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Jeremy Davies

The Birth of the Anthropocene

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The world faces an environmental crisis unprecedented in human history. Carbon dioxide levels have reached heights not seen for three million years, and the greatest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs appears to be underway. Such far-reaching changes suggest something remarkable: the beginning of a new geological epoch. It has been called the Anthropocene. The Birth of the Anthropocene shows how this epochal transformation puts the deep history of the planet at the heart of contemporary environmental politics. By opening a window onto geological time, the idea of the Anthropocene changes our understanding of present-day environmental destruction and injustice. Linking new developments in earth science to the insights of world historians, Jeremy Davies shows that as the Anthropocene epoch begins, politics and geology have become inextricably entwined.
Earth SciencesScience
This book is currently unavailable
306 printed pages
Original publication
2016
Publication year
2016
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  • Michael Bravermanshared an impression8 years ago
    🔮Hidden Depths
    🎯Worthwhile

    Great book. Takes a look at climate change from a geologic perspective which forces one to look at terms like "sustainability" and "climate change" from a healthier perspective. Essential to climate change activists.

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    • Michael Bravermanhas quoted8 years ago
      I end with a kind of parable about what it means to bear witness to the birth of the Anthropocene, even though doing so goes against a principle of mine in this book and briefly lets one person’s voice stand in for that of all humankind.
      The nuclear bomb tests that provide the best marker for the coming of the new epoch involved more than just scientists and technicians. Investigating strategies for the nuclear battlefield, the U.S., Soviet, and British armies conducted training maneuvers amid the aftermath of the test shots. James Yeatts took part in the U.S. Army’s Desert Rock exercises in 1952. Some years later he lost the teeth from his mouth, pulling them away with his bare hands. His son was born profoundly deformed
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      • Michael Bravermanhas quoted8 years ago
        But ongoing struggles for environmental justice still have the power to influence what will emerge from the Holocene’s terminal crisis. If the planet is living through the birth of an epoch, then the world’s green movements face the responsibility of helping shape a turning point within the vast reaches of the geological timescale
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        • Michael Bravermanhas quoted8 years ago
          But the carbon cycle’s economic mechanism may be hampered by activist-led divestment from fossil fuel companies, which has the potential to accelerate cautious shareholders’ retreat from firms whose value rests on their ownership of assets that may never be usable. The share prices of the largest fossil fuel reserve owners have become the critical variable of the planet’s carbon cycle. Thus the idea of the Anthropocene offers a new context for understanding the fossil fuel divestment movement and, in particular, the way in which its organizers have sought to make visible the connections between the carbon dioxide readings at Mauna Loa and the institutions of global finance. Divestment from fossil fuels is a geological act, an intervention in the linchpin biogeochemical process of the earth system.
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