Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene 1st Edition
by Clive Hamilton (Author)
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Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'.
The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself.
What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment – even to the point of geoengineering – is now impossible because we have rendered the Earth more unpredictable and less controllable, a disobedient planet.
At the same time, all attempts by progressives to cut humans down to size by attacking anthropocentrism come up against the insurmountable fact that human beings now possess enough power to change the Earth's course. It's too late to turn back the geological clock, and there is no going back to premodern ways of thinking.
We must face the fact that humans are at the centre of the world, even if we must give the idea that we can control the planet. These truths call for a new kind of anthropocentrism, a philosophy by which we might use our power responsibly and find a way to live on a defiant Earth.
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"Defiant Earth is a major contribution to a topic that is of vital if not pre-eminent importance today. The book is highly original in its synthesis of the scientific, philosophical and religious issues raised by the coming of the 'Anthropocene.' Hamilton mines each of these traditions for ways to make sense of the new and frightening epoch that is upon us." - Adrian Wilding, University of Jena, Germany
"For those entertaining the idea that we should just rocket away from an overheated planet to some new world, or perhaps fill the atmosphere with sulphur to block out the sun, here's a remarkably powerful accounting of our actual responsibility--past, present, and future." - Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
"Earth system scientists' idea of the Anthropocene has given rise to two seemingly rival camps of thought in the humanities: there are those who want to fold the idea back into new histories of global capital, and those who have used the debate to move towards a new philosophical anthropology. Clive Hamilton has been an original, important, and distinctive voice in this debate. Defiant Earth goes a long way towards bridging the distance between these rival camps while generating insights of its own into the meanings of being human in an age of planetary climate change. An essential reading for our times." - Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago
"Drawing his observations from the humanities as much as the sciences, Hamilton offers a robust view of the current state of play; not a warning – we’re past that stage – but an attempt at understanding." - Geographical Magazine
“The book is a deeply philosophical and intensively argumentative plea for all of us to reconcile ourselves with the looming planetary crisis that is now on our doorstep. It is not only beautifully written, but passionately argued … All books should aim for this stimulating provocation of thought, but it seems a rare accomplishment that few manage to achieve.”
Academic Council on the United Nations System, ACUNS
About the Author
Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change and Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering.
Product details
Publisher : Polity; 1st edition (June 26, 2017)
Language : English
Paperback : 200 pages
ISBN-10 : 1509519750
ISBN-13 : 978-1509519750
Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
Dimensions : 5.43 x 0.71 x 8.43 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #975,607 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#317 in Geography (Books)
#651 in Environmental Studies
#1,026 in Environmental Policy
Customer Reviews: 4.0 out of 5 stars 20 ratings
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Biography
Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and public intellectual. Since 2008 he has been Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra.
For 14 years, until February 2008, he was the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a progressive think tank he founded.
Clive has held visiting academic positions at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, University College London and Sciences Po in Paris.
He has published on a wide range of subjects but is best known for his books, a number of which have been best-sellers. They include Growth Fetish (2003), Affluenza (with Richard Denniss, 2005), Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change, (2010), Earthmasters (2013), What Do We Want? The story of protest in Australia (2016) and Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the Anthropocene (2017).
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earth system climate change clive hamilton defiant earth anthropocene human message science previous argument important responsibility nature planet course deeper idea matter pages philosophy
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R. Smith
2.0 out of 5 stars If you are an insomniac, this book is for you!
Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2017
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Yikes! I am a firm believer in climate change and how man is a part of nature and not separate from nature. But reading this book is sooo laborious. The syntax is way self absorbed. The author seems to be more interested in showing he can write sentences that are over 50 words in length than making a point. It is pure Ambien to read this book. If you are an insomniac... BUY THIS BOOK! You will be asleep inside of three pages once you are past the first 15 pages. The book begins nicely but becomes an incessantly boring read afterwards.
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Margit Alm
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it and found it hard to put my Kindle ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2017
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I had read/heard two previous reviews from friends who were not highly favourable of the book. So I approached my reading with some scepticism.
Not for long. I loved it and found it hard to put my Kindle away.
I really appreciated the philosophical-intellectual approach that Clive Hamilton took.
But most important to me was the key message of the book: humans are the culprits. We have to mend our ways, adapt, change dramatically to live with the anthropocentrically altered earth systems. Clive Hamilton reminded the reader to take responsibility. That word is music to my ears. Whether it is on a personal level, community level or environmental/planetary level, responsibility appears to be a word that has given way to 'rights'. We have to recover it and place it before 'rights' - in my view.
On the downside (but the downside does not detract from my rating): the message could have been delivered in some fewer pages, but then that applies to most books. The message needs to be delivered to the young. So a simplified version of the book for older children and youth may be in the order. Finally, the planet's greatest problem: human overpopulation was not spelt out, although indirectly the message was present by the mere fact that humans are the culprits.
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Simon Kerr
5.0 out of 5 stars While at times repetitive, the message bears repeating, ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2017
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While at times repetitive, the message bears repeating, again and again. It is a compelling account of the impact of the Anthropocene, the geologically new world we have both created and entered. It is a world that will not serve humans well. This book has disturbed me in a way deeper that I thought would happen. Not all the chapters will be relevant for everyone, and it does tackle various academic controversies that will mainly concern social science and humanities scholars, but its main thrust is important. I wish it wasn't ... but we now have no choice to live on an increasingly defiant planet.
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Raymond J. Salmond
5.0 out of 5 stars Global warming changes all previous understanding of what human beings are in the universe
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2017
An exciting and clear survey of the philosophy of humanity's role in the universe, leading to Hamilton reclaiming hope from the current trajectory of failure of human beings to take responsibility for saving the Earth from the rapidly approaching climate change inferno.
"What is this being who has changed the course of the Earth itself?" Hamilton asks at one point, and a consideration of possible answers to this question might be seen as the core strand of the book. Hamilton provides an exciting overview of the history of human thought on such matters, culminating in responses which have been elicited by the Anthropocene rupture in the Earth System.
Hamilton comes to his own, desperately hopeful, answer: a being who has the power to disrupt a world, but not to master it; capable of coming to a working relationship with the Earth which recognises our power and our vulnerability.
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Tony Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars Persuasive case for humankind to seize responsibility
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2018
I started reading Defiant Earth under sufferance but kept finding things to strongly agree with to the point that I should leave my mostly stylistic quibbles to the penultimate. Clive Hamilton is a well known provocateur from the progressive side of politics, a player in literary machinations and academia. He also has a nose for a problem and identifies the nomination of the Anthropocene as the geological epoch commencing in 1945 as a good focus for facing the intellectual and practical challenges of climate change and other vectors of industrial-scale planetary degradation.
Hamilton starts out explaining what the Anthropocene is, what an officially identified geological epoch is, and why it is appropriate that the Anthropocene has been recently confirmed. As epochs are typically measured in tens of millions of years, it may be questionable as to whether any geologists in the distant future would identify the Holocene (currently) Epoch as more than another Pleistocene interglacial, but we are left in little doubt that the geological mark of technologically and industrially empowered humans on the planet since WW2 is indelible. He is also quick to deflate the ecomodernist contention that the capacity to damage on this scale suggests a capacity to similarly repair, accurately identifying that that idea carries with it the same oversimplifying assumptions that are digging us deeper into the mess, the idea that we can build planetary systems which improve on nature's still largely uncharted riches.
His next step insists that as humans have made the problem, it is humans who have to fix it, but without fanciful assumptions about technological bandaids at industrial scale. He sees this as a new anthropocentrism, an argument in a different space to the increasing evidence that reduces the long assumed gap between humans and others, more in line with my long held view of humans as means not ends. Interestingly, Hamilton draws significantly on Melbourne's adopted postmodernist Bruno Latour in his efforts to insert his arguments into literary, scholastic and ultimately theological traditions. Hopefully this will enlarge the audience for his arguments as leaving it to administrators, politicians, engineers and scientists has not yet got us very far. No matter what disquiet some of those inclusions might have brought me, all was forgiven very rapidly in the final chapter where he showed in quick succession that he has gained a good handle on complexity and emergence and the rich local variability of the natural world; that he similarly recognised the cosmological responsibility of the human project as being the only known attempt to codify knowledge of the universe; and that the road ahead is uncertain, rocky and needing to be tackled regardless.
While he uses "humankind" and "human project" appropriately, my nagging annoyance was that he conflated those with special status and responsibility of all human individuals as the direct beneficiaries of the Enlightenment. My aforementioned view of humans as means is sufficient justification for protection, nurturing and autonomy of individuals without more massaging of irresponsible egos. Is it a price he needs to pay to placate those who provide his licence to pontificate, or is it an inability to see through problems closer to home? Regardless, it is just an annoyance and does not reduce the importance of Hamilton's core message which might almost be revolutionary enough if anyone is really listening. But humans have co-opted far more other species of animal and more so of plant into economic relationships than any other naturally co-dependent cluster and it will be significantly dependent on many not yet co-opted to deliver the regenerative response to the Anthropocene described in Charles Massy's Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture - A New Earth so implying the Enlightenment separates individual humans from life's web may not be helpful.
Defiant Earth should be read and thoroughly digested by all who are more comfortable with the world of words mediating their lived experience. We are already every Baby Boomer's lifetime into the Anthropocene and planetary systems aren't co-operating with the neoliberal agenda, that struggle only getting more uncomfortable as some humans fail to place any limits on their own demands for comfort while vast numbers of the still increasing human population get to enjoy at least some basic comforts, however briefly.
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JohnG
2.0 out of 5 stars I really enjoyed 'Requiem for a Species' by the same author
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2017
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I really enjoyed 'Requiem for a Species' by the same author. This book is, however, turgid and extremely repetitive, more like someone's MA Thesis than material for a full book. He goes on and on about how and how not to define 'The Anthropocene' to the point that you find yourself silently screaming: 'I don't care, please just get on with the book'. But he doesn't. I gave up around 2/3rds way through, once I'd finally figured that he was going to find yet another 101 ways of saying the same thing over and over and over again...!
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Simon
5.0 out of 5 stars Defiant Earth - read it
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 13, 2017
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I like this book. It has a huge perspective and helps understand the huge forces at work as humans enter the Anthropocene. It explains why we've moved from a fairly hospitable planet to one where unpredictability will be the new norm.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars He doesn't mince words and we need voices like his.
Reviewed in Canada on August 17, 2017
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Clive is an important voice in these environmental crisis times. He doesn't mince words and we need voices like his.
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Review of Defiant Earth by Clive Hamilton (London: Polity Press, 2017)
By Peter Reason
http://thomasberry.org/publications-and-media/review-of-defiant-earth-by-clive-hamilton
It was several years ago that I first came across the shocking idea that humans were moving more physical stuff around the planet than the natural processes of volcanos and earthquakes, rivers and tides. In the last few years, the idea of the Anthropocene has engaged both scientists and civil society: human activities have been sufficiently extensive to have moved Earth out of the Holocene, the epoch of the last 10,0000 years, into a new epoch in which human actions have fundamentally impacted planetary dynamics. In (2106) I reviewed Gaia Vince's award winning book Adventures in the Anthropocene for EarthLines Magazine, and found myself troubled by the lack of fundamental thinking through the implications of statements such as 'We must choose the kind of nature we want'. I was also troubled by what I saw as the arrogance of the 'ecomodernist' gloss (http://www.ecomodernism.org/), the notion that humans can create a 'good' or even 'great' Anthropocene—a perspective that seemed to imply we could get ourselves out of the ecological mess we have created through 'more of the same', which offended against my understanding of system dynamic.
So I was pleased to have the opportunity to hear Clive Hamilton speak at the University of Bristol in the spring of 2017. Hamilton, an Australian 'public intellectual', Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Stuart University in Canberra, has been central to the debate about the nature, meaning and implications of the Anthropocene, writing a series of books that have both stimulated and infuriated readers. He describes this latest book as ‘groping toward understanding what it means… to have arrived at this point in history’.
Chapter One sets out three ideas clearly. First is that the Anthropocene names a very recent rupture in the processes of Earth. There have been various proposals as to when the new epoch started: some argue that humans have always been 'world-making' species, certainly since the invention of agriculture; others point to its origins in the carbon-based economy of the Industrial Revolution. Hamilton dates the 'turning point in the sweep of Earth's history' (4) to the 'great acceleration' that followed the Second World War, when resource use and waste volumes took a sharp upturn. This rupture is therefore recent in human history and far more so in planetary history. And it is permanent: human actions—not least the massive redistribution of carbon into the atmosphere—will impact on the planet for millennia to come. It is unlikely that Earth will ever return to an epoch as benign for the development of civilization as the Holocene.
This leads to the second big idea, that the Anthropocene brings together human history with Earth history for the first time, so that the future of Earth depends not just on 'natural' processes, but on decisions that are volitional, made by humankind aware of its action and their consequences. Earth and human history are entangled as never before, and the future course of the Anthropocene depends in part on human impacts on the Earth system that have not yet occurred (7)
The third big idea is that the transition we must grasp is that the Anthropocene is not just a re-naming of ecological concerns that have troubled at least some since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, but rather a rupture in the process of a entity newly discovered by scientific research which he terms the Earth System—a concept envisioned to capture the qualitative leap from disturbances in ecosystems to disruption in the whole planet (13) and the co-evolution of its 'spheres'—the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the biosphere and the lithosphere. It was not even possible to think in such terms before the arrival of a 'new scientific paradigm' which has it roots in the systems modeling of the
Meadows and his colleagues in The Limits to Growth; in the Gaia hypothesis proposed by
James Lovelock and Lyn Margulis; and more recently on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; emerging fully at the turn of this century as the 'integrative meta-science of the whole planet understood as a unified, complex, evolving system beyond the sum of its parts' (11-12).
The Earth System is thus a 'new object' (11); its study supersedes, Hamilton claims, 'ecological thinking' as a biological science of relationships; it transcends earlier objects of study such as 'landscape' and 'ecosystem'. The emergence of this new object has ontological meaning. ‘It invites us to think about the Earth in a new way' (21). This 'new way' offers the vision of 'an Earth in which it is possible for humankind to participate directly in its evolution by influencing the changing processes that constitute it.
Hamilton is critical what he sees as the 'misreadings, misconceptions, and ideological co-optations' (9) of the idea of the Anthropocene. Both scientists and social scientists have put forward interpretations informed by their own disciplinary perspectives that have deflated the significance of the new epoch and diminished its qualities as a threatening rupture. (1421) The term ‘Earth System’ is systematically derived from a body of scientific evidence; so ‘The invention willy-nilly of substitute terms is itself an epistemological mistake because it treats scientific analysis as if it were the same as social analysis’ (92).
In the later pages of chapter one, Hamilton turns to two major issues that arise from this definition of the Anthropocene. First, he takes to task with ecomodern gloss that asserts that humans now have the capacity to control climate and regulate Earth as a whole; we can therefore have a 'good' or a 'great' Anthropocene. Hamilton points out that, even if this were morally and practical possible, this perspective is based on a false understanding of the nature of the rupture that has occurred. We are no longer in the Holocene epoch; the dynamic between humans and the Earth System has been 'fundamentally altered' (25). Maybe the conditions prevalent during the Holocene were a platform for a good Anthropocene, but the systems dynamics are now irrevocably disruptive. We are no longer on a resilient planet in which ecosystems can 'bounce back' but, as he develops later, on an Earth that is responding with metaphorical defiance to human meddling.
But is it right to call this epoch the Anthropocene, when most of the impact on the Earth System is the consequence of industrial development primarily in the global North? Can we speak coherently for an abstract humanity? Does this not shift us into implausible imagined universal qualities of the human species? Arguments have been put forward to naming the epoch, for example, the Capitalocene. Hamilton's response is that, while not minimizing the responsibility of the Global North for the mess that has been created, China and India will soon surpass the carbon emissions of the North if they have not already done so. But more important, the Earth System, conceived as a whole, can make no distinction between races, cultures, or nations; and if all societies have not contributed to the rupture, all will experience its impact. 'If the Anthropocene is a rupture in the history of Earth as a whole, then it is also a rupture in the history of humans as a whole'. (34)
Chapter Two begins by emphasizing the profound nature of the rupture we are facing:
the 'monstrous anthropocentrism’ and 'the wanton use of our freedom and technological power’ have led us to the brink of ruin. We face a nature that 'refuses to be tamed and is increasingly unsympathetic to our interests'. While we must confront this human arrogance, now is not the time to ‘cut humans down to size’ (40). Since the future of the entire planet and many forms of life is now contingent on the choices and actions humans make, 'denying the uniqueness and power of humans becomes perverse’. He insists we consider ‘the vast scale of human achievement (40) in all its cultural and scientific dimensions. At the same time, it is clear that humans cannot and will never 'master' nature, for its power is too great. Hamilton calls for a 'new anthropocentrism': it is too late for us to abandon an anthropocentric standpoint; we must face up to the 'profound importance of humans, ontologically and now practically, to Earth and its future'.
On the one hand, humans have never been more potent; and on the other, 'Gaia has been outraged' and awakened by human action, now more unpredictable, dangerous and less subject to human control. We can no more design the nature we wish to have as
ecomodernists claim, nor retreat to allow Mother Earth to return to balance, as some forms of ecological philosophy would argue. Now a powerful humanity faces an active and fractious Earth System. This new reality places 'human beings at the centre of the Earth System's evolution' (51). Humans are necessarily 'embedded' in the Earth System, 'the possessor of autonomy, more powerful than ever, but always constrained by the processes that govern the Earth System, not just locally but at the level of the whole’. The new anthropocentrism insists that on an active and fractious Earth humans are not free to do whatever they want but must ‘restrain ourselves and restrict what we do'; it 'emphasizes the unique responsibility humans have to protect the Earth and, above all, the avoid dangerous disruption of the Earth System’.
One of the criticisms of the idea of the Anthropocene holds that it is untenable to think about the responsibility of humanity as a species. There is nothing about the Anthropocene that can be attributed to 'mankind in general'; it is in the divisions in humanity rather than its homogeneity that we must look for the origins of the Anthropocene. In this view the
Anthropocene originates primarily and originally in the choices made by nations of the global north since the Industrial Revolution. Better, some say, to call it a Capitalocene.
Hamilton counters that we must 'locate the rise of industrial capitalism within the broader arc of the history of the species and its disconcerting entanglement with geology'. Humans didn't just stumble into the new techno-industrialism; it was part of our trajectory, not just as species like any other, but as a humankind with a 'world-making capacity'. (62) Humans become humans within worlds of social and material practices, worlds of lived experience embedded in a material environment. The Anthropocene has disclosed a new object, the Earth System; in doing so it also incites us to 'think of humans afresh' and our material-technological capabilities as a 'planet altering force' (63). It reveals a 'new kind of human'. Traditional ways of exploring the subject-object dualism are needed. No longer can we think of ourselves as separate from nature, nor simply another part of it. Humans must be seen as subjects struggling to operate within a world that is both of their own making and radically Other at the same time (64). The world-making creature has become an agent of geological change: 'if the subject is always embedded, the world in which it is embedded is an Anthropocene world’.
This position contrast to that of ecomodernists, who see a 'humanized Earth' as inevitable and desirable. For while ecomodernists see humans as essentially benign, the new anthropocentrism sees them as 'capable of enormous creative renewal but equally capable of catastrophic hubris and overreach' (66): the 'humanized Earth' of the Anthropocene is what we have always had to fear, 'one made by the misuse of our own powers'. Hamilton traces the roots of ecomodernists to the theology of theodicy, which holds that evil acts are necessary for the functioning of the larger whole that is in the ultimate analysis benevolent. In contrast, he reaches for a more complex position, quoting Goethe that human creativity is a ‘divine gift’, but one that tests our character. Hamilton celebrates human creativity while warning against our tendency to hubris.
Where does this argument for a ‘new anthropocentrism’ get us? I think it helps to see humanity as both independently creative and embedded in a more recalcitrant planet. This offers a novel, if uncomfortable resolution of the subject-object dualism—except it is not a resolution, only and uncomfortable and temporary, even frightening, toehold. It implies that humans in their world making capacities must always tread, not just lightly but cautiously and tentatively; there is no clear place to stand. Hamilton's arguments against ecomodernism are convincing, although the ecomodern point of view is so firmly embedded in western conservatism that I doubt his arguments will hold much sway with adherents.
But given this, I wonder if Hamilton wants to too strongly to find a resolution. He begins Chapter Two telling us that we must doubt everything; that all the ways we have thought about the human place in the world need to be upended. And yet he does he not return to something very familiar with his embrace of a 'new anthropocentrism'? Surely humans are independent actors embedded in dynamic Earth System; surely we are worldmaking creatures; AND we are embedded, evolved out of and part of that same Earth System. It seems to me that what is called for is not a re-centering of the human, but a new centering and a continual re-centering of the question of the human-Earth relationship.
As I read on, I am increasingly uncomfortable about the way Hamilton’s arguments slip into either/or, more/less reasoning. The proposal that a humanity that has wantonly exercised its capabilities in such a way to have disturbed and awakened later forces in the Earth System is reduced to questions of who has more or less power. And there is something about the nature of his dismissal of other points of view that I find awkward and unpersuasive.
Hamilton is never quite able to articulate a deep sense of humans with their particular gifts and capacities as full participants in life on Earth, both ‘plain members of the biotic community’ (to borrow Aldo Leopold’s phrase that I am sure Hamilton would hate) with particular and peculiar capabilities for ‘world-making’. His arguments often tend toward either/or choices for example in ‘We can no more 'design the nature we wish to have' as ecomodernists claim, nor retreat to allow Mother Earth to return to balance, as some forms of ecological philosophy would argue’; or when he argues that humans possess an ‘autonomy, more powerful than ever, but always constrained by the processes that govern the Earth
System, not just locally but at the level of the whole'. In the end, his new anthropocentrism 'elevates humans to a previously unimagined power over nature' and that this marks us out as 'the unique creature'.
But one of the important lessons from Gaia theory, as articulated for example by Stephan Harding in Animate Earth, is that the close systemic coupling of living and non-living has created an Earth System ever more biologically productive and ever more. As Tim Flannery puts it in Life on Earth, life spends the vast energy budget derived from photosynthesis on increasing diversity and modifying the planet to make it more habitable.
The arrival of the Anthropocene is indeed brutally challenging to the human, and in particular Western, view of itself. Clearly we cannot go on before, and clearly both the ecomodernist dream of a humanized Earth and the naïve ecological dream on a return to the balance of the Holocene are untenable. Humankind can neither advance into nor retreat from the mess it has made. But I suggest that what is needed is not a ‘new anthropocentrism’ that sets a creative humankind up against and recalcitrant Earth—for surely, there can be no validity in a worldview even that even hints we stand against the Earth out of which we evolved and remain a part. Rather we must search for a sense of deep participation in the process of the planet. As Flannery puts it, the human superorganism might redeem itself, take part in and even enhance Gaian self-regulation.
Surely the emphasis must be on a continual process of cultural and intercultural inquiry. Earth System science must be integrated with the human science in a new systems holism. We need to discover and create, not just how to resolve the practical problems that confront us in energy use and generation, in farming, in conservation, in manufacture; but also a new sense of humankind on Earth. Hamilton reaches for this, a sense of an emerging global anthropos, in the later stages of his book, but his attachment to a new anthropocentrism continually throws him back into unnecessary oppositional arguments. In the new and challenging dispensation of the Anthropocene, nothing can be central for long, certainly not anthropos.
This is particular evident in Chapter Three where Hamilton explores Friends and Adversaries, placing his perspective in the context of other thinkers. He starts by reflecting that 'grand narratives that order and explain human experience are out of fashion' and reflects on Leotard's phrase that a metanarrative was an 'apparatus of legitimation'. The Anthropocene, he reflects, is a totalizing narrative par excellence, of 'life lived and ordered under the shadow of a new geological epoch'. But it is not, he argues, a narrative that legitimizes the current dispensation or promises a happy ending. It legitimacy lies rather in its truth-telling function: it is a narrative of fiasco, of being too late; but it is also a narrative that holds out that the worst can still be avoided. No appeal to cultural perspectives can get us round the blunt truth of the Earth System: 'If the postmodern moves in a world of knowledge, language and text, the Anthropocene brings us back to Earth with a thud'. This has a curious resonance with the old story of Samuel Johnson: when asked how he would refute Bishop Berkeley's proof of the non-existence of matter, he answered by 'striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it—"I refute it thus"'. Postmodernists and social constructions will question Hamilton's emphasis on the truth-telling qualities of science; the reality of the Earth System is a new object remains central through the book. He argues that the extended difficulties of negotiating a climate change agreement have led humanity toward the shared question, ‘How can we live together on this Earth?’ Totalizing forces are also evident in the globalization of economics and culture. Thus the Anthropocene arrives as a grand narrative that all humanity is obliged to live under: an unexpected and unwelcome unification of humankind.
Hamilton then turns to explore the intellectual trends that this new epoch challenges. He has no truck with denialism and has already disposed of ecomodernism, which posits increased human power against a quietist Earth. He seeks to contrast his vision of an Anthropocene in which an increased human power confronts an activation of the dormant forces of the Earth System with what he calls 'posthumanism' or 'ontological pluralism' that he sees as dominating ecological thought. These theorists breakdown the modernist assumption that there is something special about humankind over against Earth and other species; they argue for humans as another species, for agency as residing in networks of material things. Moving away from a view of a passive nature open to human domination, he contends that by giving more power to nature, posthumanists take it away from humans in a manner that is untenable.
His critique of the posthumanists includes Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing, Jane Bennett and Timothy Morten. He argues that they have extended the trend in the social sciences of deconstructing hierarchies of power beyond social relations to focus on anthropocentrism itself. He states that although this looks like the continuation of radical social criticism, the extension from social critique to a critique of humanity's relation to the natural world is an 'unwarranted epistemological leap that drains the approach of its legitimacy' (87), although he doesn’t elaborate this contention. Hamilton contends that posthumanism—the position that ‘human beings remain embedded, entangled affiliated and networked into the natural world’ (89)—fails to acknowledge that fact that Hamilton regards as central to the Anthropocene, which is that they are at the same time a force in nature. The posthumanist position is untenable because, with the arrival of the Anthropocene, while our deep connections with natural processes are inescapable, 'humans do occupy a position separate from nature and from there now stand against it'. Hamilton wants us to accept the unique and extraordinary power of humans to influence the future course of the Earth rather than emphasise our embeddedness in natural processes.
This emphasis is troubling and limits the power of his arguments. Hamilton wants to come down on one side of the dualism rather than embrace the paradox of embeddedness and separateness that his analysis points to. His arguments are inconsistent. On the one hand he wants us to 'engage with and pass beyond posthumanism' (89) but soon afterward states that human impact on the functioning of the Earth System 'elevates humans to a previously unimagined power over nature' and that this marks us out as 'the unique creature' (90). In retort to Donna Harraway’s assertion that she want to ‘get in the way of man making himself the greatest story ever told’, Hamilton counters ‘the blunt truth of the Anthropocene is that, in the book of life, 'man is the greatest story ever told' (91), pointing to the vast achievements of the human project.
There is something over-determined about this argument. Over two pages (90-91) he italicizes five words emphasizing his position. He accuses Donna Harraway, of 'terminological incontinence’ and of inventing terms ‘willy-nilly’. He writes that to dissolve the boundaries between the human and non-human and distribute agency within material networks is 'anthropomorphism by stealth'. (95) He pays lip service to their contribution to decentering the human of modernism while reaching for a new certainty, a sense of power over. He has no truck with Tim Morten suggestion that 'nonhumans are entangled with us in all kinds of strange ways'. Yet that ‘strange entanglement’ seems to me to articulate the paradox of the human condition more fully than Hamilton's assertion of the unique power of humans.
One way of thinking about this might be to see the ‘posthumanists’ and deep ecologists as emphasizing the embedded side of the dialectic. Haraway, for example, appeals for a greater sense of kinship—and not just kinship between humans. Hamilton may have a point is saying they over-emphasize this. But, for all his talk of a new anthropos, creative and agentic, that is constrained by a material world, he can equally be seen as over-emphazising the separated side. We need a new sense of participatory reality that honours both separateness and embeddedness.
As I read what seems to be a rather intemperate critique, I find myself wondering how carefully Hamilton has studied those he criticizes. This suspicion is supported by his treatment of one writer with whose work I am particularly familiar, Thomas Berry. In my view, Hamilton simply gets him wrong. Early in the book (59) he associates Berry with the 'mystical' and 'transcendent holism' of Teilhard de Chardin, which 'exalts humans to a unique place but detaches us from the actual world'. While Berry draws on Teilhard's articulation of the universe as an evolutionary whole, and indeed argues in The Great Work that as intelligent beings the human ‘activate one of the deepest dimensions of the universe’ (25) his concern is for the human as a member of Earth community. He devotes a whole chapter of Evening Thoughts to an effective critique of transcendent thinking as a source of the present predicament; and he is quite clear that the human has evolved as part of the Earth process: ‘Earth is primary and humanity is derivative’ (19). Hamilton claims, not unreasonably, that the 'story of the universe' articulated by Berry with Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker places the human as 'the mind and heart of the vast evolving universe'; but his argument that they focus on the 'marvelous ability of the human species to transcend any obstacle and continue into inexorable rise to a golden future' (59) is a straightforward distortion. I read no sense of an ‘inexorable rise’ in Berry's writing. He articulates the tragedy of our present predicament in his earlier book The Dream of the Earth. On the first page of Evening Thoughts he writes of the task of creating a viable future for ourselves and the entire Earth community. In The Great Work he elaborates the need for a ‘transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner' which holds no sense of the inevitability of such a transition.
Berry grounds his arguments, as does Hamilton, in the relatively recent discoveries of the nature of the universe and Earth as a self-creating, evolutionary system. Although he was writing before the concept of the Anthropocene was mooted, in some sense he forsees it in his suggestion we are entering an Ecozoic Era (GW 201). Where he differs from Hamilton is in his broadly panpsychic understanding of the universe as a ‘communion of subjects, not a collection of objects’, in which the whole and each of its individual components ‘has an intangible inner as well as tangible physical structure’ (ET 38). Every aspect of the universe expresses a psychic/spiritual as well as material dimension, so ‘It seems best to consider mind and matter as two dimensions of a single reality that comes into being in an immense diversity of expression through the universe by some self-organizing process’
Berry places humans as both members of the community of subjects on Earth, and as having particular gifts and aptitudes that are our responsibility to use at this moment of danger and transition. We need, he argues, ‘to move from a human centered to and earthcentered norm and reality. And Brian Swimme’s concluding comment in the video of the story of the universe is hopeful but by no means points to an inevitable outcome: 'Maybe wonder will save us'. There is no sense in Berry's writing that 'God or the Universe has a higher plan', as Hamilton maintains (114).
If Hamilton misreads so badly a writer with whom I am so deeply familiar so badly, what misreadings are hidden among those with whose writing I am less familiar?
Despite his identification of Earth System as the significant ‘new object’ for our times, Hamilton’s thinking is not always very systemic. When he writes that 'humans now rival the great forces of nature in our impact on the Earth System then this fact elevates humans to a previously unimagined level of power over nature' (90), albeit tempered by an embeddedness in the material world, he misconstrues the nature of power in a systemic context. As Gregory Bateson pointed out many years ago, a system's integrity rests in ecological circuits that temper the tendency of any part to exponential growth. Any part of the system that attempts to have power over such circuits is likely to set off unintentional runaway growth, often in a part of the system that appears completely unrelated. 'Power over' is conceptual nonsense within a systemic context.
Toward the end of the chapter he reaches for a new integration, arguing that 'humans are indeed embedded in nature and in recent decades in the Earth System itself, but the embedding is not destructive of agency.' He goes on to argue that 'We need an ontology founded on human-distinctiveness-within-networks' (99). He statement, 'No other force, living or dead, is capable of influencing the course of the Earth System and has the capacity to decide to do otherwise' seems to be both more tempered and more radical than claims of power over; but he immediately tips over an edge by claiming humans to be 'super-agents, powerful even beyond the imaginings of Moderns'. He ends the chapter with a plea that 'we accept the greatness of the human project and the extreme danger that goes with it', a position close to that articulated by Thomas Berry. Hamilton is frustratingly inconsistent in his use of language; this inconsistency point out just how challenging it will be to find the new ontology he points toward.
In Chapter Four, Hamilton turns to making sense of planetary history. Do humans have significance after Nietzsche's death of God and now science has shown we are but a speck on a small planet? Hamilton makes the contentious statement that is it humans that give the Earth meaning and mark it out as a unique planet in the cosmos. He pushes against belittlements of the human project, which he now articulates as 'learning how to live wisely, cooperatively, and well within the limits of the planet' (114) which seems to me to imply that it is the planet as a whole the retains meaning. Hamilton argues that with the arrival of the Anthropocene we witness the birth of a 'new universal anthropos' (118) and the emergency of planetary history as a 'narrative of human-Earth history' (119). This anthropos, he argues, drawing on arguments that have origins in theodicity, is an imperfect creature, in the process of creation, entering the world in an 'underdeveloped intellectual and moral state'. Only through our own moral efforts may we 'evolve into beings able to exercise full moral autonomy' and through this discover how humankind can fullfil its potential in a manner that is not at odds with the processes of the Earth System. Humans have freedom. But 'Freedom is not the greatest thing; how we decide to use our freedom is the greatest thing’.
In this chapter Hamilton returns to the power of his earlier arguments. He challenges us to think more deeply about the place of humans and the meaning of human life. He wants us to go beyond a traditional religious view and beyond nihilism, not afraid to use words like freedom, responsibility, destiny. It significant that in doing so he has quite explicitly drawn on the theological thinking of theodocity, developing a more secular articulation of anthroprocity: the human is both glorious and tragic; the meaning we bring to our lives depends entirely on the moral choices our freedom offers us.
Whence comes this freedom? Hamilton addresses this question in his final chapter The Rise and Fall of the Super-agent. Freedom arises, not as Kant argued as a 'spontaneous outbreak of intellectual courage on the part of a handful of free thinkers' (136) but rather belongs to nature-as-a-whole, woven into the fabric of nature (137). This idea has it origins in Schelling, but makes more modern sense when we understand the Earth System as a 'selforganizing dynamic system characterized by emergent properties'. Freedom, in this view, is an emergent property of the whole system, and explains the contradictory way in which humanity identity is both separate from nature while remaining unshakably dependent on it.
Human subjectivity ‘can never wrench itself free from its material roots’. (138)
With this analysis, the Kantian categories of subject and object collapse. Freedom and spontaneity are no longer exclusively in the domain of the subject and necessity no longer owned by the object or nature. (139) We are no longer isolated subjects acting within and against an objective reality, but inhabiting an 'world animated, unruly, and irritable' (139). This view of freedom is both more and less anthropocentric: is less so because it is 'forever folded into nature'; it is more so because knowing freedom's source within nature as a whole comes with a heavy responsibility to live within limits as we make new worlds. Humankind is no longer of freak, but becomes the ‘key to nature-as-a-whole’. (141)
I find myself persuaded and excited by Hamilton’s articulation of human freedom as an emergent property of a dynamic Earth System. But in asserting that the human is the key to nature-as-a whole he loses me. If the possibility of freedom is built into nature, and the world itself is animated, there is no reason why freedom of some kind is not manifest in the more that human world, in chimpanzees and dolphins, as posthumanists would argue, or even more widely in local ecosystems and in the Earth System as a whole living being. Humankind maybe a significant and powerful key to nature, but not necessarily the key.
But this objection does not negate the thrust of Hamilton's argument. Responsibility lies in our embeddedness in the Earth System, not in abstract rules. It is not our split from nature that must be overcome, but our violence against it, which arises from our sense that the experienced split is a total severance. What kind of creature, he asks, ‘when in full knowledge of the damage done to Earth System continues on the same path’? Human creativity can be used to enhance the life-enriching capabilities of the Earth System, and 'beyond all purely human-oriented aspirations must be our cultivation of the planet to the enduring benefit of both' (145). 'Duty of care for the earth becomes and meaningful goal as well as a prudent one.'
Hamilton gives short shift to those who would avoid this duty of care through geoengineering or fantasies of life on other planets. These fantasies, he argues, compound the guilt at humanities wanton neglect of the Earth, both 'reckless and self-indulgent' (151). We are beyond abstract intellectual ethics, rather searching for a 'different kind or orientation to Earth, one in which we deeply understand our extraordinary power and unique responsibility. Can we become 'beings guided by a new cosmological sense rooted in the profound significance of humankind in the arc of the Earth'. In these later chapters Hamilton’s arguments feel much more nuanced. Gone are the assertions of power over and the dismissal of other perspectives. In the last pages he seeks both to explain the experienced split between humankind and Earth and to seek a new integration for the emerging imperfect anthropos. This is a brave, important and at the same time infuriating book. Brave because Hamilton is not afraid to take a stance and open up the discourse. Important, because of his emphasis on the Earth System and the need for a new understanding of anthropos.
Infuriating, because Hamilton, in his arguments for a new anthropocentrism, reaches too soon for a new resolution of the relationship of human subjects to the new ‘Earth System object’; there is an ambiguity here that Tim Morten’s sense of the strangeness of hyperobjects expresses more fully.
Gregory Bateson long ago told us the most important task was to learn to think in new ways. ‘The arrival of the Anthropocene contradicts all narratives’ writes Hamilton in his final pages. We are living beyond the possibilities of any utopia, either those promised here on Earth or in a transcendent realm. There is no story of the ultimate triumph of humanity. Maybe, in some distant future, another humanity will emerge, 'contrite and wiser'. But this second civilization is too far off to be relevant to our times. But it seems impossible to imagine that 'this beautiful shining planet should flower with a form of life endowed with the ability to render the universe knowable, only to see it withdraw into the darkness of unconsciousness'.
For Hamilton, this is where hope lies.
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클라이브 해밀턴: 오늘의 에세이-"좋은 인류세"의 신정론
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https://blog.daum.net/nanomat/1022
2015. 7. 15.
격변론, 과학, 균일론, 근대성, 기독교, 기술, 기술 해결주의, 기후 변화, 생태근대주의, 신정론, 인류세, 자본주의, 정치, 지구 체계, 지질 시대, 철학, 클라이브 해밀턴, 탈인간주의, 화석 연료
"좋은 인류세"의 신정론
The Theodicy of the "Good Anthropocene"
―― 클라이브 해밀턴(Clive Hamilton)
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그것을 처음 제안한 사람들이 경악하게도, 인류세는 한탄하고 두려워하기보다 축하해야 할 사건으로 재구성되고 있다. 기술산업적 오만에 의해 저질러진 피해에 대한 최종 증거 대신에, '생태근대주의자(ecomodernist)'들은 새로운 시대를 자연을 변형시키고 통제할 수 있는 인간의 능력에 대한 징표로서 환영한다. 그들은 인류세를 전지구적 자본주의의 본질적인 결함에 대한 증거도 아니고 인류의 근시안과 탐욕에 대한 증거도 아닌 것으로 간주한다. 그 대신에 인류세는 인간들이 마침내 독자적인 시대로 진입할 기회로서 도래한다.
몇 년 전에 얼 엘리스(Erle Ellis)는 '좋은 인류세'에 관해 말하기 시작했는데, 그런 있을 법하지 않은 병치는 이제 <생태근대주의자 선언(An Ecomodernist Manifesto)>에서 "위대한 인류세"라는 관념으로 증폭되어 제시되었다. 인구의 지속적인 성장과 경제적 발전을 제한할 행성적 경계들은 전혀 존재하지 않는다고 그들은 주장한다. 역사가 우리의 유연성을 증명하기 때문에 '인간적 체계들'은 더 온난한 세계에서 적응하여 번성할 수 있다.
이 견해에 따르면, 인류세에 진입함에 따라 우리는 자연적 한계를 넘어서는 것을 두려워하지 말아야 한다. 인류에게 위대한 새로운 시대에 대한 유일한 장벽은 자기의심이다. 엘리스는 우리로 하여금 인류세를 위기가 아니라 '인간주도적 기회로 무르익은 새로운 지질 시대의 시작'으로 간주하도록 촉구한다. 낭만주의적 기술비평가들(그리고 그들이 기대는 우울한 과학자들)은 그런 전망의 실현을 가로막고 있다. 엘리스 및 그와 비슷한 사고방식을 갖춘 사람들의 경우에, 인류가 행성적 중요성의 더 고등한 수준으로 전이한 것은 '멋진 기회'이다. '인류세' 옆에 '좋은'이라는 형용사를 병치하는 것을 부끄러워하지 않은 그들은 '우리는 인류세에 우리가 만들어내는 지구를 자랑스러워 할 것"이라고 믿고 있으며, 스튜어트 브랜드(Stewart Brand)의 다음과 같은 말을 인용하기를 좋아한다. '우리는 신이고, 그래서 우리는 그것을 잘하게 될 것이다.'
생태근대주의자들은 인간주의자처럼 글을 적을지라도, 그들은 구조적으로 신정론, 즉 신의 궁극적인 자비를 증명하는 것을 목적으로 하는 신학적 논변에 해당하는 방식으로 새로운 시대를 해석한다. 기독교 호교론에서 고통의 세계 속에 존재하는 신의 선의에 대한 증명은 아우구스티누스에 의해 최초로 시도되었고, 나중에 계속해서 라이프니츠가 (<<신정론>>이라는 책에서) 더 큰 시각을 취하면 사악한 행위들이 전체가 작동하는 데 필요하다고 주장했다. 우리에게는 신이 묵인하는 끔찍한 범죄로 보일지도 모르는 것이, 불가사의할지라도, 신의 더 큰 자비에 이바지하는 것으로 이해되어야 한다. 라이프니츠의 명쾌한 아포리즘에 따르면, '모든 것은 최선의 것을 위해 일어난다.' 또는 알렉산더 포프의 당혹스러운 말에 따르면, '존재하는 것이라면 무엇이든 옳다.' 그것은 볼테르가 매독에 걸린 거지의 지위로 전락한 후에 낙관주의적 전망에 매달렸던 팡글로스 박사의 모습으로 풍자한 정서이다. 남에게 사랑 받는 그의 개성적 특질은 기만적인 삶의 철학이 되었다.
그러므로 신정론은 자비로운 신에 의해 만들어진 세계 속에서 나타나는 악의 현존에 대한 반응이다. 격렬한 신학적 논쟁이 세속화되는 데에는 오랜 시간이 걸리지 않았다. 헤겔의 철학적 체계는 악을 세계 역사의 더 큰 운동 속에 포섭된 것으로 간주했는데, 세계 역사의 목적과 종점은 정신의 완전한 실현이다. 이런 견해를 취하기 위해 헤겔은, 지금처럼 그때도 일반적이었던, 세계는 어떤 '궁극적인 설계'―헤겔의 경우에는 자기의식의 전개―에 따라 움직인다는 관념을 고수할 필요가 있었다. 우리가 아무리 세계의 특수자들로부터 뒷걸음을 치더라도, 세계는 예정대로 영광스러운 대미에 이르는 경로를 따라 전개된다. 이런 식으로, 악은 형이상학적 권역으로 격상되어 더 이상 도덕적 의문에 불과한 것이 아니게 된다. 헤겔 이후에, 마르크스도 고통에 대한 도덕적 설명을 거부했지만, 그는 악을 형이상학적 권역에서 물질적 권역으로 끌어내렸는데, 프롤레타리아트의 궁핍화는 계급 없는 유토피아의 실현에 필요한 단계가 되었다.
'좋은 인류세' 주장은 전체의 궁극적인 선, 즉 결국에는 위협이 되는 듯 보이는 구조적 걸림돌, 고통 그리고 도덕적 과실들을 초월하고 패배시키는 선에 대한 믿음에 정초하고 있다. 이런 믿음이 드물게 표명된다는 점이 그것의 은밀한 힘에 대한 증거가 된다. 그 주장의 신정론과의 유사점들을 탐구하는 것은 그것을 헐뜯기보다는 이해하기 쉽게 해 주는 것이다. (나는 모든 유형들의 신정론의 기저에 놓여 있는 역사적 전개에 대한 감각에 반대하지는 않는다.) 좋은 인류세의 세계에서 새로운 지질 시대는 임박한 위험이 아니라, 엘리스의 표현대로, '지구에 대한 앞을 내다보는 전망'으로서, 또는 <생태근대주의자 선언>의 표현대로, '인간 역량과 미래에 대한 낙관주의적 견해', '생명다양성을 갖추고 번성하는 행성에서의 보편적인 인간의 품위'의 위대한 인류세로서 환영받는다.
기후 파괴는 근대화 과정의 해결 가능한 부작용―성장 과정 자체가 해결할 성장통―으로 간주된다. 라이프니츠의 신정론에서는 신의 의지가 모든 것이 선을 위해 존재한다는 점을 보증하는 반면에, 생태근대주의자들의 경우에는 선이 지배할 것이라고 보증하는 것은 인간의 창의성과 개선 충동에 의해 추동되는 진보이다. 그래서 그들은 신(神)정론의 자리에 인간주도적 진보가 신의 자리를 차지하는 인(人)정론을 위치시킨다. 널리 보급될 선은 남성과 여성들의 마음이 아니라 사물의 질서, 인간들의 창의성과 임기응변의 재능을 동원하는 질서 속에 존재한다. 결국 좋은 인류세에 대한 생태근대주의자들의 신념은 섭리라는 종교적 관념의 세속적 표현인데, 신이 아니라 인간이 인간의 운명을 인도한다. 우리는 미래를 보았고, 그것은 좋다.
그러므로 '좋은 인류세' 논증의 구조는 본질적으로 헤겔적 신정론인데, 악―여기서 생태 파괴로 해석되는―은 절대적인 것―여기서 보편적 번영을 향한 멈출 수 없는 진보로 해석되는―의 실현을 향하여 역사를 전진시키는 데 필수적인 모순으로 해석된다. '사유하는 정신이 현존의 부정적 양태들과 화해할 수 있도록 우리로 하여금 악의 현존을 비롯한 세계의 모든 질병을 파악할 수 있게 하기 위해' 헤겔은 그의 신정론을 논리의 과정, 합리적 질서의 전개 속에 새겨 넣었다.
오늘날의 생태근대주의자들의 경우에, 기술적으로 정교한 인간들은 일시적인 환경 실패를 전적으로 초월할 수 있다. 엘리스의 경우에, '인간들은 지구를 공학적으로 조작하여 변형시킴으로써 급증하는 인구를 계속해서 전적으로 부양할 수 있는 듯 보인다.' 진보의 고유한 동학에 도움이 되도록 생태 파괴의 부정성은 변화를 위한 긍정적인 힘으로 동화되거나 지양된다. 사실상 그 결과는 지배권을 부여받은 창의적 종과 강인한 자연 사이의 협력의 산물이다. 신정론의 구조에서 인간은 신이 자신의 모습대로 만든 피조물이고, 그래서 항상 더 큰 힘의 지배를 받는다면, 생태근대주의자들의 인정론에서 인간은 자연이 최상위의 생명 형태로 만든 피조물이다. 그런데 자연은 인간를 지배하는 권력자가 아닌데, 상황이 반전되어 인간이 자연을 지배한다.
그러므로 생태 위기로 드러나는 인류세의 표현은 퇴보를 나타내는 것이 아니라, 극복을 통한 더 높은 단계로의 도약을 가능하게 만든다. 그것은 이 세상의 고통이 저 세상의 보상으로 보답받을 것이라는 주장이 아니라, 단기적으로 견뎌야 할지도 모르는 고통이 좋은, 위대한 인류세에서 우리가 만들어낼 경이로운 세계에서 정당성을 입증받을 것이라는 주장이다. 우리는, 생태근대주의의 주요 대변인들의 표현대로, '거의 모든 사람들이 건강하고, 자유로우며, 창의적인 삶을 영위할 만큼 충분히 유복할' 행성 정원을 조성할 것이다. 체계 비판가들이 스스로 부과한 낙담에서 벗어날 수 있다면, 그들은 인간과 자연 사이의 대립은 화해시킬 수 있고, 그래서 기후 변화는 기술로 대처하여 이기게 될 재판이라는 점을 알게 될 것이라고 생태근대주의자들은 말한다. 유토피아를 단념하기에는 너무 이를 뿐 아니라, 인류세는 우리가 마침내 유토피아에 이르기 위해 필요한 실패이다.
18세기와 19세기에 신정론은 격렬한 논란을 불러 일으켰다. 임마누엘 칸트는, 신정론이 우리가 신에 관해 알 수 있는 것을 넘어서기 때문에 비도적적이고 신성모독적인 것이라고 신정론을 공격했다. 우리는 신이 무엇을 바라는지 알 수 없고, 그래서 '전체에 대해 무엇이 최선인지 판단할 수 없다'. 좋은 인류세에 반대하는 어떤 칸트적 논증은, 지구 체계의 거동을 예측하는 것은 우리 능력을 초월하며, 그리고 더 중요하게도, 그것을 통제하는 것은 우리 능력을 초월하기 때문에 우리는 인류세의 궁극적인 결과를 알 수 없다는 것일 것이다. 지구는 불가사의하고 파악할 수 없는 것(셸링의 '나눌 수 없는 잔여')을 언제나 보유하고 있고, 그래서 우리가 불완전하게 이해할 수밖에 없고 거의 조절할 수 없는 힘들이 충적세로부터 인류세로의 전환에서 촉발되었다.
또한 좋은 인류세 논증의 신정론과 유사한 구조는 그것의 본질적인 정치적 결함과 도덕적 결함에 대한 주의를 환기시킨다. 비판가들이 신정론을 비난한 까닭은 그것이 정적주의(quietism)를 낳았기 때문이다. 고통이 신의 더 큰 목적에 기여하기 때문에 정당화된다면, 우리는 고통을 조용히 받아들여야 하고 세상을 바꾸려고 시도하지 말아야 한다. 우리는 세상을 섭리에 맡겨야 하고, 인간의 운명을 신의 인도 아래 맡겨야 한다. 생태근대주의자들은 사색하면서 좋은 인류세의 도래를 기다리고 앉아 있는 정적주의자들이 아니다. 오히려 그들은 그것의 경로를 매끈하게 하기를 바란다. 그들의 정치적 참여는 정해져 있는 것의 달성을 촉진하는 쪽으로 정향되어 있다. 그들의 과업은 체계가 자체의 약속을 실현할 기회를 갖도록 체계를 보호하고 방어하는 것이다.
<<근대 사상에서의 악(Evil in Modern Thought)>>이라는 신정론에 관한 뛰어난 연구서에서 수잔 니먼(Susan Neiman)은 '섭리는 자신들이 억압하는 자들을 속여서 침묵의 인내 상태로 빠뜨리기 위해 부자들이 발명한 도구이다"라고 주장했다. 좋은 인류세의 발명에 대해서도 마찬가지로 말할 수 있다. 체계에 항의하는 경향이 있는 희생자들에게 새로운 새벽에 대한 황금빛 약속은 그들을 속여서 침묵의 인내 상태로 빠뜨린다. 현재와 미래에 인간이 초래하는 가뭄, 홍수 그리고 열파에서 비롯되는 현재와 미래의 고통에 대한 좋은 인류세의 메시지는 이렇다. 당신은 더 큰 선을 위해 고통을 겪고 있다. 우리가 할 수 있다면 고통을 완화하기 위해 도울 것이지만 당신의 고통은 정당한 이유가 있다.
좋은 인류세, 나쁜 과학
18세기 말과 19세기 전체에 걸쳐서 지질학이라는 새로운 과학은 균일론(uniformitarianism), 즉 지구가 매우 오랜 시간 동안 점진적으로 지구를 변형시키는 느리게 움직이는 힘들에 의해 형성되었다는 관념이 지배적이었다. 그 새로운 과학을 순간적인 무로부터의 창조에 관한 성서적 설명으로부터 분리하기로 결정한 신흥 전공자들은 지구 역사의 한 시기에서 다음 시기로의 전환은 어떤 자연적 발작 때문일 수도 있다는 격변론(catastrophism)이라는 이론을 수용하기를 꺼렸다.
결국 격변적 변화들에 대한 증거는 더 이상 견뎌낼 수 없었고, 그래서 지질학자들은 점진적 변화가 때때로 격변들에 의해 교란받을 수 있다는 점을 수용했다. 오늘날 지질학적 시간 척도는 격변적 사건들에 의해 초래된 한 시대로부터 다음 시대로의 여러 전환들을 포함한다. 그것들이 '격변적'인 까닭은 변화가 매우 빨라서 현존하는 대부분의 생명 형태들이 적응하지 못하고 멸종하기 때문이다.
생태근대주의자들은 19세기의 균일론으로 후퇴해 버렸다. 그들의 주요한 과학적 주장은 피터 카레이바(Peter Kareiva)와 동료들에 의해 이렇게 표현된다. '자연은 매우 탄력적이어서 가장 강력한 인간의 교란들로부터도 빨리 회복할 수 있다.' 생태계들이 '회복할' 수 있다는 믿음은 인류세에 대한 그들의 해석으로 이어진다. 엘리스는 다음과 같이 평이하게 서술한다. '지금까지 인간들은 자연적 체계들을 극적으로 변화시켰다 ... 그럼에도 지구는 생산력이 더 풍부해져서 인간 개체군을 부양할 수 있는 능력이 더 커졌다. ... 오늘날까지 이런 동학이 근본적으로 바뀌어 버렸다는 증거는 거의 없다.'
이런 진술들은 인류세에 관한 과학에 대한 전면적인 오해를 반영한다. 인류세를 제안한 지구과학자들이 제기한 기초적인 주장은, 지난 이 내지 삼 세기 동안 인간들과 지구 사이의 동학이 근본적으로 바뀌어 버렸다는 것이다. 인류세 과학의 본질적인 요점은 엘리스의 이해와 정반대되는 것이다. 인류세는 인간들이 풍경이나 생태계들에 미치는 영향의 추가적 확산에 관한 서술이 아니라 지질학적 시간 척도에 있어서 하나의 새로운 시대, 즉 지구 체계 전체의 작동에 있어서의 위상 변화로서 제시된다. 그것은 과거의 연속이 아니라 지질학적 기록에서 불연속적인 변화이다.
이전의 불연속적인 변화, 즉 홍적세에서 충적세로의 변화는 지구 평균 온도에서 8℃의 변화, 해수면 높이에서 35미터의 변화 그리고 광범위한 멸종을 나타냈다. 지질학적으로 말하자면, 대단히 짧은 시간 동안 일어나고 있는 인류세 사건은 균일론이라기보다는 격변론의 사례이다.
이런 견지에서, 자연의 탄력성에 대한 증거로서 농경 체계들의 적응성에 관한 엘리스의 조사는 그 낱말의 정확한 의미에서 시대착오적이다. 엘리스와 다른 사람들이 '좋은 인류세'라는 관념을 옹호하는 데 사용하는 충적세 조건은 과거로 밀려가 버렸다. 충적세에서 그것의 타당성이 어떻든 간에, 생태계들이 취약하지 않고 탄력적이어서 인간의 교란으로부터 '회복할' 수 있다는 주장은 인류세와 어울리지 않는다. 우리는 연속적인 변화 과정에서 일어나는 작은 변동을 목격하고 있지 않다. 우리는 지구의 역사에서 나타나는 파열―영구적인 새로운 지질 시대로의 빠른 전환―을 목격하고 있다.
지구 역사 전체를 통해서 지구는 한 시대에서 이전 시대로 결코 '회복한' 적이 없다. 이제 지구는 귀환할 수 없는 지점을 건너가 버렸다. 지구의 거대한 순환들은 바뀌어 버렸고, 대기와 대양의 화학적 조성들은 돌이킬 수 없는 식으로 변해 버렸다. 21세기말 경에 지구는 이전 1500만 년 동안보다 더 더울 개연성이 매우 높을 것이다.
요약하면, 이제 지구 체계는 다른 양식으로 작동하고 있고, 우리가 할 수 있는 그 어떤 것도, 심지어 단기간 내에 화석 연료의 연소를 중단하는 것도 지구를 충적세로 '회복'시킬 수 없다. 지구는 결코 다시는 충적세처럼 보이지 않을 것이고, 그래서 충적세 조건에 기반을 둔 주장들은 정말 현혹하는 것들이다. 국소적인 수준에서 그것의 타당성이 어떻든 간에, 생태근대주의자들의 생태계 사유는 지구 체계 사유로 대체되어 버렸고, 그래서 그런 사유를 인류세에 적용하는 것은 양자 세계에 대하여 뉴턴주의적 주장을 제시하는 것과 유사하다.
캘리포니아는 눈 녹은 물의 고갈로 초래된 거대한 가뭄에 갇혀 있다. 그것은 점점 더 빈번해지고 심각해질 것으로 예상되는 그런 종류의 극단적인 날씨이다. 그것은 IPCC의 '영향' 보고서들에서 무섭도록 초연하게 공표된다. 나는 생태근대주의자들이 이런 이야기들을 읽거나 텔레비전에서 영상들을 볼 때 어떤 종류의 생각이 촉발되는지 자문한다. 거대한 가뭄 또는 허리케인 샌디 또는 물에 잠기고 있는 몰디브를 보여주는 영상들을 좋은 인류세에 관한 서사로 어떻게 뒤덮는가? 내게는 이것이 여전히 불가사의한 일이다.
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