalasiewicz produced (Mahli, 2017) -> all men
Working group rejected the Anthropocene
based on a sample taken from crawford lake, canda (the Guardian)
anthropocene zeitgeist -> permeated culture and politics so is not limited to science
also referred to as ‘Anthropo-scene’ (Lorimer, 2017)
‘geology of mankind’ -> Nature (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000)
widespread support ensued (Steffen et al., 2011)
early ideas of the Anthropocene
Limits to Growth 1972 and Noösphere (humans as the dominant planetary force) (Mahli, 2017).
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)
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)
formalising the Anthropocene = epistemological leap = having to predict what the indication of the Anthropocene will be for the GBSS (Mahli, 2017)
geologists work in public eye -> due to permeation of term into culture and politics
Earth System Science (Steffen et al., 2020)
interconnections between different earth systems e.g. troposphere and hydrosphere (Mahli, 2019) -> Anthropocene aided emergence
earth -> 9 planetary boundaries (Mahli, 2019)
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)
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)
Earth currently = non analog state (Crutzen and Steggen, 2003)
Anthro – Greek prefix for ‘we’ (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2017) -> unfair as only certain actors (fossil fuel industry) produced the problem (Mahli, 2017)
6th mass extinction = inter-species inequalities -> biodiversity crisis -> nonhuman not considered = reemphasises the human/nonhuman divide (Crist, 2013)
contributors to climate change
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)
Capitalocene ->
capitalist socio-economic systems produced environmental crises -> based on private ownership and free markets (OED, 2020)
Capitalocene proposed start dates
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)
Harvey and Smith = eco-marxists
argued for metabolic shift in which nature is taken and commodified -> exploitation of the environment
capitalism is contradictory
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)
capitalism and ‘cheap’
-> hidden costs = environmental damage therefore ‘cheap’ is a practice (Moore and Patel, 2017)
capitalism and commodification
reinforces nature/culture binary as nature is alienated -> led to the separation of nature and society (Hornborg, 2017)
capitalism and neoliberalisation
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)
(Chakrabarty, 2008) -> If we lived in a more social world -> environmental crisis likely would have been reached earlier
(Thrift, 2005) -> Is it possible to even overcome capitalism = so deeply entrenched
‘terminator technology’
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’
Plantationocene
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)
proposed start date for plantationocene
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)
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)
> 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)
epistemicide
destruction of epistemologies -> no other ways to farm known (Tsing, 2019)
refugia to western/eurocentric ideas
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)
criticisms of plantationocene
-> Plantationocene is a criticism of the Anthropocene only highlighting one narrative but itself only represents a partial picture
Chthulucene -> based on producing multispecies interactions and actively engaging with the environment (Haraway, 2016)
aim to decenter the human and challenge the privileging of human perspectives
fight for the nonhuman through ‘making kin’ (Haraway, 2016)
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)
Chthulucene focuses on more-than-human
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
geography -> needs to better account for the human-nonhuman entanglements
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)
Todd, 2016
need to not appropriate indigenous ontologies -> ‘cultural turn’ by Latour represented this
ontological shift for Chthulucene
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)
Chthulucene criticism
no stratigraphic marker and no outline of effective action (Hornborg, 2017)
other proposed start periods
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)
other proposed names for Anthropocene
- 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)
eco-modernism (Greenwood and Garnett, 2022)
Idea that technocratic fix to overcome current environmental challenges -> facilitate sustainable dwelling and conservation and other methods will be overcome
‘Good Anthropocene’
that the Anthropocene provides a way to improve daily sustinable living -> overcomes the pessimism of the term (Mahli, 2017) = Sustainocene (Davis, 2016)
origins of ecomodernism -> three waves
- 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
ecomodernism in practice
emphasies Anthropocentrism -> impacts need to be lessened - no concern with harmonising with nature.
geoengineering -> modify the global environment to overcome issues of C.C. (OED, 2022)
Two forms
Cloud seeding (increased precip), stratospheric aerosol injection (tho might switch off monsoon)
Carbon capture and storage, ocean fertilisation, afforestation.
Nature-based solutions -> involve nature and address societal challenges to benefit humans (Seddon, 2022)
Nature-based co2 removal
Often chosen as viewed as more appropriate -> not always yielding the responsible solutions (Buck)
problems with geoengineering -> run by fossil fuel industry -> could be problematic in the future
overcome by increasing participatory action via governance?
defining the Anthropocene is importance since it will lead to certain decisions (Stallins, 2020).
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)?
anthropocene
challenges the science/politics and nature/culture binaries e.g. Anthromes (Ellis et al., 2013)
