The Anthropocene: Gone But Not Forgotten

In “A Fond Farewell to the Anthropocene” (Issues, Spring 2024), Ritwick Ghosh advances an insightful—and often neglected—analysis. The long-running controversies around the geophysical science of the Anthropocene have not only demonstrated the political nature of the scientific enterprise itself. More importantly, as Ghosh attests, they have illustrated how the political questions that define society-nature relations tend to be covered up or suppressed by the very attempt to displace political conflict to the assumedly neutral terrain of science.

Thus, the nonrecognition of the Anthropocene as a geological epoch by the International Union of Geological Sciences is to be truly welcomed. It formally ends the inherently fraudulent attempt to base decisions about the fate and future of Earth and its inhabitants on a “scientific” notion rather than on a proper political basis. Indeed, I would argue that the rejection makes it possible to foreground the political itself as the central terrain on which to debate and act on policies to protect and perhaps even improve the planet. Politicizing such questions does not depend on the inauguration of a geophysical epoch. We already know that some forms of human action have profound terra-transforming impacts, with devastating consequences for all manner of socio-ecological constellations.

The socio-ecological sciences have systematically demonstrated how social practices radically transform ecological processes and produce often radically new socio-physical assemblages. The most cogent example of this is, of course, climate change. The social dimensions of geophysical transformations demonstrate beyond doubt the immense inequalities and social power relations that constitute Earth’s geophysical conditions.

The very notion of the Anthropocene decidedly obfuscated this uncomfortable truth. Most humans have no or very limited impact on Earth’s ecological dynamics. Rather, a powerful minority presently drives the planet’s future and shapes its decidedly uneven socio-ecological transformation. Humanity, in the sense that the Anthropocene (and many other cognate approaches) implies, does not exist. It has in fact never existed. As social sciences have systematically demonstrated, it is the power of some humans over others that produces the infernal socio-environmental dynamics that may threaten the futures of all.

Abandoning the Anthropocene as a scientific notion opens, therefore, the terrain for a proper politicization of the environment, and for the potential inauguration of new political imaginaries about what kind of future world can be constituted and how we can arrange human-nonhuman entanglements in mutually nurturing manners. And this is a challenge that no scientific definition can answer. It requires the courage of the intellect that abandons any firm ontological grounding in science, nature, or religion and embraces the assumption that only political equality and its politicization can provide a terraforming constellation that would be supportive for all humans and nonhumans alike.

Erik Swyngedouw

Ritwick Ghosh closes the door on this newly named period of geological time—without fully understanding the scientific debate. Let me make it very clear, we are in the Anthropocene. Science shows that we are living in a time of unprecedented human transformation of the planet. How these manifold transformations of Earth’s environmental systems and life itself are unfolding is messy, complex, socially contingent, long-term, and heterogeneous. Most certainly, they cannot be reduced to a single thin line in the “mud” dividing Earth’s history into a time of significant human transformation and a time before. This is why geologists have rejected the simplistic approach of defining an Anthropocene Epoch beginning in 1952 in the sediments of Crawford Lake, in Canada.

Geologically, the Anthropocene is better understood as an ongoing planetary geological event, extending through the late Quaternary: a broad general definition that captures the diversity, complexity, and spatial and temporal heterogeneity of human societal impacts. By ending the search for a narrow epoch definition in the Geologic Time Scale and building instead on the more inclusive common ground of the Anthropocene Event, attention can be turned toward more important and urgent issues than a start date.

The Anthropocene has opened up fertile ground for interdisciplinary advances on crucial planetary issues. Understanding the long-term processes of anthropogenic planetary transformation that have resulted in the environmental and climate crises of our times is critical to help guide the societal transformations required to reduce and reverse the damage done—while enhancing the lives of the planet’s 8 billion people. The Anthropocene is as much a commentary on societies, economic theory, and policies as it is a scientific concept. So I say in response to Ritwick Ghosh: welcome to the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Epoch may be dead, but the Anthropocene Event and multiple other interpretations of the Anthropocene are alive and developing—and continually challenging us to do something about the polycrisis facing humanity.

Mark Maslin