Utopia and the Anthropocene • J

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Book Review Essay Utopia and the Anthropocene • J. Samuel Barkin Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/1/122/1818681/glep_a_00540.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021

Garforth, Lisa. 2018. Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Miller, Ethan. 2019. Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Symons, Jonathan. 2019. Ecomodernism: Technology, Politics and the Climate Crisis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. What might a politics of the Anthropocene look like? This question is distinct from asking what policy responses to climate change should be. Rather than asking what we should do moving forward, in response to environmental change, a politics of the Anthropocene imagines what a workable relationship between politics and the environment might be in an era when anthropogenic forces undermine visions of a sustainable future. The three thoughtful and well-written books reviewed in this essay do this in different ways, with very different conclusions. Two of them, one by Ethan Miller, the other by Jonathan Symons, address this question by imagining a new politics. The third, by Lisa Garforth, addresses it by surveying what other thinkers, from political theorists to writers of speculative ﬁction, have imagined. The Anthropocene here is understood less as a geological era, in which human activity leaves an indelible mark on the planet, than as a historical mo- ment, in which we come to see the environment writ large as changed by our activity. Anthropocenic thinking undermines the idea of a nature that is distinct from human activity and that has a steady state that we can, in an ideal world, reclaim. Big-picture thinking about the politics of the Anthropocene is therefore fundamentally different from prior environmental political philosophy. It is no longer about new political forms that will allow us to live in harmony with some static idea of nature. It is about political forms that will allow us to cope (or to cope better) with environmental change, in a world in which the politics and the environmental change are recursive. This sort of thinking is necessarily utopian; the future that we imagine is inevitably a stylized version of what could be rather than an accurate guess

122 J. Samuel Barkin • 123 about what will be. In Green Utopias: Environmental Hope Before and After Nature, Lisa Garforth studies environmentalist visions of utopia over the past half century as a way of getting at the question of how our vision of the future has changed over that time. The book “explores some of the ways in which Western cultures have imagined better futures for nature since the emergence of the idea of environmental crisis in the 1960s” (2). She draws on a variety of forms of expression of utopias, ranging from those sketched out in political philosophy to those implied in policy discourses to those constructed in spec- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/1/122/1818681/glep_a_00540.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 ulative fiction, both in print and on film. Garforth presents the “green” in Green Utopias as a fraught concept. Nature is contested, claimed in different utopias for different political purposes. But until quite recently, nature was seen in most utopias (whether green or other- wise) as a fixed, static thing. It might be seen as something to which we wish to return, or something to be overcome with technology, but either way, it is a thing apart from, and ontologically prior to, us. What, then, happens to green utopias in the Anthropocene, when we come to realize that there is no longer a nature that is ontologically prior to our relationship with it? How does a green utopia cope with “green” as a moving target? Phrased differently, what happens when environmental crisis is no longer avoidable, meaning that utopia becomes a vision of the post-crisis world rather than of a world in which environmental crisis has been avoided? This question is at the core of Green Utopias, which is divided into pre- and post-Anthropocene chapters (the Anthropocene understood here as a way of understanding our relationship with nature rather than as a claim about the natural world). The difference between the two eras is stark. Garforth identifies a range of utopian types in the environmentalist phase from the 1970s to the 1990s. She looks at the transition from a discourse of limits to a discourse of growth in the 1970s, with its implication of a steady state economy, to that of sustainable development in the 1990s, with its implications of a more environmentally sensitive economic growth. She also looks at more radical visions, such as the literature on deep ecology, both in works of political philosophy and in the fiction of authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Marge Piercy. All of these works, fiction and nonfiction, are utopian in the sense that they envision an ideal form of a political and economic relationship with nature. Not all are necessarily optimistic about the chances of a human future approximating the utopian vision (although some are), but all at least have a vision of what a stable relationship with nature might look like. Post-Anthropocene utopias are much harder to find, replaced either with visions of adaptation in the face of continual crisis or visions of radical adaptation in response to apocalypse. Dystopia is more common than utopia; in fiction, when green utopias are to be found, they are as likely to be sarcastic as sincere (two examples of this in the book are Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and the movie WALL-E). Utopian thinking does not disappear, but it loses its ambition. The broader and more fully fleshed-out green utopias of 124 • Utopia and the Anthropocene the earlier era become more difficult to find. In other words, we as a culture have yet to think through what green utopias might look like after nature. The two other works of political philosophy examined here do present clear and distinct visions of utopia that do not draw on static visions of nature. They do so with arguments that at first glance seem very different, one critical, the other modernist, and that lead to different utopias, but that in ways come to compatible political conclusions. In Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/1/122/1818681/glep_a_00540.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 Ethan Miller begins with the premise that our thinking about the political world is limited by a hegemonic assemblage, or a common sense in Gramscian terms, of the categories of economy, society, and environment. He speaks of these as categories of “ontological politics” that define the terms of contemporary political reality. He argues that the categories are often thought of in political par- lance as both objective and obvious but are in fact historically contingent. The assemblage as a whole leads us to think of the economy as distinct from society and as in opposition to a separable category of environment. It has us think in terms of trade-offs and balances, but prevents us from thinking in terms of “forms of collective life” that do not recognize these distinctions. The setting for the argument is Maine, particularly rural Maine, where economic decline, a resource-based economy, and a political culture that makes politicians and political processes accessible combine to make fertile ground for questioning the common sense of economy/society/environment. After building the critique of the set of interlocking discourses, Miller interviews a set of local actors working in economic development, social services, and environmental advocacy. He finds them at the outset to accept the categories of the assemblage unquestioningly. Rather than what might be called the positivist approach, in which the interviewer tries to be objective and not lead the inter- viewee, his method is to explicitly lead his interviewees in a critical reappraisal of the common sense of their categories. It is in part from these reappraisals that he builds his alternative to the assemblage, his own green utopia. Miller does not use, and would likely not be comfortable with, either the term green or the term utopia. He refers to his alternative as ecopoiesis, or, more prosaically, ecological livelihoods, which he sees as a process of constant nego- tiation in conditions of constant change, which puts it squarely in Garforth’s category of utopia after nature. He envisions a set of what he calls transversal coordinates that might cut across and replace economy, society, and environment as distinct categories of human interaction. These coordinates include, for example, constituency, measurement, knowledge and uncertainty, and in- centives. A key difference between categories and coordinates is that the latter do not have straightforward measures of success or failure. They are therefore useful sites for recomposing “modes of conflict that map the lines of our inter- dependencies more clearly and generatively” (199), allowing us to negotiate ecological livelihoods without assuming that trade-offs among categories are necessary. J. Samuel Barkin • 125

Miller’s argument is explicitly critical; the assemblage of economy, society, and environment is an artifact of modernity, and modernity is therefore part of the problem. Jonathan Symons, in Ecomodernism: Technology, Politics and the Climate Crisis, embraces rather than rejects modernism. In a way, his argument is also explicitly anti-utopian (he titles one of his chapters “The Thirty Years’ Crisis” in reference to E. H. Carr’s classic critique of utopian politics). It begins with the premise that expecting people to radically change their behavior in the short to medium term will not work as a climate change strategy. In the absence Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/1/122/1818681/glep_a_00540.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 of transformative behavioral change, Symons argues, we need transformative technological change. He begins the book with an analogy to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The strategy of the Reagan administration in dealing with the crisis was to call for behavioral change, but this strategy failed completely to affect the crisis. The epidemic was only brought under control when large sums of money were invested in new medical technologies. Ecomodernism, as the term suggests, does involve faith in the ability of modernist mechanisms to address the climate crisis. One of those mechanisms is technology. Ecomodernists call for investment in radically innovative technology that can decouple economic growth from carbon emission, and more broadly from resource depletion. They also call for intensification, the idea that we need to live in high-density cities and use high-density forms of energy and agriculture if we are to leave space for nature. (Symons does not really address the question of what nature means in the Anthropocene.) Another of the modernist mechanisms that Symons discusses is social democracy. In this sense, his ecomodernism is a critique of laissez-faire liberalism and techno-utopianism. He argues that the market, left on its own, will neither invest in new technologies on the necessary scale nor make environmentally or socially informed decisions about how to deploy the technologies that are developed. His ecomodernism is in this sense more developmentalist than neo- liberal, more New International Economic Order than Washington Consensus. The two key elements he ascribes to the social democracy of his ecomodernism are democratic legitimacy and a global social safety net. Democratic legitimacy is necessary for making decisions about the deployment of technologies, such as geoengineering, that are politically fraught. It calls for the strengthening of state governance of markets and of international governance mechanisms (both interstate and nonstate) that democratize international decision-making. A global social safety net is necessary to build the levels of trust globally that are a prerequisite for democratic legitimacy. Symons’ argument is a measured and self-reflective one. It steers clear of techno-optimism and market apologism and is reflective about the limits of his argument. Ecomodernism for him is political realism rather than utopianism; it might not be the world we want, but is likely to be the best we can get. The two visions of politics in the Anthropocene that Miller and Symons offer are in some ways polar opposites. Miller calls for a retreat from the politics of modernism and for a reconstitution of a sustainable politics at a more local 126 • Utopia and the Anthropocene level. Symons calls for an embrace of modernism in its political and economic manifestations, as well as for a corollary globalization of politics as the only effective response to the end of nature. But they share with the sources Garforth presents in Green Utopias alimitedviewofthepossibilityofutopiainthe Anthropocene. Both Miller and Symons are uncomfortable with the idea of utopia, the former noting that his is not a “utopia of harmony and cooperation” and the latter distancing himself from the politics of utopia more broadly. But while both eschew the idea of utopia, with its connotations of fantasy, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/1/122/1818681/glep_a_00540.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 both nonetheless embrace it in the sense that Garforth is using it: as a future that we can imagine, as a stylized version of what might be. The two utopias have in common that they deal with the Anthropocene and the end of nature by imagining utopias of political process rather than of a specified relationship with nature. In this way they overcome the dystopic tendencies that Garforth finds without minimizing the effects of the Anthropocene. Rather than being an end point to which we aspire, utopia in the Anthropocene becomes a process of interacting with an environment in constant change. These three books, taken individually, do well what they set out to do. Garforth effectively illustrates the challenges of imagining a green future as we lose the idea of nature. Miller makes an argument, both broadly theoretically informed and empirically grounded in Maine, against the common sense of economy, society, and environment that hobbles our ability to think about sustainable livelihoods. Symons develops a thoughtful and contextual argument in favor of ecomodernism. Taken together, the three books make an excellent start- ing point for thinking about how to think about the future in the Anthropocene.