Mark Horvath, Adam Lovasz: The Challenge of the Anthropocene for Politics: An Essay on Acceptance

In the Historia Anglorum, written in the 12th century by Henry of Huntingdon, the following story is recounted of King Canute the Great. At the height of his reign, the king orders a chair to be placed on the seashore as the tide is arriving. The king declares to the rising tide, „you are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.”[1] Alas, this order does not work, and the ruler’s feet are promptly drenched by the insolently indifferent waters. Nature cares nothing for the all too human declaration of the king. Speech acts can only get us so far. This tale has been recounted upon numerous occasions. The king’s action was intended as a demonstration of the limitations of human ability. Try as we might, we cannot halt the rising tide or give orders to the sea. Human ambition is absurdly limited, when confronted with the inscrutable complexity of nature’s laws.

But what of this day and age? Today we have technologies that were absent in Canute’s era. From dredging to artificial dams, the humans of today, on first appearances at least, are endowed with the capability to radically transform nature. Surely, the unalterability of nature has undergone a radical shift. Nature is not as natural as we formerly thought it was, so the modern conceit goes. We supposedly live in a radically different social world as compared with Medieval England. Or do we? Is King Canute’s lesson more relevant than it otherwise seems? In this article, we propose to delineate what the Anthropocene era means for politics. Such a project necessarily extends far beyond the limitations of a brief article, hence we must at this juncture limit ourselves to outlining in broad strokes the contours of the problem. Descriptive and prescriptive elements will necessarily mingle in the context of this essay, and the use of parables is paramount. Firstly, we shall define the concept of the Anthropocene, as coined by atmospheric chemist Paul Cruetzen. In defining the importance and singularity of the Anthropocene concept, we shall also have recourse to the work of philosopher Clive Hamilton. The Australian philosophers defines Earth System Science as a closed discipline, for the Anthropocene itself forms an autonomously self-organizing reality. In our view, the phenomenon of operative closure is particularly acute in the legal and political systems. We ask how society can be made open once more. The challenge the Anthropocene poses for politics in particular lies in the way positive feedback processes enhance the general unpredictability of the Earth System. Although these forces have been unleashed as the unintended result of human actions, there is absolutely no guarantee that we are in a position to rectify this, especially not through political action. Sociologist Hartmut Rosa has recently argued that the way we conceptualize global society ought to be re-evaluated in light of the inescapable uncontrollability of social reality. Certain decisionist political ideologies that overemphasize human will-power, as well as technocratic ideals, are singularly unfit for use in the Anthropocene era and should be abandoned.