Environmental Justice and the Anthropocene Meme

Abstract

This essay examines the adoption of and the indifference to the term “Anthropocene” in diverse discourses addressing the urgency of climate change in the early twenty-first century. Through an analysis of keynote speeches, this essay argues that Anthropocene—a storytelling device invoking a pan-human species responsibility for the current climate crisis—is deployed widely within Euro-Australo-American academic environmental studies and environmental politics, but has not gained political or epistemic traction in environmental justice and climate justice organizations and social movements. Challenging the underlying universalism, anti-humanism, and cynicism woven into Anthropocene discourse, activists from environmental justice, climate justice, and indigenous organizations do not invoke Anthropocene’s rhetoric of humans as destroyers or masters of nature. Rather, these groups provide examples of “people powered” regenerative politics based on life-enhancing political strategies and proactive organizing in support of a just transition toward renewable energy, local economies, and socially and ecologically sustainable communities.

The Anthropocene exit: Reconciling discursive tensions on the new geological epoch

“…In addition to the stratigraphic evidence of a geological epoch (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000;Steffen et al, 2015a;Waters et al, 2016), the Anthropocene has produced several discourses about it (e.g. Malm and Hornborg, 2014;Di Chiro, 2016). Accordingly, the Anthropocene can signify both the epoch and the discourses about it.…”

“…It is of course pertinent to question whether the term 'Anthropocene' is based on a narrow worldview offering only a limited normative guide to action; or even worse, that it may leave the prescription implicit behind the hegemonic understanding of what should be done (Malm and Hornborg, 2014;Hornborg, 2015;Di Chiro, 2016).…”

“…This means that the anthropogenic changes in the biosphere are also sociogenic, pertaining to a specific social order. That is, the driver of change is not merely humans as a species, but also specific social power relations and structures, and forms of economic organisation (Bauer and Ellis, 2018;Di Chiro, 2016;Lövbrand et al, 2015;Malm and Hornborg, 2014;Moore, 2015).…”

Geo-engineering: a curse or a blessing?

“…It is worth noting in more detail, though, that 'Anthropocene' is a social construct and most definitely not a politically neutral concept, not a 'purely objective, scientific term'if such a thing can exist at all (cf. Baskin 2015, Lepori 2015, Luke 2015a, 2015b, Schlosberg 2016, Di Chiro 2016. It was introduced by the same people who brought you 'global warming' 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'.…”

The Role of Awe in Environmental Ethics

“…This point is made frequently by environmental justice advocates. See, for example, Cuomo () and Di Chiro ().…”