For most of our planet’s history, geologic change on earth was steered by inanimate forces. Then modern humans arrived, triggering a new geological epoch now known as the “Anthropocene.” Coined in the 1980s by biologist Eugene Stoermer and popularized in 2000 by Nobel-prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen, the word marks the transformation of the biosphere over the past 250 years—a change wrought not by solar radiation, tectonic activity, or volcanoes, but by human beings.
We are the only known animal to have caused climate change, desertification, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, pollution, and species extinctions. Until relatively recently, technologies and ways of life that enabled us to transfigure the earth in these ways were understood as expressions of our inherent superiority. Today, the Anthropocene is increasingly seen not as a mark of human exceptionalism, but as an ecological catastrophe that threatens not only non-human lives, but also our own continued existence.
In their book, Love in the Anthropocene, our guest, philosopher Dale Jamieson, and his co-author, novelist Bonnie Nadzam, invite us to imagine a not-too-distant-future in which our technologies have continued to transform the face of the planet. In this world, the “sixth extinction” is long underway. Like the cities of today, rivers, lakes, forests, oceans, and fields are curated and managed by humans. Other animals remain only insofar as their existence contributes to human enjoyment. Most of them are bioengineered. What, Jamieson and Nadzam ask, will become of us in a world in which nature is almost entirely an artifact? What will it do — what has it done, already — to our relationships with one another and with ourselves? In this episode, we speak with Jamieson about the spiritual costs of this “narcissist’s playground” and what we can do to preempt it.
Dale Jamieson is a leading environmental philosopher and professor of environmental studies and philosophy at NYU, where he leads the University’s Animal Studies Initiative. He is also the founding director of the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection. In addition to co-authoring Love in the Anthropocene, he is the author of Reason in a Dark Time, Ethics and the Environment, and Morality’s Progress. He has edited or co-edited nine books, most recently Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Philosophy, and serves on the editorial boards of several journals.
Recommendations:
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Animals’ Rights Considered in Relation to Moral Progress by Henry Salt
Nature Writings by John Muir
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