PART I
Understanding nature in the Anthropocene
1
THE RETURN OF NATURE IN THE CAPITALOCENE
A critique of the ecomodernist version of the âgood Anthropoceneâ1
Anne Fremaux
There are countless examples of writings today that bemoan, celebrate, or just try to adjust to the new regime of truth according to which nature is âdead.â The recent proposal to rename our geological epoch âThe Anthropocene,â or âAge of Humansâ, is, for some theorists, another attempt to claim the âend of nature.â âNature is gone,â says Erle Ellis in an article eloquently entitled âStop trying to save the Planetâ âŠ: â[w]e now live in the Anthropoceneâ (2009). In the ecomodernist narrative, the Anthropocene or new ecological era is not an event to be lamented and feared but rather âan opportunity for humans to finally come into their ownâ (Hamilton 2015: 233).2 When Bill McKibben spoke about âthe end of natureâ in his eponymous 1989 book, he had a few concrete developments in mind (which he lamented): for instance, global warming and ozone layer depletion that rendered extinct the idea of nature as something absolute and separate from us (1989: 54). The âend of natureâ, as he saw it, was the end of nature as we used to know it. That was the end of representationâof an independent, autonomous nature, free from human influence and impact.3
In the same vein, when Carolyn Merchant (1980) famously evoked âthe death of nature,â she meant the change of paradigm from nature understood in a vitalistic and organicist way to a basic mechanic and reductionist view. Probably neither McKibben, nor Merchant would have ever thought that the metaphoric âabolition of natureâ would become an ontological signifier in the era of the Anthropocene and that it would even have, for some, positive implications. Indeed, what is at stake, now, is not âthe supposed end of nature as an idea or symbolâŠ[but] natureâs realityâ (Arias-Maldonado 2014: 4).
What does âthe end of natureâ in the Anthropocene mean? In a soft version, it says that â(i) natural processes can no longer be defined as independent from human influence, and [that] (ii) natural forms and processes have been influenced by humans to a very high degreeâ (ibid: 5). The close intertwinement between nature and culture and the fact that human actions influence, even on a large scale, natural processes is nothing that traditional environmentalists would deny. But the idea that nature is âdeadâ goes further. First of all, it ignores the fact that rather than being neutrally âdead,â nature is rather being âdestroyedâ and âdevastatedâ by identifiable social processes such as class relations, technologies, growth logics, etc. (Moore 2015). But more philosophically, ecomodernists such as Ellis deny natureâs own agency in the new techno-postmodern hybridist socio-ecological compound offered by postmodern thinkers.4 Humansâ cultural and technological mediations are the grand winners of the âgood Anthropocene.â5 As Pellizzoni playfully says (in this volume): â[a]s happens in George Orwellâs Animal Farm; some agents seem to be more agential than others.â6 However, the âecological crisisâ itself and all its material components (the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap, rising temperatures and sea levels, the concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, species extinction, pollution, etc.), show that nature is not entirely subsumed within the human power. As Adorno says, âobjects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainderâ (1973: 5). This mysterious âleftoverâ is maybe what some postmoderns call âGaiaâ (Stengers 2015; Latour 2014). Gaia, says Hamilton, juts through into our world as âan intruder, a trespasser, a gate crasherâ who âis crashing the party [of progress]â (2014).
The ecomodernist view seems to be flawed, even from the postmodern perspective it sometimes wants to embrace. Indeed, in socio-constructivism, nature is seen as a relativist concept and, therefore, should be open to social discussion (social consensus). However, ecomodernists do not replace the old single concept of (pristine) nature by the âContested Naturesâ dear to postmoderns (Macnaghten and Urry 1998). They do not argue for increased democratic debates on environmental issues and the entering of the Anthropocene in the agonistic political realm (for instance on the issue of global and environmental justice). On the contrary, the new ecomodernist and constructivist socio-ecological regimes are rather âanti-democraticâ and âtechnocraticâ (mandating scientists to decide which arrangements are to be elected), âconservativeâ (privileging the current capitalistic management of nature), and âUniversalist.â Indeed, the Anthropocene, as Arias-Maldonado (2016) says, is heading inevitably towards âthe convergence of different societies around the Western, capitalistic-driven model of socionatural relationsâ considered by the author as a âuniversal impulseâ (7).
The teleological conception of history which considers (neo)liberalism as âthe end of historyâ (Fukuyama 1992) does not take into account the peoples on Earth who suffer from eco-social destructions induced by capitalist modes of production and consumption, or environmental and social movements that resist the capitalistic appropriation of the world (grassroots movements, Indigenous struggles, anti-extractivist Buen Vivir movement, Navdanya movement for peace and democracy in India, etc.). The ecomodernist version of a âgood Anthropoceneâ driven by an undifferentiated global subject (âthe Anthroposâ) and heading toward the European or American unsustainable norms of production and consumption7 is a typical modernist and Western-centric interpretation of history that forgets the billions of people who still live in severe poverty lacking elementary goods such as food, clean water, basic medical care, or shelter to survive.8 Moreover, it assumes that all humans are equally implicated and equally affected by the situation. Bonneuil (2015), for instance, criticises the dominant narrative and âview from nowhereâ that put forward an undifferentiated biological entity and geological agent (âhumanityâ), uniformly concerned or even implicitly guilty for the mechanisms that gave rise to the advent of the Anthropocene. Some, like the historian and sociologist Jason W. Moore (2015, 2016) argue that the Anthropocene is not the geology of a species but rather the geology of a system of power, profit and re/production, namely capitalism, and as such, should be renamed âCapitalocene.â For Malm and Hornborg (2014), the Anthropocene is not a scientific story but the index of capital accumulation, of privileged resource consumption, of differentiated and unevenly distributed environmental impacts. According to these views, this is the same system (capitalism) that has produced the devastating ecological effects that typify the Anthropocene and social inequalities that characterize our contemporary world. As Newell and Paterson put it: â[w]hat makes [anthropogenic climate change] a particularly tricky issue to address is that it is the people that will suffer most that currently contribute less to the problem, i.e., the poor in the developing worldâ (2010: 7). The ecomodernist program does not only deny natural limits and the capacity of the environment to absorb the by-products (waste, green house gases, etc.) of advanced societies; it also denies the burden of responsibility carried by the Western world for the ecological plight.
Contrary to the need for accountability, eco-constructivists,9 also called âeco-pragmatistsâ or âneo-environmentalistsâ, urge us to produce the technological innovations necessary to adapt to the new situation without changing the usual way of doing (what can be called the âbusiness as usualâ scenario). They advocate the decoupling from nature in order to âsaveâ it; celebrate the âend of natureâ as well as âthe death of (romantic) environmentalism.â They recommend more technology, and especially a âneoliberal conservationâ guided by economic rationality and human-centered managerialismâ (Asafu-Adjaye et al. 2015). This agenda is opposed to the challenge of postmodernity,10 which as Michel Serres frames it, demands conceiving of nature in intersubjective terms: not as an enemy to be conquered but as a partner worthy of respect and recognition; in effect, a declaration of peace between the human species and the natural world (Stierstorfer 2003: 180).
The novelty and âoriginalityâ of ecomodernism, compared to the former tenets of ecological modernization, stem from the alliance it promotes between green capitalism and postmodern discourses on the âend of nature.â Ecomodernists have indeed seized the opportunity of the new post-natural hybridist narrative and the anthropocentric world picture offered by the âAnthropocene,â to foster traditional techno-socio-capitalistic arrangements, presented as the roadmap for the future. This is a typical techno-optimist position, according to which âtechnological innovation incentivized by capitalism and the free market (coupled with a willingness to leave the planet), means that we can continue with our energy-intensive, consumer-intensive, globalized ways of life and socio-economic orders indefinitelyâ (Barry 2016: 109). This school of thinking includes authors such as Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger, BjĂžrn Lomborg and Rasmus Karlsson. âOne way of describing this form of thinking is âCornucopian,â understood to mean the confident belief that technological advances and scientific knowledge and its application will continue to deliver high levels of material goods and services, material abundance now and in the futureâ (Barry 2016: ibid.).
By fostering such a techno-optimistic agenda, these thinkers ignore 1) the non-reductionist conception of Earth brought about by Earth Science System (ESS) and post-normal science (Ravetz 2006), both of which show the unpredictability of Earthâs trajectory in the Anthropocene; 2) the postmodern warnings about the âintrusion of Gaiaâ (Stengers, Latour); 3) the deconstructive critiques of human exceptionalism in the post-nature connectionist and relational narrative, or âthe blurring of boundariesâ between humans and nonhumans (Latour, Haraway, Braidotti, etc.).
While uncritically appropriating insights of the hypermodern narrative of control11 and of the postmodern narrative of hybridity (ânature is usâ), the ecomodernist narrative and the unapologetic picture of a âgood Anthropoceneâ it offers, remain entirely situated in the prejudices of modernity. These prejudices include, among other ideas, a blind faith in technology,12 a âdomination of natureâ narrative, and a dualism by which nature is seen as pristine or as not existing at all. Ecomodernists could, therefore, be renamed âmostmoderns,â13 a provocative appellation aiming at denouncing the postmodern claims of ecomodernism while they remain highly (un-reflexively in my opinion) modern.
This chapter argues that to acknowledge the increasing entanglement of nature and culture around usâand inside usâdoes not require us to abandon the analytic distinction between aspects deriving from human societies (the construction of nature by human labor and technologies) and those arising from natureâs ânon-identityâ (otherness). The affirmative âidentity thinkingâ characteristic of both hypermodernity and constructivist postmodernism (ânature is deadâ) is an attempt to reduce the other to the self, the object to its representation, the making to the knowing and, in the capitalistic framework, the particularities of nature to abstract forms of monetary exchange. It represents, therefore, a source of dominating hubris (Adorno 1973; Horkheimer and Adorno 2002), a philosophical anthropocentric fallacy and a justification for destructive practices. As White et al. say, summarizing the position of eco-Marxism on this issue: âHumans viewed from the perspective of geohistory over time are indeed more one force bobbing on the sea than a producer of socionaturesâ (2016: 139). Against the further capitalist exploitation that the ecomodernist version of the âgood Anthropoceneâ promotes, I argue that the repeated failures of ecological modernization, ecomodernism, and environmental managerialism should be an opportunity to re-think our place on the planet. Particularly, it should urge us to accept the fragility and vulnerability of the human species in the face of complex and unpredictable natural phenomena. The great challenge that lies ahead us is not the further humanization of the planet nor its mastery but rather the further humanization of humanity and the mastery of our mastery. The current âCapitaloceneâ (Moore 2015, 2016), where the global ecological crisis is not so much the humanization but rather the capitalization of the earth (Barry 2007) leads us to unforeseen and unpredictable catastrophes, spelled out here as âthe return of nature.â
ESS, ecomodernism, and geoengineering: the (hyper)modern narrative of mastery and control
From the perspective of ESS, our planet is going through a huge change, leaving behind the thousands of years of exceptional stability of climate and sea levels that characterized the Holocene, to enter a new epoch of uncertainty and significant transformations. The ESS approach puts forward processes such as global warming, biodiversity loss or the prevalence of artificial organic molecules throughout the world that push the Earth System towards tipping points at which more or less stable systems will shift to a different state, or be disrupted altogether. Although the very idea of âtipping pointâ comes from the analytical model of systems theory, this approach considers feedback mechanisms inherent in forces that esc...