Anthropology and imagining the future
It has become increasingly apparent that climate change constitutes a major threat to human well-being and even survival for many people. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists have come to the conclusion that the warming of the planet and associated climatic events is largely anthropogenic, or the result of human activities particularly since the Industrial Revolution. The pace and effects of warming have been increasing; and this change in the world we inhabit threatens significant, if not severe, consequences for human well-being. Despite these momentous and potentially dire developments, the governments of the world, as a whole, have been slow to respond to this pending threat, as seen in the failure of a series of international climate conferences intended to generate an active response. Moreover, while manufacturing and agro-business producers of greenhouse gases have developed a public discourse of Green Capitalism, continued emphasis on unceasing expansion contradicts assertions that the world economic system can achieve sustainability. Finally, a corporate-supported global warming denial campaign has succeeded in sowing confusion which, in turn, has contributed to lowering of public concern about climate change despite ever mounting scientific evidence that anthropogenic climate change is real and pressing.
All of these events have produced a significant challenge for anthropological relevance and for Sidney Mintz's (1985: xxvii) vision of crafting an âanthropology of the presentâ that entails detailed examinations and critiques of âsocieties that lack the features conventionally associated with the so-called primitiveâ. Yet, as anthropogenic climate change will manifest profound impacts on human societies as they move further and further into the twenty-first century, the still evolving anthropology of climate change can make an important contribution to the anthro pology of the future.
Historically, anthropologists have concerned themselves with either human societies of the distant past â the domain of archaeology â and of the recent past or present â the domain of sociocultural anthropology. When we consider how long we have lived as farming and herding communities, some 10,000 years, orhow long some people have lived in socially stratified state societies, some 6,000 years, our presence in such social arrangements is a tiny fraction even of the already brief timeline of our species when contrasted with the age of the Earth. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other scenario setters often speak of the state of humanity on this planet in 2050 or 2100 but generally not beyond. Sheila Jasanoff (2010: 241) suggests that â[c]limate change invites humanity to play with timeâ, including projecting the mind's eye into the future as we might imagine it will unfold.
Over the past several decades, anthropologists and other social scientists have often alluded to a cavalcade of âpostsâ such as: post-colonialism, post-industrialism, post-Fordism, post-socialism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, and post-feminism. Anthropologists might entertain the possibilities of two other âpostsâ, namely post-capitalism and post-anthropogenic climate change. While in the 1970s and 1980s, various anthropologists grappled with imagined future scenarios for humanity, the demise of the Soviet bloc countries and the disillusionment with grand theory under the guise of post-modernism appear to have predisposed a younger generation of anthropologists to steer away from seemingly grandiose projects of attaining a better world based upon both social justice and environmental sustainability.
Yet a revival of the anthropology of the future strikes me as long overdue. Fortunately, John Bodley (2012) in the six editions of his book Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems concludes with a chapter on âThe Futureâ in which he envisions a sustainable planetary society. Climate change compels us to engage in what Immanuel Wallerstein (1998: 1) terms utopistics, which he defines as âserious assessment of historical alternatives, the exercise of our judgment as to the substantive rationality of alternative possible historical systemsâ. In seeking to assess possible future scenarios with respect to climate change, one must consider the possibility of a dystopian future with the hope that this will contribute to the realisation that serious mitigation efforts will require an alternative to the capitalist world system, one that is based on both social equity and environmental sustainability and that will allow humanity to reach a steady state for itself and other forms of biological life, both large and small.
In this chapter, I explore three possible scenarios for the future of humanity:
- A dystopian future characterised more or less as âbusiness as usualâ, with ongoing economic growth, and increasing social inequality. This is a fortress world in which the affluent attempt to protect their privileged lifestyles, amidst environmental degradation and runaway climate change; although in the end they might find themselves in situations analogous to the experiences of elites during both the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, albeit on a much more global scale. This is a future stuck in the myths, and modes of being, of contemporary capitalism, incapable of acting on, or accepting, any other view of life, or assuming that disastrous consequences can arise from ânormal behaviourâ;
- A future of âreflexive modernisationâ which emphasises âecological modernisationâ (renewable sources of energy, energy efficiency, improved public transport, etc.) and âsustainable developmentâ, with ongoing social inequality but some amelioration of global poverty, and some mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. This represents a society with a slightly more flexible political economy than the first, but still unable to imagine a significant alternative to the current world order; and
- A democratic eco-socialist revolution which would entail public or social ownership of the means of production, highly democratic processes, increasing social equality, a steady-state economy, environmental sustainability and a safe climate. This assumes a society capable of open imagination and ready to explore alternate modes of social being.
The road to dystopia
Climate change scenarios prompt us to imagine dystopian visions of the future, if for no other reason than to forewarn us to take serious measures to counteract possible doomsday events. In his book Six Degrees, journalist Mark Lynas (2007), based on his perusal of numerous climate scientific reports, vividly portrays climate change scenarios of between 1°C and 6°C increases in the global temperature, most of which will have negative impacts on human population. Given that an increasing number of climate scientists are envisioning a 4-degree or even hotter world by 2100 (see Christoff 2014), if humanity does not seriously begin to curtail its greenhouse gas emissions, Lynas envisions a 4-degree world that would result in the following:
- Loss of one-third of Bangledesh's land area, resulting in the displacement of millions from the Meghna Delta;
- Flooding of low-lying islands and deltaic cities such as Shanghai, Mumbai, Alexandria, Boston, New York, New Orleans, London, and Venice;
- Massive shrinking of Greenland's ice sheet into the centre of the landmass;
- Slowing and shutdown of the North Atlantic Conveyor Belt, which would have a significant cooling impact for the countries of northwestern Europe;
- Spreading of new deserts in southern Europe;
- Possible July and August temperatures of 48°C in Switzerland, accompanied by wildfires and diminished water supplies;
- A completely ice-free summer in the Arctic Ocean; (h) Release of methane contained in frozen Arctic soils.
In a 5-degree world, human populations would be greatly restricted in terms of habitable areas due to drought and flooding, northern Europe would possibly constitute a crowded refugee area, and Patagonia, Tierra de Fuego, Tasmania, the South Island of New Zealand, and the ice-free Antarctic Peninsula could serve as other refugee areas. In a 6-degree world, the eruption of oceanic methane mightresult in massive human extinction. I would add to these latter scenarios the possibility of warfare and conquest along the way as people try to control useful areas or obtain such areas from those occupying them: a scenario that could arise even earlier.
James Lovelock (2006: 180â181), the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, recommends that humanity stabilise its population at 500 million to 1 billion and warns that Gaia will cull those who break the rules. He argues that future society will be âtribalâ and even more fractionated than presently between the privileged and the poor (Lovelock 2006: 171). In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, Lovelock (2009: 11) identifies portions of the Earth that may be inhabitable in a dystopian future. These include the northern regions of the United States and Russia, Canada, Scandinavia, Siberia, Patagonia, southern Chile, and island nations or states, such as Japan, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the British Isles. Lovelock (2009: 61) predicts that the summer heat of Continental Europe will become increasingly unbearable, even with the use of air-conditioning which would itself contribute to climate change, particularly if the electricity involved is generated by coal-fired or natural gas power plants. Lovelock (2009: 56) contends that a 4°C hotter planet may only be able to sustain a population of âas little as 100 million if the carrying capacity of the land surface of a hot Earth falls to 10 percent of what we have nowâ, which might in reality again result in massive conflict as human populations compete for limited resources.
Perhaps frustrated by the cumbersome nature of global and national governance practices, various scholars have argued that democratic processes are moving too slowly to contain climate change and they suggest that eco-authoritarian, or even eco-fascist, regimes are needed. James Anderson (2006: 245) argues that the âradical changes necessary to sustain capitalism could indeed turn out to be an extremely authoritarian counter-revolutionâ. Shearman and Smith (2007) maintain that âdemocratic statesâ are too dominated by special interest groups and materialism to create effective climate change mitigation policies. They assert that liberal democracies need to be replaced by authoritarian states, such as Singapore, which will be governed by ânatural elitesâ who have been socialised from childhood to address complex problems such as climate change. Shearman and Smith (2007: 134) assert that climate change will create an economic and ecological disaster that will require a future government led by âspecially trained philosopher/ecologistsâ following a Platonic notion of leadership committed to environmental sustainability. In a somewhat similar vein, Lovelock (2009: 61) maintains that âorderly survival ⌠may require, as in war, the suspension of democratic government for the duration of the survival emergencyâ. This would be especially the case if millions or even billions of people were culled to maintain some semblance of affluence on the part of the rich and powerful.
Lieven De Cauter (2008: 111) suggests that climate change may contribute to a future world that âlooks like some version of Mad Max, a trash sci-fi movie in which oil scarcity has turned the planet into a low-tech, chaotic, neo-medieval society run by gangsâ. Indeed, in recent years a rich genre of climate change science fiction has begun to appear and generate its âmyths of the futureâ, although sometime ago George Turner (1987) published a dystopian novel about Melbourne in which much of the city becomes submerged under rising sea levels in the middle decades of the twenty-first century. At any rate, De Cauter argues that environmental disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 and the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 are contributing to what Naomi Klein has termed disaster capitalism, under which the affluent sequester themselves from the victims of disasters in gated communities and green zones, or a âsort of security stronghold as well as an ecological safe havenâ (De Cauter 2008: 115). Disaster does not just open a well of suffering but opens ...
