{"id":7993,"date":"2015-01-17T12:51:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T17:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=7993"},"modified":"2015-03-24T10:20:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T15:20:00","slug":"anthropocenic-reckoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/01\/17\/anthropocenic-reckoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropocenic reckoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

With environmental and eco-political news in the front pages daily, it’s easy to get back into the swing of regular, even daily, posting after the winter holiday lull. Here’s more on the “dating the ecocrisis” theme…<\/em><\/p>\n

Andy Revkin is reporting<\/a> that the Anthropocene Working Group has concluded<\/a> that the middle of the twentieth century makes most sense as a date of the beginning of the Anthropocene.<\/div>\n
\n

“In a paper published online this week by the journal Quaternary International<\/em>, 26 members of the working group point roughly to 1950 as the starting point, indicated by a variety of markers, including the global spread of carbon isotopes<\/a> from nuclear weapon detonations starting in 1945 and the mass production and disposal of plastics. (About six billion tons have been made, with a billon of those tons dumped and a substantial amount spread<\/a> around the\u00a0world\u2019s seas<\/a>.)”<\/p>\n

Given that the term Anthropocene is intended to be descriptive, not analytical, this makes perfect sense to me. The causes of those markers — nuclear fallout, plastics, and so on — can be traced to some combination of other factors, including industrialization, capitalism, the nation-state system, European colonialism, and whatever else. But it’s what’s occurred<\/em>, not what accounts<\/em> for it, that is the message here. The rest is that much more difficult to ascertain.<\/p>\n

I keep regular dialogue with critics of Revkin’s more optimistic position, a few of whom have shared their views on this blog (e.g., Clive Hamilton<\/a> and Kieran Suckling<\/a>). But I should admit that\u00a0I like Revkin’s way of inclusively juxtaposing the different views we might take — Hamilton’s, Elizabeth Kolbert’s, and others — while fitting them into a more empowering narrative frame. He writes,<\/p>\n

“We have to accept ourselves, flaws and all, in order to move beyond what has been something of an unconscious, species-scale pubescent growth spurt, enabled by fossil fuels in place of testosterone.”<\/p>\n

This doesn’t sound celebratory to me, at least in the old Promethean sense, as much as it sounds like a\u00a0reckoning: here we are, for better or worse, and we (humans) must contend with ourselves along with everyone and everything else. Let’s do it thoughtfully. Referring to Alan Weisman’s thought experiment of The World Without Us<\/em>, he says, “We\u2019re stuck with \u201cThe World With<\/em> Us.\u201d”<\/p>\n

Revkin is trying to expand the audience for this kind of reflectiveness, not keep it restricted to the hardcore regretters, repenters, and jeremiahs. I think that’s a good thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With environmental and eco-political news in the front pages daily, it’s easy to get back into the swing of regular, even daily, posting after the winter holiday lull. Here’s more on the “dating the ecocrisis” theme… Andy Revkin is reporting that the Anthropocene Working Group has concluded that the middle of the twentieth century makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688615,688977],"tags":[123667,123569,123517,123570],"class_list":["post-7993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropo_scene","category-geo_philosophy","tag-anthropocene","tag-anthropocene-working-group","tag-clive-hamilton","tag-revkin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-24V","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7577,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/10\/nyc-arts-humanities-on-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":7993,"position":0},"title":"NYC: Arts & Humanities on the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 10, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's AESS conference\u00a0\"Welcome to the Anthropocene\" features a breakfast roundtable called \"The Arts and Humanities Respond to the Anthropocene.\" See the session description below. Unfortunately the panelists have been dropping like flies: it looks like neither dancer and performance artist Jennifer Monson,\u00a0eco-artist Jackie Brookner, nor performer and comedian Jennifer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7645,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/06\/12\/on-naming-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":7993,"position":1},"title":"On naming the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following are the comments I prepared for the roundtable \"The Arts and Humanities Respond to the Anthropocene.\" They follow in the line of critical thinking on the Anthropocene initiated by\u00a0gatherings like the Anthropocene Project (see here, here, and here, and some of the posts\u00a0at A(S)CENE) and journals like Environmental\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/06\/HABITUS-9-medium-1024x682-275x183.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7686,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/07\/07\/against-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":7993,"position":2},"title":"Against the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a guest post by Kieran Suckling, Executive Director of the nonprofit\u00a0Center for Biological Diversity. It follows the discussion begun\u00a0here\u00a0and in some\u00a0AESS conference sessions, including Andy Revkin's keynote talk\u00a0(viewable here)\u00a0and responses to it (such as\u00a0Clive Hamilton's).\u00a0 I In considering why the name \u201cAnthropocene\u201d has been proposed, why it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"setting-sun-smokestacks","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2014\/07\/setting-sun-smokestacks-275x179.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/08\/12\/welcome-to-the-meghalayan\/","url_meta":{"origin":7993,"position":3},"title":"Welcome to the… Meghalayan?","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Geology watchers were more than a little surprised last month to learn that we are living in a new age called the Meghalayan, which apparently began about 4200 years ago. After all the\u00a0excitement\u00a0over the\u00a0Anthropocene, it seems that a rival group of geological stratigraphers -- one tasked with naming the sub-parts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7722,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2014\/08\/05\/anthropocene-debate-continues\/","url_meta":{"origin":7993,"position":4},"title":"Anthropocene debate continues","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Kieran Suckling's post Against the Anthropocene, originally posted here on July 7 and subsequently shared\u00a0with the International Commission on Stratigraphy's\u00a0Anthropocene Working Group by Andy Revkin, has elicited a round of emailed back-and-forths from some noteworthy individuals, including paleobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz and paleoecologist Anthony Barnosky. As this debate would be of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8265,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/21\/bandwagocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":7993,"position":5},"title":"Bandwagocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"These days, it takes a course release for an academic to keep up with the avalanche of books\u00a0being published with titles that feature the word \"Anthropocene.\" To read them would take a sabbatical. Doing anything approximating a \"slow read\" would require, well, retirement. But that's no reason not to try.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7993"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8000,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7993\/revisions\/8000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}