Timothy Luke

The Anthropocene as Past/Present/Future THE RECENT COINAGE OF “THE ANTHROPOCENE” as a technical term of art presents an intriguing intellectual and political puzzle.1 Arguments for accepting the Anthropocene as a fundamental change in all hitherto experienced human history appear driven less by the hopes to chronicle accurately natural history, than by designs for redirecting how human beings ought to act now. On the one hand, its proponents present themselves as vigilant scientific sentries of individual freedom, declaring alarm as experts on current ecological crises prompt nation-states “to do something” about the destruction that mankind has wrought in the environment for 250 years. [Read More]