Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 270

Geologists call the period of Earth history following the glacial retreat of the last ‘Ice Age’ the Holocene, which covers the last 12,000 years. In the twenty-first century, some scientists now argue that we have left the Holocene behind and moved into a new epoch known as the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). As the name suggests, the Anthropocene is a period in which human activity has become the dominant force shaping ecosystems and the global climate, and which will be identifiable in the geological record. It seems clear that the concept is closely tied to scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change and its impact.

In the Anthropocene, the older separation of nature and society as distinct spheres representing the biological and the social appears to have collapsed. Not only are nature and society essentially intertwined, but the era of nature as an independently developing force is over (Walsh 2012). Instead, human activity has become the driving force in how life on Earth is developing now and will develop in the future (Fletcher 2019: 523). For some, the Anthropocene era began with the Industrial Revolution, as fossil fuels and machinery replaced animal and human labour, bringing with it increased greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. For others, the key starting point was the rapid development and spread of consumer culture in the 1950s and 1960s (Lidskog and Waterton 2016: 398). This period saw the rapid growth of the global human population, huge expansion of the aviation industry, mass private car-ownership and the industrialization of agriculture, alongside a step change in the amount of mat erial waste produced.

Although the Anthropocene is an emerging concept that is by no means accepted by all, it has brought into sharp focus the issue of human ‘stewardship’ of the Earth. Even if we accept that human societies have brought about a new era, this was not a planned development but the consequence of industrial capitalist evolution and the constant pressure for economic growth, however environmentally damaging that might be. Should we accept that human beings are now stewards of the planet with all the responsibility that brings, or do we work to radically reduce the human impact on the planet in order to preserve a distinct, independent world of nature? Theorists of the Anthropocene argue that the latter option has already been bypassed. There is no longer a ‘nature’ separate from humanity.

Today we are able to acknowledge the dark side of modern industry, technology and science, which the classical sociologists could not have foreseen. Scientific and technological developments have created a world of high-consequence risks that make possible both huge gains and losses. Yet, with a growing global human population, the idea that a majority of people could ‘go back’ to living more ‘natural’ lives in close contact with the land is patently unrealistic. As ecological modernization suggests, advanced technologies and scientific research will be vital factors in the quest for sustainable solutions in the emergent Anthropocene era.