Literary Review - The good news is that we’re all doomed. Humankind has made such a hash of the stewardship of creation that God looks like a chump for entrusting it to us. Most of the biosphere would be better off without us. If we don’t self-immolate or exhaust our resources, Peter Frankopan warns us, the planet will take its own revenge in some seismic rupture; or outer space, which we have strewn with the detritus of satellites and probes, may in return bombard us with asteroids or electromagnetic storms.
If the good news is that we are doomed, the better news is that we can’t do much about it. Frankopan points to the arrogance of talk of the ‘Anthropocene’, an age in which humans have replaced nature as the big influence on Earth. Not only does the name resonate with the self-congratulation of a bully, improperly proud of unprincipled power, but it also misleads us by making us think that we have the means of reversing our misconduct. Even if we adhered to the Paris protocols, global warming would be slowed but not arrested. If the sun doesn’t fry us, a new ice age may surprise us. Even if we stopped aggravating illness through our pathological lifestyles, we would remain at the mercy of microbial evolution. One day the ‘coming plague’ may overtake our response to it.
March 26, 2023
Books: It's the End of the World As We Know It
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Maybe Frankopan is one of those prigs referred to in another article today. What we call it is irrelevant, and he does not make his case as to why we should not use anthropocene very well either. MUCH more important is what people do. the opponents of progress have yet to make any substantive proposals on pretty much everything of substance that will make life better on planet earth. Arguing about the name does not help and mostly wastes time that could be better spent. The movement has many streams. And they run on hope. The hope of a better world. One with more justice at the heart of policy on climate. Mostly because on a round place hurtling through space the long term solutions only work if they are based on justice and ecology equally.
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