Anthropocene Flashcards
(20 cards)
What is the Anthropocene?
A proposed geological epoch in which humans have become a dominant force shaping the Earth’s biological, chemical, and geological systems.
What are some human-induced changes to the Earth that support the Anthropocene idea?
Changes include vegetation alteration, erosion, soil transformation, atmospheric shifts, nutrient cycling, and presence of radionuclides, plastics, and concrete in geological strata.
How does the Anthropocene differ from the Holocene?
The Holocene spans the last 11,700 years post-ice age; the Anthropocene marks a new era defined by human planetary impact.
What is the debate around the start date of the Anthropocene?
Some propose 1610 (colonization of the Americas), others 1964 (Great Acceleration and nuclear testing peak).
What is the Orbis hypothesis?
The idea that the Anthropocene began around 1610 due to global effects of colonization, mass death, and trade, which caused a dip in atmospheric CO₂ levels.
Why is the date of the Anthropocene’s beginning politically significant?
It shapes the narrative of environmental crisis—whether rooted in colonialism and capitalism or industrial modernity.
Why is it problematic to treat ‘humanity’ as a single actor in the Anthropocene?
It obscures unequal contributions and impacts, hiding colonial and capitalist histories behind a universal ‘anthropos’.
What is the Capitalocene?
A critique of the Anthropocene that attributes ecological crisis to capitalism’s exploitative systems rather than to humanity as a whole.
According to Jason Moore, how does capitalism organize nature?
Through dualisms (nature/society, mind/body), cheapening labor and nature, and externalizing environmental costs.
What is the Plantationocene?
A framework highlighting the socioecological legacy of plantation agriculture: ecological simplification, racialized labor, and extractive monocultures.
What are key features of a plantation system?
Monoculture, cheap labor and land, export orientation, displacement, and rigid social control.
How does the plantation model persist today?
In forms like free trade zones, gated communities, prisons, and export agriculture—reproducing plantation logics.
How does the Plantationocene critique Eurocentric environmental narratives?
It shifts focus from industrial revolution to colonial agriculture as a driver of global ecological change.
What is meant by ‘the plantation is in your cereal, orange juice, and peanut butter’?
Modern food systems are deeply rooted in plantation legacies of exploitation and ecological simplification.
What was ‘the plot’ in plantation contexts?
Small land areas where enslaved people grew food, fostering community, resistance, and alternative value systems.
What is the political significance of ‘the plot’?
It represents a counter-space of survival, care, and cultural continuity under systemic violence.
What alternatives to industrialized, capitalist agriculture are mentioned in the lecture?
Agroecology, cooperative farming, agrarian land reform, and food sovereignty movements.
What are the ethical implications of defining the Anthropocene through a colonial lens?
It highlights how environmental crises are rooted in historical systems of violence and exploitation, not universal human activity.
Why is stratigraphic evidence central to the Anthropocene debate?
Geologists need physical evidence in Earth layers to formally define a new epoch.
What does Davis et al. argue about retelling modernity’s history?
That plantations and enslavement were foundational to capitalism and environmental degradation—not merely precursors.
