Zurich Open Repository andArchiveUniversity of ZurichMain LibraryStrickhofstrasse 39CH-8057 Zurichwww.zora.uzh.ch

Year: 2015

Extinction as usual?: Geo-social futures and left optimism

Rowan, Rory

Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of ZurichZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-117071Journal ArticlePublished Version

Originally published at:Rowan, Rory (2015). Extinction as usual?: Geo-social futures and left optimism. E-Flux Journal:online.

Rory Rowan

Extinction asUsual?: Geo-Social Futuresand LeftOptimism

Back to Geo-Social Futures

The concept of the Anthropocene, the so-calledgeological age of man, has become pervasive inrecent years, marking one of those rareinstances when an idea from the naturalsciences gains wider purchase on the popularimagination, as evolution, thermodynamics, andGaia have before it. Although the conceptremains contentious within the Earth sciences –the International Commission on Stratigraphy isdebating whether it should be adopted within thescientific periodization of the Earth’s history –for the moment this appears no obstacle to itsgrowing popularity across domains that typicallyhave little truck with geology, including of coursethe art world, where it remains a favoredcuratorial device, and academia, where it is thesubject of innumerable conferences andsymposia. Whether or not it will turn out to be aconcept of enduring significance or a passingintellectual meme remains to be seen, but agrowing body of critique is emerging from withinboth the humanities and the environmentalmovement. Much of this critical discussion on theAnthropocene has thus far focused onhighlighting the ways in which appeals to theagency of a supposedly universal “Anthropos”conceal the historically specific forms of socialpower that have resulted in Earth systemschange.1 Stratigraphic debate in the Earthsciences about identifying appropriate markersfor its origins is increasingly shadowed bydebates in the humanities that locate itsemergence with European colonialism, thedevelopment of industrial capitalism, or ColdWar nuclear militarism. Some have suggestedthat “Capitaloscene” is a better designation,given the fundamental role played by globalcapitalism in transforming the planetaryenvironment, while others are calling for the“decolonization” of the Anthropocene.2 Indeedsuch debates have fed back into the Earthsciences, where scientific controversies havethemselves become politicized, with, forexample, a recent paper published in Nature bySimon Lewis and Mark Maslin of UniversityCollege London suggesting that evidence existsfor locating the origins of the Anthropocene inthe European colonization of the Americas.3 Lessremarked upon has been what geo-social futuresmay be possible and desirable in light of thesecontested entanglements of social andgeological histories. It is now common to find geo-social futuresevoked within the horizon of extinction. A recentscientific paper arguing that there is no longerany doubt that the Earth is undergoing its sixthmass extinction was widely reported upon inmainstream media, but this was only the latest

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Harvey Ball, creator of the smiley face, autographs posters in his office on July 6, 1998.

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in a slew of ominous warnings issued by eminentresearch institutions.4 Although the prospect ofimminent extinction might provide fodder forcheap nihilism, and imagining The Earth After Us

arguably aids awareness of just how grave theconsequences of anthropogenic environmentalchange may be, it is perhaps more urgent andfruitful to address how to live with and through

seemingly inevitable catastrophic environmentalchange.5 It is important to remember that (toparaphrase what William Gibson has said of “thefuture”) environmental catastrophe is alreadyhere – it’s just not evenly distributed. For many,environmental devastation is a lived realityrather than a matter of philosophical speculationor apocalyptic foreboding, let alone long-termplanning. Hence, questioning geo-social futuresnot only implies imagining extinction, or“learning how to die,” but also thinking abouthow best to collectively organize life in light ofthe uneven responsibilities for, andvulnerabilities to, anthropogenic planetarychanges already well underway.6

“We Have Seen What We Can Do, and It’s

Awesome”

In June 2015 the “new environmentalist” thinktank The Breakthrough Institute hosted a three-day conference on the theme of “The GoodAnthropocene” at its headquarters in Oakland,California. The conference brought togethernatural and social scientists and popular sciencewriters including Diane Ackerman, Steve Fuller,Bruno Latour, and Mark Lynas, as well as one oftheir harshest critics, the Australianenvironmentalist Clive Hamilton. Given that, formany, including Paul Crutzen – the climatescientist who popularized the term – theAnthropocene is a concept indicating theprofound depth of the planetary environmentalcrisis, it may seem counterintuitive to prefix itwith the deeply oxymoronic adjective “good.” Butshaking up conventional environmental thinkingwas one of the aims. The idea of the good Anthropoceneoriginated with Erle Ellis, a landscape ecologistat the University of Maryland and a senior fellowat The Breakthrough Institute. Ellis advocateswhat he calls “postnatural environmentalism”and argues that we should “forget MotherNature” and recognize that “this is a world of ourmaking.”7 He claims that “nature is gone,” andthat humans have shaped the naturalenvironment for millennia, even at the planetaryscale.8 Thus, Ellis advises liberating ourselvesfrom pious mystifications about a pure, wildnature that existed before the modern period,and suggests that “rather than look back indespair [we] look ahead to what we canachieve.”9 For him, the Anthropocene means that

we are “living on a used planet,” that there is “noreturning to our comforting cradle,” and that,rather than an occasion for regret, this presentsan opportunity to celebrate human ingenuity:“We have seen what we can do, and itsawesome,” he wrote in 2011.10 According to Ellis,if we first “stop trying to save the planet,” thenwe can embrace the Anthropocene and our newrole as “the creators, engineers, and permanentglobal stewards of a sustainable human nature”– and he insists that “we” does mean all of us.11

For Ellis, postnatural environmentalismraises important but neglected questions: “Canwe create a good Anthropocene? In the distantfuture will we be able to look back with pride?”12

Like all visions of the future, Ellis’s optimisticconcept of a geo-social future where humanscan be proud of an “artificial earth” is based onhis understanding of the past.13 Ellis is aprominent advocate of the controversial earlyAnthropocene hypothesis, which traces humans’planetary impact to the advent of agriculturesome eight thousand years ago. For Ellis, theearly Anthropocene legitimates the goodAnthropocene, because if humans have alwaysshaped the natural environment, howeverunintentionally, then there is nothing essentiallydifferent about intentionally managing the entireplanet as technical capacities increase. Heassures us that, “we humans can totally trashthe planet and still survive. We already have inmany ways.”14 The logical sleight of hand uponwhich Ellis’s argument hinges and by which heseeks to jump scale without complication is, ofcourse, glaring: rice farming, therefore

geoengineering. Ellis’s good Anthropocene has beenwelcomed by those associated with so-callednew environmentalism or eco-pragmatism. Newenvironmentalism is not a formally organizedmovement but rather a loosely relatedassemblage of thinkers and institutions who,despite differences, share common ideas: theeclipse of “wild” nature; conservation as theproduction rather than the salvation of nature;technological progress as the key to sustainableenvironments; marketizing nature as a keyelement of environmentalism; the rejection ofscarcity as a necessary horizon; the capacity ofhuman ingenuity to transcend planetaryboundaries; and the rejection of much of whathas traditionally been identified asenvironmentalism.15 Indeed, these thinkersadopt the idea of “planetary stewardship” not asa difficult yet necessary task in the face oflooming catastrophe, but as a calling to embracehumanity’s role as planetary masters.16 MarkLynas starkly expressed this attitude at the GoodAnthropocene conference:

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In 2014, a thirty-six-year-oldwooden roller coaster inValencia, California dramaticallycaught fire and partiallycollapsed.

For the essential truth of the Anthropoceneis this: neither God nor Gaia is in charge. Weare. We now get to decide everything fromthe pH of the oceans to the temperature ofthe biosphere to the very composition andfuture evolutionary path of life on Earth.Ducking or denying this responsibility willnot make it go away. By virtue of our globalinfluence, we have landed ourselves withthis awesome task of planetarymanagement. The Anthropocene is bestunderstood not as a passive state, but anactive one.17

It should be emphasized that these debates arenot confined to obscure corners of academicconjecture but operate across different publicforums, shaping policy around topics like climatechange, conservation, energy technologies, andeconomic development.18 Despite the globalambition of these discussions, for the most partthey remain deeply US centric, but this isprecisely the reason for their outsize cultural andpolitical influence. The idea of the good Anthropocene wasgiven a major publicity boost in 2014 when New

York Times journalist Andrew Revkin bloggedabout a keynote speech where he took up the

idea. Revkin argued that “with work … we canhave a successful journey this century … We aregoing to do OK.”19 He was sharply rebuked byHamilton in a series of stinging articles where heclaimed that those “who argue for the goodAnthropocene are unscientific and live in afantasy world of their own creation.”20

The idea of the good Anthropocene is basedon a fundamental misreading of science. Itarises from the failure to make thecognitive leap from ecological thinking –the science of the relationship betweenorganisms and their local environments –to Earth system thinking, the science of theWhole Earth as a complex system beyondthe sum of its parts.21

Hamilton argued that the good Anthropocene is adepoliticizing narrative that works to perpetuatethe interest of those conservative forces workingdeterminedly to prevent action on climatemitigation and renewable energy. “It ignores thefundamental problem here, and that is theexercise of political power to stop governmentsfrom imposing policies that will facilitate thetransition to the low-carbon future.”22

This controversy was rekindled with the

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publication of the The Ecomodernist Manifesto, apamphlet laying out a rose-tinted newenvironmentalist vision of the “GreatAnthropocene” that can be achieved by turningaway from conventional environmentalistprinciples.23 Published by The BreakthroughInstitute, it carried signatures from a long list ofaffiliates, including Ellis and Lynas. Themanifesto repeats Ellis’s interpretation of theearly Anthropocene hypothesis, affirming thatthe “Earth is a human planet” and that“humankind’s extraordinary powers” can be used“in service of creating a good Anthropocene,”while the idea of “fixed physical boundaries tohuman consumption” is declared to be “sotheoretical as to be functionally irrelevant.” Agood Anthropocene, the manifesto declares,“demands that humans use their growing social,economic and technological powers to make lifebetter for people, stabilize the climate, andprotect the natural world.” To this end, themanifesto’s central claim is that intensifyingindustrial food production and expanding nuclearenergy would require less land and providegreater material well-being for an increasingglobal population, allowing the “decoupling [of]human development from environment impacts”so that “humanity’s material dependency uponnature might be less destructive.” Thus,intensifying technological development will alloweconomic growth to be unburdened ofenvironmental costs. Indeed, the manifestoargues that “meaningful climate mitigation isfundamentally a technological challenge,” amatter of inevitable technical innovation ratherthan a question of political will and cooperation. The manifesto has drawn a wide array ofcritiques from environmentalists and eco-critics,including, unsurprisingly, from the perspective ofdegrowth.24 Hamilton issued a scathing attackon the manifesto, highlighting how it blatantlydisregards established climate science onideological grounds, instead putting faith in an“old-fashioned American technofix” to solve theproblems of climate change – a type of techno-fetishism that is, Hamilton argues, only possiblebecause politics has been emptied out of themanifesto’s account of the world.25 Bruno Latourlikewise noted the absence of the political:“From the Manifesto I get enthusiasm, anger,dressing downs, but I don’t get politics.”26

Echoing his recent turn to the work of CarlSchmitt, Latour scolds the “ecomoderns” fortheir antagonistic deficit:

You should be able to define your friendsand your enemies. Who are you fighting?Who are you allying yourself with? What arethe amity lines you want to draw? I keephearing talks against those who want to

have or to impose limits. But … drawinglimits between friends and enemies is whatpolitics is all about.27

Further, he points out that the manifesto is“written entirely as if humans were still alone onthe stage,” and hence assumes an anachronisticconception of the division between Man andNature that fails to engage with the complex“reality of entanglement” the Anthropocene hasrevealed. Hence, according to Latour, not only isthe manifesto missing politics, but it fails toprovide any basis upon which political thinkingmay be “able to absorb the Anthropocene,namely the reaction of the Earth system to ouraction, in a way that renders politics againcomprehensible.”28 Hence, for Latour as forHamilton, the “Good Anthropocene” imagined byThe Breakthrough Institute and its newenvironmentalist fellow travelers is anideological mirage that places faith in a future ofseamless eco-technological ease rather thanaddressing the tensions of the political. As such,Hamilton notes, it is “system compatible” withthe headlong rush of the status quo intodevastation.29

Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the

Will?

At the Good Anthropocene conference, Lynasadvised environmentalists that “there is nothingso liberating as letting go of your pessimism,”and insisted that the difference between “the‘worst of times’ planet [and] the ‘best of times’planet” is principally a matter of attitude.Likewise the authors of The Ecomodernist

Manifesto state that “we embrace an optimisticview towards human capacities and thefuture,” and Ellis has asked “what good isenvironmentalism if it makes you depressedabout the future?” Hamilton rebuts thisoptimism on two fronts. Firstly, he says that it isa sunny form of aggression used as a “means ofgaining the moral upper hand.”30 Secondly, that itis grounded in and promotes a faulty view ofreality shaped by a quasi-religious belief intechnological progress. In the view ofecomodernists, “the only barrier to a grand newera for humanity is self-doubt and the‘pessimism’ of gloomy scientists … The Power ofpositive thinking can’t turn malignant tumorsinto benign growths, and it can’t turn planetaryoverreach into endless lifestyle improvements.”31

Similarly, Latour highlights that forecomodernists, “catastrophism [is] a sort ofhuman ideology imposed on a situation thatwould remain, in itself, fairly quiet and stable,let’s say fairly Holocene.”32 However,environmental catastrophe is, Latour cautions,not imaginative fancy, “but a reality that blind

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Pope Francis snuggles a baby lamb at the living nativity scene at a church outside Rome on January 6, 2014. The Huffington Post, January 7, 2014.

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faith in outmoded conceptions of progresscannot exorcize.” For Latour, such optimism is adangerous delusion:

Wake up you ecomoderns, we are in theAnthropocene, not in the Holocene, nor arewe ever to reside in the enchanted dream offuturism … As usual, those who fightagainst apocalyptic talk and catastrophismare the ones who are so far beyond

doomsday that they seriously believe thatnothing will happen to them and that theycan continue forever, just as before.33

It may be hard to disagree with Hamilton’s andLatour’s assessments; however, there seems tobe a risk here for eco-critics, particularly thoseof the Left: necessary critique of the falseoptimism peddled by The Breakthrough Instituteand their ilk might lead to a rejection of optimismas such – a risk that a pessimistic orientationtowards geo-social futures will become thedefault setting for Leftist environmentalism. Itmay seem that pessimism as a philosophicalstance is the preserve of only a few scatteredfringes of contemporary intellectual life – the“dark ecology” promoted in Paul Kingsnorth’sDark Mountain project, the “cosmic pessimism”of Eugene Thacker, the “antinatalism” of JimCrawford, which was given a popular platform bythe television show True Detective, or even theanonymous anarchist text Desert. Yet confiningourselves to this list would be to recognizepessimistic orientations only where they areexplicitly declared, when in fact pessimismtowards geo-social futures seems to be a muchmore common stance, even if it appears innuanced, more qualified forms.34 If we think ofpessimism as an affective sensibility, or even anaesthetic disposition, as opposed to atheoretically articulated – or even consciouslyheld – position, it might be considered moreprevalent in Leftist thought than some may careto admit. The problem with pessimism from apolitical perspective is that it is not veryconducive to forging collectives around sharedprojects and common struggles. Indeed, this maybe the point – to let hot air out of inflated dreams– but a pessimistic sensibility seems more likelyto cultivate politically debilitating affects, suchas melancholic paralysis and resignation in theface of existing forms of power, or even to fuelfears. However unintentionally, pessimism cantacitly legitimate the lessons of individualizedquietude taught by conservatives who tell us thatthe “small, happy life” offers deliverance fromthe dangerous delusion of collectivetransformation.35 Just as blind optimism riskslubricating existing forms of power, an equally

blind pessimism risks stunting the collectivecapacities required to oppose them. Optimism remains a crucial affectiveresource for galvanizing political struggles,particularly important in forging enduringalliances across plural collectives dispersed inspace and diverse in ethos – exactly the type ofarticulations needed to ensure more socially justand ecologically sustainable geo-social futures.This is why it is crucial not to cede optimism toreactionary forces or dismiss it as utopiannaïveté. Without some basic acceptance of theidea that through collective effort our relationswith one another and the planet can betransformed for the better, why would we act atall? Rejecting this possibility would be toconsent to an existence that is all stick and nocarrot, a purely defensive life governed by ad hocreactions, that would elevate the contingentideology of neoliberal individualism into aninescapable anthropological fact and reduceeach of us to a little Katechon securing the bestworst option until shit really hits the fan.Adopting a worldview from which all optimismhas been expunged would in effect naturalize theexisting catastrophic trajectories of globalcapitalism and militarized colonialism asinevitable and accept that indeed “there is noother way,” not due to faith in the brilliance of theplan but because of a lack of recognition thatcollective capacities may challenge it. Yet if some form of optimism is to beembraced, then the question with regard to geo-social futures is whether a distinction can bemade between those who locate optimism inexisting trajectories of global capitalism –accepting a depoliticized account of therelationship between social and naturalprocesses and uncritically positing technologicaldevelopment as the medium of social progressfor a universal humanity – and those who locateoptimism in struggles already under way againstthese very same trajectories – arguing thatdespite the brutality, dislocations, andextinctions of modernization, it has alsoproduced the conditions, platforms, andcapacities from which other worlds and newcollectives might be born, even within thewreckage of all that has been lost. I wouldhazard to say that these distinct modes ofoptimism can and should be distinguished.However, while rejecting the false optimism ofThe Breakthrough Institute may be relativelyeasy, articulating alternative conceptions ofoptimism within the present politico-planetaryhorizon is a task fraught with tension. Optimism implies a certain assessment ofthe possibilities for beneficial change (orcontinuity) over time, but how is historicalchange to be conceived at a geo-social juncture

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marked by the collision of social and Earthhistories? And who may it be beneficial for? Howdoes this unprecedented planetary-scaleconvergence of social and environmentalprocesses impact our ability to tie politicalstruggles, and political affects such as optimism,to actions and aims? The vector of inevitableprogress along which the moderns’ optimism wasplotted has now buckled under pressure fromexternalities that can no longer be ignored, andits promise of a better future is no longer clear.The planetary stage upon which world historywas to be played out has itself entered thedrama of the political, contorting the neutralspatial environment through which the arrow ofprogress was believed to pass. In light of thesenew historical conditions heralded by theconcept of the Anthropocene (or Capitaloscene,Plantationocene, Chthulucene, Gynocene,Manthropocene, whichever is preferred for themoment), the whole armory of concepts,practices, subjects, and relations with whichmodern politics has been mapped must beretooled.36 Optimism is no exception. Optimismcan no longer operate within the horizon of asecularized paradise and the promise ofperfection – whether of justice, freedom, orcomfort – but must remain committed tobetterment within planetary conditions almostinevitably set to worsen, however unevenly andunsteadily. The better geo-social future thathope and struggle must be oriented towardsmight now be defined in terms of less bad.Though it remains necessary to cultivateoptimism as a political affect, it has been robbedof some of its traditional emotional charge,mirroring the ambiguous state of geo-socialfutures. Even if the Left’s position on geo-socialfutures is to embrace optimism, it must do so insuch a way that the collective capacity to mournwhat has been lost is not forgotten in the rush toblast open the doors of heaven. Cultivating theconditions for optimism must not be confusedwith celebrating a sunny machismo. I agree withthose who insist that the Left must reclaim itsorientation to the future (even if the conceptionof history this future implies remains uncertain),but this should not come at the expense ofrepressing collective grief and forgetting mutualcare, modes of relation that cannot becompensated for with militant gusto but whichwill be necessary if any better world is to truly bebetter.37 Further, even if optimism meansresisting the secularized eschatology ofcatastrophism, it does not mean spinning theyarn that everything will be okay, and certainlynot that all problems simply require the correcttools (“a shoddy workman blames his tools,” asthey say). Far too often in Leftist political thought

a false dichotomy is imposed between techno-critics and techno-utopians. Seeing the potentialrole of technology in achieving the aims of theLeft’s politics or for guaranteeing a better geo-social future does not necessarily make one atechno-utopian, but this is all too often theassumption, with critics jumping to theconclusion that those who see benefits ininfrastructure and advances in biologicalscience, chemistry, and engineering must also beadvocates of Monsanto and geoengineering, ormust regard forms of indigenous knowledge asexpendable primitivism. Much of this absurdity arises because theseconversations too often revolve around themetaphysically inflated phantom of Technologyas such rather than engaging the specific ways inwhich particular technologies are put to use forcertain ends within distinct social assemblages.While the assumption that technology isinherently bad should certainly be rejected, thisdoes not imply that technology is inherently goodor even neutral. Concern would be moreproductively focused on questioning whatparticular technologies do, how they are used, bywhom, to what end, and how open they are torepurposing. Obviously, not all technologies arevectors of liberation – but equally clear is thatthey are not all apparatuses of instrumentalreason that ensnare us ever more deeply in websof control and alienate us from our authenticbeing. Breaking with these inflated critiques oftechnology on the Left does not imply anecessary break with the principles ofenvironmentalism, as in The Ecomodernist

Manifesto. Rather, it means taking a more soberapproach to the question of how technologiesmay play a part in transforming socio-ecologicalrelations so that the impact of social formationson local ecologies and Earth systems is reduced,notably by employing already existing renewableenergy technologies to replace fossil fuels andnuclear power, as most mainstreamenvironmentalists argue. What makes the ecomodernists techno-utopian is not that they argue that technologiescan play a role in reducing anthropogenicenvironmental destruction, but that they depictthe obstacles to serious action to this end astechnological rather than political, and suggestthat if the world could just wait until the righttechnologies are developed then everythingwould be okay. In fact, many of the relevanttechnologies already exist; what is absent ispolitical will to implement their development anduse. It is not a utopian politics but a utopia thatlacks politics. It seems, then, that with regard to geo-social futures, it might be apt to adopt aGramscian position: “pessimism of the intellect,

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optimism of the will” – even if today the categoryof “will” too is uncertain, when the “end of Man”has pronounced the sovereign subject dead andthe “end of Nature” declared a new era of multi-agental complexity. Despite contending visionsof geo-social futures, it seems essential for theLeft today to insist that pessimism is not thenecessary correlate to the militant commitmentto justice, care, and freedom, and that optimismmust be cultivated, not despite worsening geo-social conditions, but precisely because of them.Without a commitment to the enduringpossibility of a better world, we simply resignourselves, and the planet, to extinction as usual. ×

Rory Rowan is a post-doctoral researcher at theGeography Department at the University of Zurich.

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1See, for example, T. J. Demos,“III. Against the Anthropocene,”blog.fotomusuem.ch, May 252015; Andreas Malm “TheAnthropoceneMyth,” Jacobin, May 30, 2015;and Kathryn Yusoff, “GeologicLife: Prehistory, Climate, Futuresin theAnthropocene,” Environment andPlanning D: Society andSpace, 2013.

2Donna Haraway, “Anthropocene,Capitalocene, Plantationocene,Chthulucene: MakingKin,” EnvironmentalHumanities, 2015; Jason Moore,“The Capitalocene Part I: On theNature & Origins of OurEcological Crisis,” 2014; andLesley Green, “The Changing ofthe Gods of Reason: Cecil JohnRhodes, Karoo Fracking, and theDecolonizing of theAnthropocene,” e-flux journal 65,special issue on thetheme “Supercommunity,” June9, 2015 http://supercommunity.e-flux .com/texts/the-changing-of-t he-gods-of-reason/

3Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin,“Defining theAnthropocene,” Nature, March12, 2015.

4Paul Ehrlich et al, “Acceleratedmodern human–induced specieslosses: Entering the sixth massextinction,” Science Advances,June 19, 2015. The team ofresearchers was led by Ehrlich,the author of the controversial1968 book The Population Bomb.

5The Earth After Us is the title of abook by Jan Zalasiewicz, thehead of the working group at theInternational Commission onStratigraphy assessing whetherthe Anthropocene should beaccepted as an officialperiodization in geologicscience. See also AlanWeisman’s best-selling 2008book The Earth WithoutUs, and The Collapse of WesternCivilization: A View from theFuture by Naomi Oreskes andErik Conway, for other examplesof the growing post-extinctiongenre in popular science.

6Roy Scranton, “Learning How toDie in the Anthropocene,” NewYork Times, November 10, 2013.

7Erle Ellis, “Stop Trying to Savethe Planet,” Wired, May 6, 2009;Erle Ellis, “Forget MotherNature: This is a World of ourMaking,” New Scientist, June 14,2011.

8Ellis, “Stop Trying to Save thePlanet.”

9Ellis, “Forget Mother Nature.”

10Ellis, “Stop Trying to Save the

Planet”; Ellis, “The Planet of NoReturn: Human Resilience on anArtificial Earth,” TheBreakthrough Institute, Winter2012; Ellis, “Forget MotherNature.”

11Ellis, “Stop Trying to Save thePlanet” and “Forget MotherNature.”

12Ellis, “Forget Mother Nature.”

13Ellis, “The Planet of No Return.”

14The early Anthropocenehypothesis sits at some distancefrom dominant scientificopinion, which locates theorigins of the Anthropocene inthe massive intensification ofcarbon-heavy industrializationin the last two centuries or evenjust in recent decades. AlthoughEllis has been involved in theInternational StratigraphicCommission’s working group onthe Anthropocene, he isrelatively marginalized, as thevast majority of its membersseek to locate the origins of theAnthropocene much later in thestratigraphic records than hedoes. It is also important toclarify that not all advocates ofthe early Anthropocene getbehind Ellis’s vision of a goodAnthropocene. The originator ofthe hypothesis, thepalaeoclimatologist WilliamRuddiman, is more circumspectabout the nature of geo-socialfutures, remaining optimisticabout human resilience in thelong run but disturbed by theidea that his arguments arebeing used to claim thatincreasing fossil-fuel use doesnot threaten catastrophicenvironmental change. I focushere on Ellis because he is themost vocal and public proponentof the early Anthropocenehypothesis and is involved inattempting to alter climatepolicy with his public activities.

15In 2004 the directors of TheBreakthrough Institute, MichaelShellenberger and TedNordhaus, coauthored acontroversial paper entitled “TheDeath of Environmentalism:Global Warming Politics in aPost-Environmental World.”

16See Will Steffen et al, “TheAnthropocene: From GlobalChange to PlanetaryStewardship,” Ambio, November2011.

17Mark Lynas, “A goodAnthropocene? – speech toBreakthrough Dialogue2015” http://www.marklynas.org/2015/06/a-good-anthropocene-speech-to-breakthrough-dialogue -2015/

18For example, authors of best-selling popular environmentalscience books like Diane

Ackerman (The Human Age: TheWorld Shaped By Us), EmmaMarris (Rambunctious Garden:Saving Nature in a Post-WildWorld), and Mark Lynas (The GodSpecies: Saving the Planet in theAge of Humans); journalists suchas Andrew Revkin, who runsthe New York Times’ “Dot Earth”environment blog; as well asthink tanks like TheBreakthrough Institute, SteveBrand’s Long Now Foundation,and Future Earth (a UnitedNations–funded researchplatform that has a project on“Bright spots: seeds of a goodAnthropocene,” perhaps tellinglyrelated to research in ecosystemservices) are all associated withso-called newenvironmentalism. As for Ellis,he writes in popular magazinessuch as Wired and NewScientist and had a prominentrole in the recent two-yearAnthropocene Project at Berlin’sHaus der Kulturen der Welt.

19Revkin’s talk at the Associationfor Environmental Studies andSciences conference in NewYork can be found on his blog atthe New YorkTimes http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

20Clive Hamilton, “The Delusion ofthe Good Anthropocene,” June17, 2014. To his credit, Revkinshared Hamilton’s response onhis blog and took part in adiscussion with Hamilton hostedby the environmental newssite Grist.

21Clive Hamilton, “The NewEnvironmentalism Will Lead Usto Disaster,” Scientific American,June 19, 2014.

22Hamilton in “Is theAnthropocene a World of Hope ora world of Hurt?,” a discussionwith Andrew Revkin andNathaneal Johnson, Grist, July 7,2014.

23The Ecomodernist Manifesto,The Breakthrough Institute,2015.

24See the collectively authoredpiece “A Call to Look Past AnEcomodernist Manifesto: ADegrowth Critique”(PDF) http://www.resilience.org/articles/General/2015/05_May/A -Degrowth-Response-to-An-Ecomodernist-Manifesto.pdf

25Clive Hamilton, “The Technofix IsIn: A Critique of theEcomodernist Manifesto,” EarthIsland Journal, April 21, 2015.Hamilton was nonethelessinvited to The BreakthroughInstitute’s Good Anthropoceneconference, where he arguedthat the manifesto’s argumentfollowed an essentiallytheological structure. See CliveHamilton, “The Theodicy of theGood Anthropocene,” June 24,

2015.

26Bruno Latour, “Fifty Shades ofGreen,” June 2015(PDF) http://bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/00-BREAKTHROUGH-06-15_0.pdf

27Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29Hamilton, 2014.

30Ibid.

31Ibid.

32 Latour, 2015.

33Ibid.

34For example, although Hamiltonadmits that “thinking about thepolitics of climate change isdepressing” (Hamilton, 2014), hestands at some distance fromthe metaphysically moroseKingsnorth on the ultimatepossibility, as opposed tolikelihood, of the large-scaleenvironmental and socialtransformation needed to securea more socially just andecologically sustainable geo-social future. Nonetheless, oneof the most interesting aspectsof the debates around potentialgeo-social futures is that theytend towards polemicalpolarization. This is hardlysurprising given the stakesinvolved, but these polemicssometimes unearth anunexpected subterraneanopposition between optimisticand pessimistic orientations,which cut across the expectedLeft-Right political axis andrevealing strange and perhapsuncomfortable conceptualconvergences.

35David Brooks, “The Small, HappyLife,” New York Times, May 29,2015. Here, as so often, themoderate conservative (Brooks)and the disenchanted radical(Kingsnorth) enter into apeculiar consensus on the salveof the private sphere when thepublic disappoints. See PaulKingsnoth, “Dark Ecology,” OrionMagazine, December 21, 2012.

36This retooling also applies tofamiliar modes of criticalthought, some of which call outfor an epistemological update.Some of the critiques of theAnthropocene concept haveshown a reluctance to tarry withthe limits of established criticalmaneuvers in the face offundamental conceptual change,and have sometimes appearedto be forcing the toothpasteback in to the tube of familiarcritiques. This is not to say thatthese critiques are wrong or

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somehow unnecessary – on thecontrary – but rather that theyhave limits with regard toconcepts that emerge from verydifferent domains that need tobe recognized.

37See Nick Srnicek and AlexWilliams, “Manifesto for anAccelerationist Politics,” 2013http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/14/accelerate-manifesto-for-an-acceleration ist-politics/ Laboria Cuboniks,“Manifesto on Xenofeminism: APolitics for Alienation” 2015

http://www.laboriacuboniks.net/ Mark Fischer and JeremyGilbert, “Reclaim Modernity:Beyond Markets, BeyondMachines,” Compass, 2014;Alberto Toscano, “The PrejudiceAgainst Prometheus,” STIR,Summer 2011. The impulse toreclaim the Left’s orientation tothe future common to thesetexts is one I share, but nonehave adequately accounted forthe fundamental shift inplanetary conditions withinwhich this future will emerge.

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