Altered Earth
Getting the Anthropocene Right

This landmark essay collection explains the Anthropocene as a scientific concept and as a human dilemma, showing how it limits our future but liberates our imaginations.

Julia Adeney Thomas (Edited by)

9781316517475, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 March 2022

300 pages
23.6 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.564 kg

'… these readable, focused, and engaging essays show that science and the humanities need not be opposed, but can (and must) reinforce each other in understanding and countering the growing Earth System crisis.' Ian Angus, Climate & Capitalism

Altered Earth aims to get the Anthropocene right in three senses. With essays by leading scientists, it highlights the growing consensus that our planet entered a dangerous new state in the mid-twentieth century. Second, it gets the Anthropocene right in human terms, bringing together a range of leading authors to explore, in fiction and non-fiction, our deep past, global conquest, inequality, nuclear disasters, and space travel. Finally, this landmark collection presents what hope might look like in this seemingly hopeless situation, proposing new political forms and mutualistic cities. 'Right' in this book means being as accurate as possible in describing the physical phenomenon of the Anthropocene; as balanced as possible in weighing the complex human developments, some willed and some unintended, that led to this predicament; and as just as possible in envisioning potential futures.

Preface Dipesh Chakrabarty
Introduction: The growing anthropocene consensus Julia Adeney Thomas
Part I. Strata and Stories: 1. Science: Old and new patterns of the anthropocene Jan Zalasiewicz
2. Humanities and social sciences: Human stories and the anthropocene earth system Julia Adeney Thomas
Part II. One Anthropocene: Many Stories: 3. Earth system science: Gravity, the earth system and the anthropocene Will Steffen
4. Deep History and disease: Germs and humanity's rise to planetary dominance Kyle Harper
5. Anthropology: Colonialism, indigeneity, and wind power in the anthropocene Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer
6. The ascent of the anthropoi: a story Amitav Ghosh
7. Politics in the anthropocene Manuel Arias-Maldonado
8. Very recent history and the nuclear anthropocene Kate Brown
9. Stratigraphy: Finding global markers in a small Canadian lake Francine McCarthy
10. Curating the anthropocene at Berlin's house of world culture Bernd Scherer
Part III. Future Habitations: 11. Anthropocene ethics, as seen from a Mars mission: a story Clive Hamilton
12. Mutualistic cities of the near future Mark Williams, Julia Adeney Thomas, Gavin Brown, Minal Pathak, Moya Burns, Will Steffen, John Clarkson and Jan Zalasiewicz
Afterword: Jürgen Renn and Christoph Rosol.

Subject Areas: Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Climate change [RNPG], General & world history [HBG]