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Depoliticized Environments: The End of Nature, Climate Change and the Post-Political Condition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2011

Erik Swyngedouw
Erik Swyngedouw
Affiliation:
Geography, School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester
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Extract

Nobel-price winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen introduced in 2000 the concept of the Anthropocene as the name for the successor geological period to the Holocene. The Holocene started about 12,000 years ago and is characterized by the relatively stable and temperate climatic and environmental conditions that were conducive to the development of human societies. Until recently, human development had relatively little impact on the dynamics of geological time. Although disagreement exists over the exact birth date of the Anthropocene, it is indisputable that the impact of human activity on the geo-climatic environment became more pronounced from the industrial revolution onwards, leading to a situation in which humans are now widely considered to have an eco-geologically critical impact on the earth's bio-physical system. The most obvious example is the accumulation of greenhouse gases like CO2 and Methane (CH4) in the atmosphere and the changes this induces in climatic dynamics. Others are the growing homogenization of biodiversity as a result of human-induced species migration, mass extinction and bio-diversity loss, the manufacturing of new (sub-)species through genetic modification, or the geodetic consequences resulting from, for example, large dam construction, mining and changing sea-levels.

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Papers
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 69 , October 2011 , pp. 253 - 274
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2011

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