ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Anthropocene's breakdown of conceptual barriers between human and non-human coincides with neoliberalism's breakdown of the barriers between public and private, between market and society and between one jurisdiction and the next. Scholars writing on the subject of the Anthropocene have seemed eager to see it as an opportunity for reimagining human social, economic and political systems in order to build a more harmonious relationship with Earth systems. The chapter suggests that the increasing neoliberalization of law and governance systems, it seems more likely that our legal/political response to the Anthropocene will come in the form of expanded neoliberal management. In addition, the EU has committed to making environmental action a component of its external trade and other policies, leveraging its power in the economic arena to effect changes in environmental behaviour outside its borders. The Anthropocene will, indeed, prove a serious challenge to classical liberal conceptions of territorial sovereignty.
