Presenter: Mark Cutler (Confirmation milestone)
A sense of nature as wholly separate from human intervention now seems irretrievable in an era when we know, beyond doubt, that we have in fact changed every square inch of this Earth. When we finally traverse one of the few remaining uncharted territories, we will know in advance that our construction or garbage or emissions has already changed the structure or distribution or temperature of its ecosystem. Regardless of what the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy thinks of it, the term Anthropocene has already caught on to denote the era in which humans are the “dominant influence on climate since industrialism[, and] must now be understood as climatological or geological forces on the planet that operate just as nonhumans would, independent of human will.” (Grusin vii)
Venue
St Lucia campus