Eighteen Ways of Looking at the Anthropocene: Part One

4/29/21

For the next three weeks I’m offering a collection of thoughts on the Anthropocene concept: What is it? How should we understand it? Does it matter, and if so, why?

My original plan was to throw all of it at you in two long letters, but given its heaviness I’ve decided instead to break it into three parts and end each section with a good-idea story.

These thoughts on the Anthropocene are the start of a conversation – made up of definitions and propositions – that underlies this entire newsletter. Many of these propositions are ideas or questions I’ve been thinking about for years. My point, though, is not to wrap up the concept of the Anthropocene into a tidy package, but rather to open it up for examination. Much more could be proposed here by way of perspective, and each notion could be expanded upon. I intend to do both in the months to come while writing about the odds and ends of planetary transformation, drawing portraits of affected species and ecosystems, and describing the man…