Climate change has become the most important theme of our generation. The most popular way to narrate the history of climate change has become the “Anthropocene”. Most of the 21st C. historians of climate change employ the concept of the Anthropocene to tell the history of how we got here, with a burning planet and shady hopes. The way we construct our history is fundamental because it creates the discursive spaces where we can elaborate our future. This means that each narrative of climate change has different implications about political actions. In this essay I want to consider the Anthropocene narrative and its alternatives. In addition, I want to take a step further and make a critical reflection on the ontology underpinning these historical narratives. In fact, narratives always involve some protagonists. In historical narrative, just like in fictional narrative, we construct characters and the way in which we construct them always structures the limits and prospects of the plot. I will investigate the ontology of environmental history narratives by focusing on the idea of nature, humanity and of their relationship.
Let’s begin with a brief introduction on environmental history and the Anthropocene. Environmental history deals with the interaction between the human being and the rest of nature. One of the most researched themes in environmental history is that of climate change. As we already said, the main concept which defined the 21st C. research on environmental history in relation to climate change is that of the Anthropocene. Both the global research community and the scientifically informed public have taken the conceptual legitimacy of the ‘Anthropocene’ for granted. However, the ‘Anthropocene’ has recently gathered important criticisms. Thus, environmental historiography of climate change began to develop around the narratives of the ‘Anthropocene’ and its alternatives, like that of the Capitalocene.
1.1 The Anthropocene and its critics
The concept of the Anthropocene is used to grasp the geological epoch in which we live. Introduced in the 2000 by Crutzen, atmospheric chemist and Nobel Prize winner, it became a crucial narrative mark for environmental histories of climate change. While there is no universal agreement on the date of the beginning of the Anthropocene, it is supposed to follow the Holocene, the geological epoch we have been living for the last 11,500 years.
Even if neither the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) nor the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) has officially recognised the geologic legitimacy of the term, it is informally employed in the vast interdisciplinary field of Earth science. The term has been employed in multiple narratives of environmental history: the naturalist, the post-nature, the eco-catastrophist narratives. Alternative to and critical of the Anthropocene are the eco-Marxist and feminist narratives, both subscribing to the Capitalocenist critique.
1.2 The Anthropocene narratives
The Anthropocene environmental history begins with the observation that there is “strong evidence that humankind, our own species, has become so large and active that it now rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system”.
The mainstream narrative of the Anthropocene is the naturalist one. Accordingly, since the end of the 18th century, ‘we’, the human species have inadvertently altered the Earth system at a geological scale. Humanity did so through three stages: the industrial revolution, the post-WWII Great Acceleration and the 21st C. stage where non-OECD countries joined the Acceleration. The key causal factors are population growth, economic growth, and the expansion of international exchange. A revolution has recently occurred Earth system scientists have made humankind aware of the Anthropocene. Hence, policymakers should rely on scientific guidance to lead humanity towards a sustainable future.
The post-nature narrative celebrates the Anthropocene as the end of Nature. Post-naturalists share with naturalists the idea that environmental awareness is a recent event and that scientists should lead humanity in the transition to a new society. However, they see the Anthropocene as a chance for humanity to artificialise the Earth even more. They believe that we are now realising that there has never been Nature as distinct from humanity. They believe that Nature is a construction and so humans can do whatever they want with the Earth. Technological risks are then part of the human condition towards the creation of a New Atlantis.
The eco-catastrophist narrative tells a story of the Earth’s finitude hit by modernity’s project of indefinite growth and progress. It advocates for a post-growth resilient society where life would be materially and energetically simpler and lower, but more enjoyable, meaningful, and egalitarian. It agrees with the first two narratives on the recency of environmental awareness and on the authority of science, but it rejects on the faith on green technology.
1.3 The Capitalocene critique
The Capitalocene critique is run of the Anthropocene is twofold. On the one hand, the idea of a recent environmental awareness is held to be historically false and reproduces the very modern regime of historicity that it seeks to overcome. Indeed, by declaring the moderns environmentally unaware and us aware, Anthropocenologists reproduce the idea of an ignorant past functioning as a backdrop to yield lessons for the future in a unilinear progressive form. On the other hand, the idea of the Anthros as protagonist of the story is politically anaesthetising, as it depoliticises the environmental debate by turning into a techno-scientific matter with no socio-economic and cultural dimension. Instead of speaking of the Anthros, we should speak of the Capital. The driver of climate change is capitalist dispossession and commodification of the Earth, along with imperial domination. Thus, the Anthropocene should be renamed the Capitalocene.
1.4 The natural ontology of the Anthropocene
Apparently, the Anthropocene brings an end to the modern divide between nature and humanity, acknowledging that society impacts nature, and that nature impacts back. However, it treats humanity like a special agent distinct from nature itself and, in its natural and post-natural narratives, it prescribes an ontological politics to sanction humanity’s new role in dominating the earth. It basically reintroduces and re-inforces the modern assumptions which brought us to the ‘Anthropocene’. Even in the eco-catastrophist narrative, we see a clear division between humanity and nature, with the latter succumbing and re-claiming its space in the face of human hubris.
1.5 The natural ontology of the Capitalocene
The capitalocenists criticize the Anthropocene narratives for blackboxing humanity and ignoring the internal dynamics of society which are causal to the relationship with nature. In a way, the Capitalocene narrative overcomes the humanity-nature dualism by substituting it with the one of world-economy and world-ecology. Relying on the Wallernsteinian concept of world-system, the Capitalocene history introduces the idea of world-ecologies co-generated by each phase of the history of the world-economy. Capitalocenists lack an ontological and metaphysical explanation of what to do with the philosophical relation between humanity and nature. By proposing a critical ontology of humanity and nature, I want to enrich the capitalocenist critique of the Anthropocene by remaining on the realm of natural ontology. Before doing this, let us turn to the ethical debate between deep and dark ecology to further illuminate on the contested relationship between humanity and nature.
- Environmental ethics: deep vs dark ecology
Environmental ethics is the philosophical discipline concerned with the moral relationship of human beings to, and the value and moral status of, the environment and its non-human contents. One of the way environmental ethics grappled with the relationship between humanity and nature is through the debate between deep ecologists and dark ecologists, which emerged at the turn of the 21st C. Let us review the two positions.
2.1 Deep ecology
Deep ecology began in Scandivian in the 1970s as a critique of instrumental environmentalism. The latter is the idea that humanity should preserve and protect the environment insofar as it is instrumental for human interest. In contrast, deep ecology argued for an intrinsic and non-instrumental approach to environmentalism: all natural entities have a value on their own disregarding of their instrumentality to human interests. From a metaphysical point of view, deep ecology preaches “the awareness of a deeply felt identification of the self with the ecosystem”. This panist metaphysics finds ethical redemption through the rescuing of poetic language to re-connect to nature. In short, modern humanity has mistakenly separated from nature and should now recognize that it is part of it: poetic identification with non-human entities will help us re-acquire awareness of our belonging to nature. The deep ecological position tries to make justice to the ethical intuition that nature should be respected. Moreover, it attempts to overcome the modern nature-humanity ontological dualism through metaphysical reconciliation with nature. Let us see how dark ecologies find this attempt problematic.
2.2 Dark Ecology
Dark ecology developed around a decade ago to criticise the un-ecological potential of deep ecology. The idea is that “identification with the environment involves the possibility of destroying it”. By placing nature at the center of our attention we unconsciously objectify it. On the one hand, when a human subject tries to fully identify with a non-human entity the subjective perception of the metaphysical line that divides him from the latter will start blurring. He will see the non-humanity entity as an extension of himself, thus objectifying it. On the other hand, attachment to the environment seems to reproduce human exceptionalism in that it assumes that we “do have what it takes to protect the environment or unify ‘harmoniously’ with it in a deep ecological way”.
The objectification of nature and the human exceptionalism described are both stemming from the attempt to overcome modern naturalist ontology. However, they seem to reproduce the very same problematic assumptions it seeks to overcome. Hence, the dark ecological prescription is to stop looking at nature: “the idea is that s soon as we stop talking about nature we will paradoxically cease to objectify, exploit and, thus, pollute it”. The ethical aim is again the respect of nature, but it is achieved by doing without the humanity-nature dualism altogether: “an ecology without a subject or nature is an ecology that puts neither humans nor the environment in the limelight- and this is what makes it really ecological”.
Clearly, the ontological relationship between humanity and nature seems to be so problematic that those who tried to overcome it, like Anthropocenologists and Deep ecologists, somehow fall back to modern naturalist ontology- the same that took us to the Anthropocene-Capitalocene.
- Humanity, Nature and cruelty
I propose to overcome the problem of the nature-humanity dualism in the following way. Firstly, we should embrace the idea that nature is already in us and that humans are part of nature. This entails seeing nature as an ontological entity of which humanity as just one expression. Secondly, we should accept the moral idea that nature is a cruel place. Thirdly, we should recall the moral intuition that moral responsibility can only be ascribed to humans.
3.1 Humanity as Nature
The argument that Humanity should be considered as part of nature comes from biological anthropology. In deconstructing the nature of viruses, Chadarevian and Raffaetà, reminded us that “the vast biological diversity of viruses is yet to be discovered and that most viruses are harmless”. Drawing from the work of the biologist Gorbanelya, they point out that “all organisms, including humans, are infected by viruses and there is no escape from this situation as infection is one of the driving forces of evolution. Other scientists have also emphasized the key role of viruses for evolution, a role confirmed by the evidence that nearly half of the human genome comes from genes acquired from other species, with viruses most probably operating as mediators. In philosophical terms this idea is expressed through Braidotti’s nomadic subject: “the subject is fully immersed in and immanent in a network of non-human (animal, vegetable, viral) relations”. Hence, it makes little sense to ontologically separate humanity from nature as if they were two separate structure to reconcile: they have never ever been separated at all.
3.2 Nature as a cruel place
The idea of nature and cruelty has rarely been researched in the last decades. Modern thinkers like Leopardi have attempted to somehow question the relationship between nature and cruelty. At the beginning of the last century, some scholars, debating at the end of WWI, have also tried to understand whether nature is cruel or only humanity is. Contemporary scholars have not pursued the question. However, in the face of natural disasters, when humans are hurt and suffer, we tend to react with a sense of moral repugnance as if a cruel act took place. When we witness lions eating zebra babies, we also tend to seem horrified. The ghost of cruelty seems to haunt humanity in nature. For the sake of the present argument, I will assume not that nature is cruel, but that nature is a cruel place- in nature we are haunted by the ghost of cruelty.
3.3 Moral responsibility as human exceptionalism
The reason environmental studies became so relevant is the awareness of climate change. Natural disasters have become ever more present and the idea that more of them have yet to come is daunting. Natural disasters are worrying us because they hurt humans and non-humans, and we fear the consequent suffering. When we witness or think of natural disasters we are haunted by cruelty.
But can non-human entities that partake into natural catastrophes, i. e. a tsunami, really acquire the moral property of being cruel? Can nonhuman natural elements be cruel themselves? The answer is no. For two reasons. Firstly, in secular ethics we can only ascribe moral responsibility to humans, so we can’t blame nonhuman entities for moral wrongs. Secondly, the capitalocene narrative shows us that climate change is caused by socioeconomic and cultural arrangements for which some specific social groups are responsible, i.e. the capitalist ruling class. Indeed, natural disasters usually the poor in the poorest countries. Thus, the cruelty we perceive is to be ascribed to those responsible for the world-economic system.
In the present article I attempted to propose a critical re-conceptualisation of the nature-human ontology. Environmental historiography proposed to break with the modern naturalist ontology through the narratives of the Anthropocene. However, as the Capitalocene critique showed, the Anthropocene narratives tend to reproduce the very ontological assumption they attempt to overcome. The history of climate change cannot be the history of humanity adversely impacting nature because this would mean that when a natural disaster hits some human and make her suffer, the whole humanity must be morally blamed for the cruelty haunting the event. From a Capitalocene point of view such an event is a consequence of the world-economic system, and so moral blame must fall on those who sustain it and profit from it. My argument that humans are just part of nature and that the latter is a cruel place helps articulate the Capitalocene ethical worry through ontological terms. In fact, we can say that nature and humans as beings are still at play, but since cruelty is also to be considered, we have to trace a specific moral responsibility, which is detected through the Capitalocenist world-system analysis. In environmental ethics the ecological debate runs on the distinction between humanity and nature and whether we should put nature at the center of our gaze or in the background. I contend that nature is already in us. Dark ecologists are right in criticising the external focus of deep ecologists towards nature with the aim of reconnecting to it. However, they are wrong in wanting to do ecology without nature- nature is in and is (also) us. The real ethical task in ecology is then to detect cruelty and learn how to decrease it.