ABSTRACT
The Anthropocene is an era of unprecedented interference between human history and earth history. As human activities have become the dominating cause of earth system change, we are facing a crisis of our fossil freedoms. By fossil freedom I mean the sum of liberations enabled by the burning of fossil fuels from previously existing constraints, which characterized the energy regimes of traditional agriculture. All agrarian regimes share a locally defined biomass-climate nexus, which sets limits to their productivity. Fossil energy regimes break up this nexus, thus overcoming limits in population growth, mobility, transport and the accumulation of material wealth. But by profoundly changing atmospheric chemistry through the release of enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, they have also established a completely different relationship with the climate system. The threat of dangerous climate change that has emerged is a symptom of crises that is now pointing to the limits of fossil freedom. The same applies to the material worlds we have built. I argue that hitting the limits of human expansion in the Anthropocene gives us cause to redefine our freedoms, which will have to include the earth. In essence, this is what I mean by “dirty metaphysics.”
