Human history has been entwined with the history of nature since the earliest accounts of creation. The advent of the environmental sciences secularized those histories, postulating new causal and consequential connections between nature and humanity. The Anthropocene is but the latest of the narratives that tie the laws of the Earth to the activities of nature’s most interventionist offspring: the human species. In this talk, I will trace the modern scientific narratives of human-nature relationships through the parallel lens of environmental law. I will ask what difference the concept of the Anthropocene—in particular, its embrace of the geologic timescale—makes to our notions of responsibility toward a planet that we not only inhabit but also consume and transform through human enterprise.

About This Series

The Anthropocene—the geological epoch of humanity—has established itself as a key concept within a wider scientific and social discourse. In the midst of the dramatic and destabilizing changes to the basic conditions for life on our planet, new epistemic potentials for human action upon the Earth are to be explored.

In the framework of the Anthropocene Lecture series, a number of distinguished speakers accentuating the Anthropocene debate are invited to respond to a topic that will be a central challenge for many generations to come. The lectures take place at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam.