ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the emergence of the Anthropocene by considering some of the dynamics between European cultural values and natural history in early modernity, and their relations with climate change. The concept of the Anthropocene as a process of global transformation is generally conceived as a development coeval with the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century. In a recent article in Nature on the Anthropocene, argue that the multiple biotic transfers of the Columbian Exchange, including those that were accidental, constituted a swift, ongoing, radical reorganization of life on earth without geological precedent. The chapter discusses the Val Plumwood's concept of human self-interest evident in dualism as the primary logic of colonisation that is particularly germane to the argument that the roots of current climate predicament in the age of Anthropocene lie in long seventeenth century. It explores the instances of critique in poetics and philosophy as vibrant currents of resistance to human exceptionalism that emerged in early modernity.
