Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T09:18:20.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Politics in the Anthropocene

from Part Two - One Anthropocene; Many Stories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2022

By
Manuel Arias-Maldonado
Edited by
Julia Adeney Thomas
Julia Adeney Thomas
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access

Summary

What does it mean for politics that human beings have transitioned, or are still transitioning, from the Holocene to the Anthropocene? The latter marks the rise of a new political actor, namely humanity as a whole. Although the disruption of the Earth System was not the result of a conscious decision, securing the habitability of the planet requires a concerted effort on the part of living humans. This chapter suggests that the shared vulnerability of human beings on an increasingly unstable planet may encourage a new self-understanding of the species as a global political agent. In the meantime, three approaches to the Anthropocene can be distinguished: liberal democracy, eco-authoritarianism, and green communitarianism. None of them is being globally implemented, and it would be naive to expect otherwise. They will most likely coexist in the future, thus expressing in different ways the common will to face the dangers of the Anthropocene.

Keywords

Anthropoceneliberal democracyeco-authoritarianismcommunitarianismdegrowthclimate changehuman speciespolitics
Type
Chapter
Information
Altered Earth
Getting the Anthropocene Right
 , pp. 160 - 181
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, S (2013) Voluntary simplicity and the social reconstruction of law: Degrowth from the grassroots up. Environmental Values 22(2): 287–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barry, J (2012) The Politics of Actually Existing Unsustainability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biermann, F, Dryzek, J (2016) Critical dialogue. Perspectives on Politics 14(1): 174–178.Google Scholar
Bonneuil, C, Fressoz, J (2013) The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us. London & New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Chakrabarty, D (2018) Anthropocene time. History and Theory 57(1): 5–32.Google Scholar
Dell’Aquila, M, Atzori, D, Stroe, OR (2020) The role of policy design and market forces to achieve an effective energy transition: a comparative analysis between the UK and Chinese models. In: Hafner, M. and Tagliapietra, S. (eds.), The Geopolitics of the Global Energy Transition: Lecture Notes in Energy, vol 73 (227–255). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Paola, M, Jamieson, D (2018) Climate change and the challenges to democracy. University of Miami Law Review 72: 369.Google Scholar
Dryzek, J, Pickering, J (2019) The Politics of the Anthropocene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Economy, E, Levi, M (2014) By All Means Necessary: How China’s Resource Quest is Changing the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, T (2009) Our one-party democracy. The New York Times, 8th September: 29.Google Scholar
Galaz, V (2019) Time and politics in the Anthropocene: Too fast, too slow? In: Biermann, F. and Lövbrand, E. (eds.), Anthropocene Encounters: New Directions in Green Political Thinking (109–127). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, G (1977) The Tragedy of the Commons. In: Hardin, G. and Baden, J. (eds.), Managing the Commons (16–30). San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.Google Scholar
Heilbroner, R (1975) An Inquiry into The Human Prospect. London: Calder & Boyars.Google Scholar
Ingenbleek, P, Reinders, M (2013) The development of a market for sustainable coffee in the Netherlands: rethinking the contribution of fair trade. Journal of Business Ethics, 113: 461–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jamieson, D, Di Paola, M (2016) Political theory for the Anthropocene. In: Held, D. and Maffettone, P. (eds.), Global Political Theory (254–280). Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Kallis, G (2011) In defence of degrowth. Ecological Economics 70: 873–880.Google Scholar
Lovelock, J (2010) Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change. The Guardian, 29th March.Google Scholar
Mann, G, Wainwright, J (2018) Climate Leviathan. London: Verso Books.Google Scholar
Mert, A (2019) Democracy in the Anthropocene: a new scale. In: Biermann, F. and Lövbrand, E. (eds.), Anthropocene Encounters: New Directions in Green Political Thinking (128–149). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Milligan, B (2013) Space-time vertigo. In: Ellsworth, E. and Kruse, J. (eds.), Making the Geologic Now: Responses to Material Conditions of Contemporary Life (123–130). Brooklyn: Punctum Books.Google Scholar
Ophuls, W (1977) Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.Google Scholar
Pomeranz, K (2009) The great Himalayan watershed. New Left Review, 58: 5–39.Google Scholar
Poppe, K (2013) On markets and government: property rights to promote sustainability with market forces. NJAS – Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 66: 33–37.Google Scholar
Raffnsøe, S (2016) Philosophy of the Anthropocene: The Human Turn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ritter, B (2018) Market forces are driving a clean energy revolution in the US. The Conversation, 28th April.Google Scholar
Rosenblatt, H (2018) The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Simon, ZB (2019) History in Times of Unprecedented Change: A Theory for the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Steffen, W, Crutzen, P, McNeill, J (2007) The Anthropocene: are humans now overwhelming the great forces of nature? Ambio 36(8): 614–621.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steffen, W, Röckstrom, J, Richardson, K, et al. (2018) Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. PNAS 115 (33): 8252–8259.Google Scholar
The Economist (2017) Green is the new black, 8th April: 62.Google Scholar
Tickell, C (2011) Societal responses to the Anthropocene. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 369, 926–932.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vollrath, D. (2020) Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy is a Sign of Success. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wang, W, Feng, C, Liu, F, Li, J (2020) Biodiversity conservation in China: a review of recent studies and practices, Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, 2: 100025.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wissenburg, M (1998) Green Liberalism: The Free and the Green Society. London: UCL Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×