by Michel Lussault
Interview first published in French in the journal Rhizome, 2022.
Rhizome: How do you define the Anthropocene?
Michel Lussault: This neologism is coined from the term “anthropos”, i.e. the generic human being, and “cene”, deriving from Kainos, which means “new”, in this case in the sense of a new geological period: the “period of the human”.
It was Paul Josef Crutzen[1] who proposed this concept at the turn of the 21st century to show that, due to the impact of human activities on planetary biophysical systems, human beings have become a “force of nature” of comparable importance to geological forces. In other words, human activities and their effects are so massive and far-reaching that all of the planet’s biological and physical systems are “forced.” These powerful “anthropogenic forcings” cause an accelerated evolution of planetary bioclimatic conditions by triggering numerous feedback loops between all of the various components of the Earth system. These are comparable in importance to the non-anthropogenic bioclimatic evolutions that have existed in the geological history of the planet, but therefore differ in their origin, and above all in their rapidity. Indeed, the geological history of Earth has experienced, for example, very significant temperature changes over tens of thousands of years,[2] whose origins were linked to fluctuations in the motion of the planet and its axial inclination. In a few hundred years, we will experience changes of comparable magnitude whose origin is not a “normal” biophysical fluctuation, but anthropogenic.
Undeniably, an “Anthropocene science” is being constituted, and we can highlight two major ideas towards which scientists converge. The first is the considerable and irreversible anthropization of biophysical environments. Inevitably, human activities consume resources, and this has consequences for biophysical systems – what we usually call “nature”. In this regard, many experts are wary of the word “nature” because it can lead to certain misconceptions regarding the interactions between human beings and biophysical environments. For example, as the anthropologist Philippe Descola has pointed out, the Amazon rainforest is not at all “natural”.[3] Worked by hunter-gatherers for millennia, it was anthropized long before the evolutions we’re experiencing today. This allows us to avoid the idea that there could be some kind of totally preserved state of nature with which human beings live in harmony. The state of nature is a myth: it does not exist. The human being has the characteristic of being a species which, in order to install its “habitats”, its living spaces, systematically “anthropizes” biophysical environments. This produces transformative effects – what some now propose calling “Terraforming” – observable from the earliest days of Sapiens’ adventures. This intensity of anthropization is, in a way, a signature of the human species.
The second major idea, which truly characterizes the Anthropocene, is the ability of humans to cause effects that are not simply local and regional, but global and planetary. In other words, human activities are becoming so powerful that their impacts are felt on the global scale of the Earth system. The exemplary case is that of climate change, where warming causes feedbacks with major consequences. It is a ‘forcing’ on a planetary scale, but it must be understood that it has systemic consequences synchronically at all scales (local, regional, national, continental, global).
The Anthropocene is a useful term to indicate that we are entering a new period, if not geological, at least certainly historical, completely unprecedented, the most striking characteristic of which is that it opens up major questions about whether the planet thus subjected to anthropogenic forcings will be able to continue to provide a livable habitat for us humans.
Rhizome: Has urbanization accelerated the responsibility of human beings in change?
Michel Lussault: The generalized urbanization of the world[4] really began after 1945, but we find the beginnings of it from the end of the 18th century and the start of what is commonly called the “Industrial Revolution”. The contemporary phenomenon is changing in scope and now concerns all terrestrial societies. This is not just a demographic and geographical process, but an anthropological change that corresponds to the rapid and planetary imposition of new ways of living, new “forms of life”. In this sense, urbanization has a colossal impact and involves every inhabitant of the Earth.
In a context of strong demographic growth,[5] the needs – economic, social, mobility, food etc. – associated with urbanization are considerable and highlight the issue of resource extraction as never before. We therefore see the intensification of extractivism. By extractivism I mean the technological, economic and ideological system put in place with industrialization, which basically consists of considering biophysical environments as “mines” from which we can draw as many resources and as much energy as we need. Widespread urbanization pushes this extractivism to a level unparalleled in history.
Because of its organizational modalities and their associated needs, urbanization also generates more and more serious biophysical impacts. Thus, transportation and the day-to-day functioning of cities have never before emitted so many greenhouse gases and pollutants. The impact of urbanization on ecosystems is considerable. These impacts are direct, because cities are growing and expanding to the detriment of the ecosystems they impoverish and threaten, but also indirect, when they are not directly linked to the geographical expansion of urban spaces, but rather to the needs of markets. For example, to satisfy the growing food demand of urbanized populations, an agro-industrial system was developed that led to the clearing of equatorial forests, the depletion of forests and moorland, the draining of marshes, the overfishing of oceans, etc. The impacts of urbanization on water are also significant and worrying. And how can we not mention the incredible production of waste – especially plastic – emitted by urban populations and, in particular, by industries producing the astronomical quantity of products intended to satisfy the needs of urban consumers? To make the smallest object, such as a mobile phone weighing a few hundred grams, tens of kilos of materials (we’re talking around 70 kilos in this case) will be needed, which creates a considerable amount of waste.
Urbanization is pushing us into the Anthropocene. For this reason, I propose the neologism “Urbanocene” to suggest that the Anthropocene is vectorized by the generalized urbanization of the world.[6]
Rhizome: In the face of these challenges, what avenues for action do we have?
Michel Lussault: The challenge, in the face of the looming crisis of the very habitability of our planet, is to think about new ways of cohabiting on a global scale, new ways of thinking about urban organizations and their purposes, and new ways of envisaging urban life. It would be important first of all to examine the way in which environmental injustices are always coupled with social inequalities. Inventing a new way of living on this urbanized planet and coping with the effects of global change requires the establishment of fairer societies. We have not been able to propose this for decades, because the model of urban development that has been dominant for more than 70 years is profoundly unfair. It even promotes inequality as an “ordinary” and logical result of competitive economic functioning. This model is very closely linked to contemporary competitive and financialized capitalism, which is obviously directly responsible for this consequence.[7] The stakes are immense and the issue is certainly a difficult one, but questioning this development model is essential in order to try to create much more equitable forms of urban housing.
Moreover, for decades, centuries even, we have considered that everything of the order of “nature”, participating in biophysical systems, could be bent to our will, to our use, and transformed into resources that we should be able to use without hindrance or limits. This must be questioned. It is in this sense that it’s essential to question the relationship that we, human beings in society, have with non-humans, living and non-living. Here the question arises of the type of ethical and therefore political relations that could be established between humans and non-humans, as well as between all human beings, whose diversity of gender, origin, sensitivity and culture must also be taken into account. This is how we understand that the separation between “environmental” and social issues is unnecessary. However, let’s be clear: there are no off-the-shelf solutions. It will require an intense mobilization of social actors, a reappropriation of everyone’s capacity to act in order to invent new frameworks of existence.
Rhizome: How does one represent the fundamental rights of the Earth?
Michel Lussault: As early as the 1970s, a movement was emerging that argued that non-humans could no longer be treated as objects, but rather should be treated as subjects of law, that is to say, as entities that deserved to be recognized legally, politically and culturally. The question of the legal status of non-humans is not merely technical, because the law is, in a way, merely codifying a recognition that is philosophical, cultural, ethical and political.
The emergence of demands for these Earth rights forces us to rethink our relationships with living non-humans (animals, plants, trees, microorganisms) and non-living non-humans (materials, minerals, artefacts) or with complex non-human realities, such as rivers or large composite ecosystems like forests and soils. For example, sand and water are used on a massive scale all over the world to produce concrete. Today, in our cities, we live immersed in a world of sand because, wherever we look, we are surrounded by buildings and therefore by sand. This sand comes from somewhere, so it must be “recognized” and “considered”: we cannot obliterate its presence and think that its use is without consequences.
If we agree to reflect on the problem of the legal status of non-humans then we open a door to a much wider field: that of redefining the relationships that weave our daily coexistences and of questioning our classic ways of composing our living spaces, where we humans are permanently intertwined with non-humans. The modalities of this intertwining, of this particular “diplomacy”,[8] are as much social and economic as they are political.
Translation by Secessio
Notes
[1] Nobel Prize-winning chemist and specialist in the destruction of the ozone layer.
[2] In the region of 2 to 5 degrees.
[3] Descola, P. (1993). Les Lances du crépuscule. Plon.
[4] Termed planetary urbanization in Anglophone urban studies. Brenner, N. (2014). Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Jovis.
[5] The world’s population will have increased sixfold between 1900 – when there were approximately 1.5 billion inhabitants – and 2050, when there will likely be 10 billion. In the same period, the urban population will have increased from approximately 200 million to more than 6 billion.
[6] Lussault, M. (2021). L’anthropocène comme urbanocène. Dans V. Disdier et M. Lussault (dir.), Néolitihique-Anthropocène. Dialogue autour des 13 000 dernières années (p. 85-94). Éditions 205.
[7] We can nevertheless note that a number of non-capitalist countries have historically been active participants in the degradation of the environment, particularly China and the Soviet Union.
[8] I am here taking up and extending somewhat the proposition of Morizot, B. (2016). Les Diplomates. Cohabiter avec les loups sur une autre carte du vivant. WildProject.
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