Preface

Merchant, Carolyn

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Preface

Carolyn Merchant

Description: The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of...

The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability

We are all blips of life in a sea of eternity. Each life, whether human, animal, plant, or bacterium, constantly combats the most relentless and unforgiving of nature’s laws...

Author

Carolyn Merchant

PublisherYale University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23416

Preface

~We are all blips of life in a sea of eternity. Each life, whether human, animal, plant, or bacterium, constantly combats the most relentless and unforgiving of nature’s laws—the second law of thermodynamics. Each life loses its battle. Why? Because the world is running down. It is moving from order to disorder, while entropy—the energy unavailable to perform useful work—is constantly increasing. The end of the earth will be a heat death in which all temperatures are equal. No movement, no change, no transformation.

Evolution, which creates new order, at first seems to defy entropy. It creates ever more complex varieties, species, genera, and families as new energy is supplied from the sun. But as each new life-form confronts the second law, it loses its battle. Each life reproduces its own kind, grows old, and dies. Each new life is but a blip that exists for a brief moment in time before it vanishes forever. Whether the universe itself will succumb to a heat death as it constantly expands and its temperature differential approaches zero or whether it will contract and collapse into a black hole and reemerge is an open question.

But as we approach the mid-twenty-first century, losing hundreds of life-forms is of mounting concern. As we face the effects of global warming from the continued burning of fossil fuels, we will increasingly encounter extreme weather patterns, melting polar ice, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes, raising the specter of the death of the earth itself. The concept of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene (as named by scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in the year 2000), in which human activities impact nature in devastating new ways, suggests that the earth—as we know it today—may cease to exist in the future.1Crutzen and Stoermer, “Anthropocene.” Rethinking nature in the Anthropocene—the period from the advent of the steam engine in the late 1700s to today’s increased burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas)—has profound implications for reconceptualizing, not only the sciences, but the humanities themselves. How, for example, is the air and water pollution associated with global warming reflected in history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, ethics, and justice? How is the very idea of what it means to be human altered with climate change? What does the future hold for humans and the humanities in the Age of the Anthropocene?

Swedish environmental historian Sverker Sörlin, in “Environmental Turn in the Human Sciences,” writes: “Considerable energies are going into the emerging concept of environmental humanities. This is a broad multidisciplinary approach that signals a new willingness in the humanities . . . for a common effort in which the relevance of human action is on par with the environmental aspect. Programs or other initiatives for the environmental humanities have already started to emerge in universities in Europe, Australia, and the United States, including Princeton, Stanford, and UCLA.”2Sörlin, “Environmental Turn in the Human Sciences” and “The Anthropocene,” 12. Although numerous articles and books have been written about the Anthropocene in the fields of the sciences, politics, economics, and governance, to date there are relatively few analyses of the Anthropocene as it relates to the humanities.

In the Age of the Anthropocene, much is at stake for the mutual survival of humanity and nature. The humanities are of critical importance in bringing the environmental crisis of the twenty-first century to the attention of the American public. Engaging individuals, governing bodies, and communities in implementing change requires not only the research of scientists but equally, perhaps especially, the insights of humanists. A theoretical framework for the environmental humanities that is applicable to large-scale, complex environmental problems in the Anthropocene must be sought.

The idea of the Anthropocene can help us reconceptualize the humanities in new ways that make them compelling for the twenty-first century. Language and images can play formative roles in creating awareness and changing personal behavior and public policy. The humanities (as exemplified by history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, ethics, and justice) can create new and compelling cognizance of the critical choices facing us during the next fifty to one hundred years and beyond.

This book is meant for an educated public interested in the current state of the planet, its future, and what we as humans can do to preserve life on earth. It can be used in undergraduate courses and graduate seminars that focus on the environment, the humanities, and social sciences as well as in e-book clubs and discussion groups. It is meant to provoke thoughtful responses and inspire creative solutions by examining the arts and humanities, science and history, ethics and justice.

In the following chapters, I introduce the term Anthropocene, ask why this new designation matters, and critically assess the various meanings and significance attributed to it by scientists and humanists. I argue that the concept of the Anthropocene goes beyond earlier concepts and periodizations such as preindustrial, colonial, industrial, modern, and postmodern by presenting a clear and forceful characterization of the future crisis humankind faces. I examine ideas associated with the origins of the era of the Anthropocene, especially in Western culture, and what precepts can point toward a new era of sustainability based on energy, process, and “green” science. I show how and why the connection of the Anthropocene and the humanities matters for all of us in the future.

I focus the chapters of this book on Europe, particularly England, and the United States, where industrialization began, but I also suggest areas and continents where the idea of the Anthropocene can and should be further explored. My goal throughout is to examine problems with Western histories and ideas and to propose new principles of process and partnership that can become ideals for the future. In so doing, I draw on and synthesize ideas that span the length of my academic career. I include concepts from my books and articles that offer insights into what the Age of the Anthropocene is, how it is exemplified, and the possibility of transforming it into an Age of Sustainability.

This book does not claim to be comprehensive. I make no attempt to cover all countries, continents, and periods or to cite all the books on the Anthropocene that have appeared in recent years. Rather, I choose thought-provoking examples to gain insights into the relationship between the Anthropocene and the humanities and indicate where research can fruitfully be expanded by others. To make the book more accessible to a general audience, I include images of the women and men who played major roles in the emergence of the Anthropocene as well as the art that characterizes its significance and consequences.

It is crucial for the future of humanity that we explore the causes and consequences of, and intimate connections with, climate change in the Anthropocene. The increasing buildup of greenhouse gases, global warming, and the melting of Arctic, Antarctic, and mountaintop glaciers and snows has an enormous impact on rising sea levels and hence on life-forms around the world. The effects of climate change are manifested in warming waters, drought, desertification, extinction, and the migration of species. Human populations are likewise adversely affected. Women, especially those in developing countries, experience the burden of increased work, such as carrying water from distant sources, gathering fuel, and caring for families. The additional labor results in suffering and loss of life, especially among the poor, working classes, racially discriminated peoples, and those of the female gender.

It is critical to reach solutions to our global ecological and humanitarian crisis. Inspired by the humanities, such solutions will entail new scientific approaches, technologies, politics, ethics, and especially changes in the class, race, and gender differentials that result in suffering for so many people. The earth itself will continue in some form, but perhaps in a much altered state. It is incumbent on those of us living now to make the changes that will save humanity and nature as we know them today.

We are all visitors on the earth.

1 Crutzen and Stoermer, “Anthropocene.” »

2 Sörlin, “Environmental Turn in the Human Sciences” and “The Anthropocene,” 12. »

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