The Anthropocene

Abstract

Climate change will challenge the human community in many ways for centuries to come. Human influence on the climate is now the primary driver of the shift to a less stable and more dynamic global environmental system—the Anthropocene. In this chapter we explore some profound implications of this new age. First, what we mean by “the environment” is now itself ever-changing, with human actions affecting the very makeup, functioning, and evolution of global and local ecosystems, pushing them in new directions that can be difficult to predict. Second, this new reality has consequences for the founding principles of environmental management, conservation, ecosystem restoration, and action on the environment in general. The use of the past as a baseline natural world to be restored or mimicked is no longer possible, and so the era of preservation as the basis of environmental management is over. Climate change is pushing ecological systems out of their Holocene comfort zone (the last 10,000 years of unusual climatic stability). Our conceptions of a “natural” world and how people relate to it will have to change as well. Scientific controversies, environmental politics, and ecological management begin to look very different as a result. While most environmental scientists warn of the profound difficulties of navigating the Anthropocene, some technological optimists envisage a brave new future where humanity progresses through continued advances in biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology (Silver, 1997; Kurzweil, 2005). In this light, climate change and the transition to the Anthropocene are just a bump in the path of human progress. This kind of thinking extends to geo-engineering the planet to both avoid the worst of climate change and even push human development in new directions. While some climate scientists are beginning to explore the possibilities and consequences of geo-engineering, others are concerned that such bold action will exacerbate environmental uncertainties. These tensions among scientists represent competing visions of the degree to which governance informed by science can really understand and constructively guide Earth processes. If humanity survives into the long run, there may be ways that the Anthropocene can be organized to provide for both ecosystem and human functioning.