ABSTRACT
Scientists, humanists, and even (some) policymakers agree: we’re in the Anthropocene, a new moment in Earth’s history marked by profound, and possibly devastating, changes to life itself. Now what? With its recourse to geologic time, the Anthropocene concept might at first seem comforting: the “big picture” afforded by deep time radically recontextualizes our current crisis. At the same time, the Anthropocene concept is potentially paralyzing: why bother with environmentalism on a planet that has seen five mass extinction events? This chapter sketches out a middle ground—a space of self-aware cognitive dissonance from which we might confront the Anthropocene’s affective challenges.
