WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:08.900 the anthropocene means the age of humans. It is often understood as the time when humans have made a 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:15.500 lasting imprint permanent imprint on the earth, at a time where human impact is everywhere and human 00:00:15.500 --> 00:00:21.700 activities is a major driver of climactic and environmental processes. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:00:21.700 --> 00:00:28.750 We associate the anthropocene with this kind of stuff: plastic pollution, industrial agriculture, 00:00:28.750 --> 00:00:35.100 mining, oil extraction and so on. I could have put on many other pictures for instance of 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:42.900 deforestation, plantation forestry, traffic and travel, cruise lines, containerised 00:00:42.900 --> 00:00:50.400 transportation and many other things as well. Usually the term anthropocene also often points to 00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:52.000 the effects of all these these NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:01.700 Disturbances as well, so things like drought, wildfires, floods, smog, species extinction and so on. So is 00:01:01.700 --> 00:01:09.800 extreme weather events of various kinds but also pollution, toxicity, radiation, exposure, chemicals 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:16.300 ocean, acidification, coral bleaching, thawing of the permafrost and so on and so forth. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:01:16.300 --> 00:01:24.850 In some it is the age of humans and crucially it is the age when human impact reaches everywhere 00:01:24.850 --> 00:01:32.200 even in the places where we appear to be completely absent, it's the age when even in the most remote 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:40.900 and inhospitable spots on the planet there's a plastic bag right, and it has been much discussed 00:01:40.900 --> 00:01:46.800 in the last few years I think that for a wider public NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:01:46.800 --> 00:01:54.500 debates, the anthropocene can be useful, because it sort of gives us a term for the contemporary kind 00:01:54.500 --> 00:02:01.100 of environmental change and a term the presents more than just climate change, that encompasses climate 00:02:01.100 --> 00:02:06.400 change but also all of these other things. So the anthropocene is climate change but it is so much 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:11.900 more, it accomplices climate change but also all of those other anthropogenic interventions and 00:02:11.900 --> 00:02:13.800 effects. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:02:14.600 --> 00:02:22.300 So the concept of the anthropocene started out as a technical concept in the field of geology, it is 00:02:22.300 --> 00:02:31.500 first of all a proposed geological epoch, but the concept also has some wider purchase and it 00:02:31.500 --> 00:02:37.000 has become a widely used term in anthropology and in many other social sciences and 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:45.300 Humanities, and these two versions of the anthropocene. ?someone? called them the two lives of the anthroposcene NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:02:45.300 --> 00:02:51.800 the first is sort of life that the concept has within the field of geology, and then the second 00:02:51.800 --> 00:02:58.400 life is the life that the term has in other fields, and in the wider public 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:07.500 Consciousness. So the anthropocene is the proposed geological epoch, so for geologists the earth is 00:03:07.500 --> 00:03:15.250 still in the ?whole of scene, hollow? which is the period that began after the last ice age but in recent years NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:03:15.250 --> 00:03:23.900 many geologists have had called for us to officially move into a new epoch the 00:03:23.900 --> 00:03:31.900 anthropocene, so a group of scientists called the anthropocene working group was established some 00:03:31.900 --> 00:03:39.000 years ago to find out or to figure out whether or not there's enough geological evidence to 00:03:39.000 --> 00:03:43.650 officially say that we are now in a new epoch the anthropocene, and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:03:43.650 --> 00:03:49.900 which epoch the world is in is something that's formally decided by the international union of 00:03:49.900 --> 00:03:56.500 geological scientists and as far as I know the latest from them is that so that they 00:03:56.500 --> 00:04:02.300 passed an internal vote among their members where the consensus was that yes we are indeed in the 00:04:02.300 --> 00:04:09.400 anthropocene, but it hasn't been formally passed yet by this international union. So you 00:04:09.400 --> 00:04:13.800 might be wondering what does it take for such a decision to pass for NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:04:13.800 --> 00:04:21.700 Such a decision that we are in a new geological epoch, and for geologists the criteria 00:04:21.700 --> 00:04:29.200 to determine this has to do with whether human activity has definitely left a lasting imprint or 00:04:29.200 --> 00:04:38.400 mark on the stratigraphic record. So the stratigraphic record refers to the layers of rock that 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:43.750 solidify over time and the question for geologist is whether or not the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:04:43.750 --> 00:04:51.700 climactic and environmental changes of the present will leave a mark on the earth's 00:04:51.700 --> 00:04:58.300 layers of rock, you might say the question is have we impressed ourself on the mountains, have we 00:04:58.300 --> 00:05:05.700 written ourself in stone as a species. A couple of things have been debated and one of them is 00:05:05.700 --> 00:05:09.250 whether or not we can find the so-called "Golden Spike" NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:05:09.250 --> 00:05:14.700 and another is whether we can document the correlation between the deposits in the Rock on the one 00:05:14.700 --> 00:05:22.700 hand and human activity on the other, so a golden spike would be a legible point in the 00:05:22.700 --> 00:05:30.200 stratigraphic record that is kind of starting point for the anthropocene, and as you read in the 00:05:30.200 --> 00:05:36.900 Davis and Todd article this question when did the anthracene start is quite a contested one. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:45.100 We can look for a starting point but we can also look for correlations between what we can 00:05:45.100 --> 00:05:52.300 measure in the natural world on the one hand, and development in human activity on the 00:05:52.300 --> 00:06:00.100 other. So here are the so-called famous J-curves of the anthropocene and Swanson mentions 00:06:00.100 --> 00:06:06.700 them briefly I think, so what you see here is that massive spikes in various human NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:06:06.700 --> 00:06:13.700 activities so on the right side here socio-economic trends, these massive spikes in human 00:06:13.700 --> 00:06:21.400 activities map onto and correlate with massive spikes in various environmental indicators. So 00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:29.500 socio-economic trends such as population growth, water use, paper production, tourism these things 00:06:29.500 --> 00:06:36.000 correlate with earth system strengths such as CO2 in the atmosphere temperature and ocean 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:36.650 acidification. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:06:36.650 --> 00:06:43.100 and what you can also notice that these curves here sort of suggest a golden spike on their 00:06:43.100 --> 00:06:49.100 own, a starting point and that Golden Spike would be around 1950 that's sort of the point where 00:06:49.100 --> 00:06:57.800 most of these indicators start their dramatic upward rise, and it's not all of them right of course 00:06:57.800 --> 00:07:06.100 for instance domestication of land which is one of these curves here on the left side, it has a 00:07:06.100 --> 00:07:06.700 different NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:07:06.700 --> 00:07:14.200 pattern it didn't rise around the same period and time, but most of them arise 00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:21.100 dramatically from around 1950 and this period from the 1950s is often referred to as the great 00:07:21.100 --> 00:07:29.100 acceleration. It is a time when a lot of things grew and accelerated with a tremendous kind of 00:07:29.100 --> 00:07:36.600 speed, and another interesting starting point or Golden Spike that has been suggested is even more NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:07:36.600 --> 00:07:43.100 more specific than this a a nuclear testing and one suggestion has been that the first 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:49.900 nuclear blast in 1945 pinpoints the beginning of the anthropocene. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:07:50.800 --> 00:07:58.400 All right so let me just try and impress on you what kind of a momentous assertion the idea of the 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:07.000 anthropocene is about the world and about humans. Say that human activities have caused an epochal 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:13.600 change right, formally and officially we're still in the holocene and the holocene began 00:08:13.600 --> 00:08:19.799 after the last ice age a little bit more than 10,000 years ago. The period NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:08:19.799 --> 00:08:25.500 that came before the holocene the Pleistocene is however in certain ways quite similar to 00:08:25.500 --> 00:08:32.049 the holocene so the pleistocene which spans two and a half million years or something like that 00:08:32.049 --> 00:08:43.700 is an Epoch that's saw several cycles of glaciers and thawing, so several cycles of glaciation and 00:08:43.700 --> 00:08:49.750 several ice ages that came and went, and the holocene is the period following the last of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 69% (MEDIUM) 00:08:49.750 --> 00:08:57.250 Those ice ages so the holocene is quite similar to one part of those 00:08:57.250 --> 00:09:03.800 oscillations between colder and warmer climates that characterises the pleistocene. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:09:03.800 --> 00:09:10.500 Now the anthropocene is something completely different. The anthropocene is a departure not 00:09:10.500 --> 00:09:15.900 just from the Holocene but perhaps from a pattern that the earth has been in for two and a 00:09:15.900 --> 00:09:22.250 half million years, so if the Holocene in a certain way is the continuation of a pattern going back 00:09:22.250 --> 00:09:28.700 more than two million years then for humans to have caused something qualitatively new is 00:09:28.700 --> 00:09:34.450 quite a big assertion and this is all a matter of what we might NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:09:34.450 --> 00:09:41.500 Call geological time right, these are the time scales at which mountains are formed, these are the 00:09:41.500 --> 00:09:50.050 time scales on which the seemingly eternal and unchangeable immutable parts of the Earth 00:09:50.050 --> 00:09:57.500 are formed, and so to say we're in the anthropocene is to say that human activities have an impact on 00:09:57.500 --> 00:10:04.400 these vast timescales of the very formation of the earth. The history NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:10:04.400 --> 00:10:11.450 in our human history intersects with glacial and geological time and this is where it gets 00:10:11.450 --> 00:10:17.000 especially interesting for social scientists, and this is where we get to the second life of the 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:21.800 anthropocene the life it has to beyond the field of geology. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:10:22.300 --> 00:10:28.400 To say that anthropologists have taken an interest in the anthropocene is an understatement, so 00:10:28.400 --> 00:10:35.900 writings on the anthropocene have virtually exploded over the last 10-15 years. Here's a few 00:10:35.900 --> 00:10:43.400 examples on the slide and there's literally hundreds more out there it's like 00:10:43.400 --> 00:10:50.000 everyone's themes to these days to put the anthropocene in the title of their papers or their books it 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:53.000 seems everyone like pivots their inquiries and the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:10:53.000 --> 00:11:01.600 Research in some way to concern the anthropocene and you know this is not because we are incredibly 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:08.300 interested in rocks as anthropologists, a few people are but most of us are 00:11:08.300 --> 00:11:15.800 interested still in people and I think this interest in the other person lies in the fact that 00:11:15.800 --> 00:11:22.950 the anthropocene now can be a kind of diagnosis of the Contemporary so we use it in a way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:11:22.950 --> 00:11:29.200 to scale up to sort of say that this one thing that I'm looking at well it's part of something 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:36.200 bigger and as such we use the anthropocene in much the same way that we use concepts like modernity 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:42.400 and neoliberalism as a way to say that this little thing that I'm studying over here in this 00:11:42.400 --> 00:11:51.500 particular part of the world is part of something bigger a larger phenomenon such as neoliberalism 00:11:51.500 --> 00:11:53.599 or the anthropocene. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:11:53.599 --> 00:12:01.950 So compared to the geologogical concept of the anthropocene the social scientists anthropocene is 00:12:01.950 --> 00:12:09.600 at the same time more limited and also broader in scope, so we are less concerned with those very 00:12:09.600 --> 00:12:17.600 very long time spans but we also don't narrow ourselves to just looking at rocks we try and set to 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:23.500 find characteristic patterns in anthropocene activities for instance and we look at life NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:12:23.500 --> 00:12:31.600 in the anthropocene, how it feels to live in changing times how new kinds of attachments to nature 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:42.800 are formed or how attachments are severed, and how our ways of thinking might change and so on. 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:49.500 The anthropocene then might be another way for us to do what we've always done to diagnose 00:12:49.500 --> 00:12:53.050 and understand life in the contemporary world. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:12:53.050 --> 00:13:00.900 It's not just that it's also something different, it's also kind of a new imaginative 00:13:00.900 --> 00:13:12.000 resource away for us to nudge and destabilize our thought a way for us to take our assumptions and 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:17.400 thinking in a new direction sort of a prompt for us think in new ways. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:13:17.400 --> 00:13:24.900 It can if you can disturb some old assumptions for instance for one thing about time and space NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:13:24.900 --> 00:13:34.000 so our everyday actions and lives today are entangled with the long ecological time you 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:41.300 know our local activities are linked and materially tied to places really far away like we talked 00:13:41.300 --> 00:13:49.600 about last session, and in these ways the anthropocene can force us to think differently about 00:13:49.600 --> 00:13:55.200 ourselves my actions don't just occur locally and they don't just occur NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:13:55.200 --> 00:14:03.000 in the present and they occur over large time scales long time scales on vast distances and so you 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:09.000 know the anthropocene is a world where people in one place of the world like people in the US 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:16.100 can see and smell the smoke from wildfires in Australia it's a world where our evening sky 00:14:16.100 --> 00:14:25.150 sometimes are reddened by smoke from wildfires in California, it's a world where Norwegian reindeer NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:14:25.150 --> 00:14:34.700 reindeer where they still have in their bodies the imprint of nuclear fallout 00:14:34.700 --> 00:14:41.300 from the Chernobyl accident. You know knowing all this and being reminded of this over and over might 00:14:41.300 --> 00:14:44.000 change the way we think. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:14:44.000 --> 00:14:50.100 In the anthropocene we live with the traces and manifestations of our own and others 00:14:50.100 --> 00:14:57.500 people's actions over the last few decades and more we talked about how the local isn't really ever 00:14:57.500 --> 00:15:07.100 local in class last week right and the anthropocene points this out very clearly too. Any place is 00:15:07.100 --> 00:15:11.550 stretched out both in time and in space. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:15:11.550 --> 00:15:18.500 Our weather today right is it's part of the manifestation not of the cars that drive around right 00:15:18.500 --> 00:15:25.100 now today but of the cars and the air travel and the extractive industries and all sorts of 00:15:25.100 --> 00:15:35.100 things of the recent past so it's like we live within the sedimentations of a near past but we also 00:15:35.100 --> 00:15:42.099 live in the future of live through our anticipation of what our actions today might cause NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:15:42.099 --> 00:15:48.600 So we act today in the light of near future that we anticipate will manifest our actions of today right. So 00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:54.100 the anthropocene can affect I think how we think about time and space it sort of stretches out the 00:15:54.100 --> 00:16:02.000 present in a way, and the anthropocene can also affect how we think about nature and culture or nature 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:08.500 and society or nature and humans, the anthropocene can make it make it really really difficult to 00:16:08.500 --> 00:16:12.350 think of ourselves that's outside of time or NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:16:12.350 --> 00:16:20.800 it might help us destabilize the notion that we are ever outside of nature right, you read Ingold 00:16:20.800 --> 00:16:26.500 A few weeks back and Ingold criticizes this classic western understanding that places the 00:16:26.500 --> 00:16:33.900 environment that's external to us and the concept the anthropocene can disturb this nature cultural 00:16:33.900 --> 00:16:42.400 divide in a similar way, so if my actions today will materially linger in what the weather will be like NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:16:42.400 --> 00:16:51.550 twenty years from now it can make my involvement with nature very conspicuous, very difficult to miss. 00:16:51.550 --> 00:16:57.800 Not only can it make me think of time as more stretched out it can make me think of myself as 00:16:57.800 --> 00:17:04.700 physically imprinted on the fabric of the earth and so the anthropocene gives us experiences that 00:17:04.700 --> 00:17:10.900 disturb the idea that the environment is something out there apart from us, the environment is us 00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:12.550 also it is made from NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:17:12.550 --> 00:17:20.000 many things including the traces of my actions and I am the environment in a sense my actions become 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:24.599 part of the environment and become part of the environment that me and also other people in the 00:17:24.599 --> 00:17:30.800 future will have to live in, and so everywhere we look we would find these hybrids and mixtures 00:17:30.800 --> 00:17:35.900 things that are inescapably both human and nature. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:17:36.600 --> 00:17:43.500 If the concept of the anthropocene is useful to rethink ingrained assumptions it might also come 00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:50.300 with some problematic assumptions, and this is what Davis and Todd are concerned with. The 00:17:50.300 --> 00:17:58.900 anthropos part of the anthropocene means human but does it or should it refer to all humans 00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:07.100 equally do we want an anthropocene concept that sort of distributes responsibility equally across all 00:18:07.100 --> 00:18:07.300 of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:18:07.300 --> 00:18:14.150 humankind. That's the question right and then the name and the date of the anthropocene NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:18:14.150 --> 00:18:21.900 consequently is it's not just a matter of putting the right name to an external reality it's also a 00:18:21.900 --> 00:18:27.700 political matter in the sense it's a naming that makes the difference a naming that will ease 00:18:27.700 --> 00:18:37.600 certain actions and make other things harder to do. And the problem with the anthropocene is that it 00:18:37.600 --> 00:18:44.550 tends to implicate all humans equally under the sign of the anthropos humans this is the age of humans, it NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:18:44.550 --> 00:18:51.000 doesn't differentiate between certain humans and others and this universalizing tendency 00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:57.300 to lump all humans together is a reason why according to Davis and Todd is especially important 00:18:57.300 --> 00:19:04.200 to think carefully about what we take to be and what we communicate about the starting date of the 00:19:04.200 --> 00:19:05.700 anthropocene. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:19:05.700 --> 00:19:15.700 There might be starting dates that can help to correct or undermine this universality. So when 00:19:15.700 --> 00:19:20.900 did the anthropocene start? well the anthropocene started to become an official geological epoch needs a 00:19:20.900 --> 00:19:29.900 starting date right and geologists have debated this and in Davids and Todd's article that you are 00:19:29.900 --> 00:19:36.100 reading it was meant to be an intervention into the deliberations of the anthropocene NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:19:36.100 --> 00:19:43.100 working group who was working on establishing whether or not we are in the anthropocene, and so 00:19:43.100 --> 00:19:49.900 several starting dates have been suggested for the anthropocene, and here's the four main 00:19:49.900 --> 00:19:58.900 contenders. The birth of Agriculture, the Industrial Revolution, 1610 and the colonisation 00:19:58.900 --> 00:20:06.000 of the Americas and the mid 20th century which we touched on already a little bit. And NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:13.300 so we might ask of each of them not just are they a geologically accurate but what do they direct 00:20:13.300 --> 00:20:20.700 attention to, what is brought into view by each of them what what is implied by each of them what 00:20:20.700 --> 00:20:28.250 sort of actions and what sort of politics might they enable and let me briefly say 00:20:28.250 --> 00:20:36.100 something about these two because these are not the main contenders so to speak NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:20:36.100 --> 00:20:45.300 these are the two that have been debated the least or or have been not quite as seriously considered 00:20:45.300 --> 00:20:51.900 as the other two. So first the birth of Agriculture this would many would say it's not nearly 00:20:51.900 --> 00:20:58.800 specific enough. Agriculture is also very very difficult to define NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:20:58.800 --> 00:21:09.900 is also far back in time, it's way further back in time than most would 00:21:09.900 --> 00:21:16.600 think is reasonable for the anthropocene to have started and in it might also suggest the kind 00:21:16.600 --> 00:21:23.850 of inevitability a sense that once people started to cultivate plants in their environment we were 00:21:23.850 --> 00:21:29.750 already irreversibly set upon the path towards destruction NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:21:29.750 --> 00:21:36.650 and the industrial revolution on the other hand might seem like a better candidate but I think 00:21:36.650 --> 00:21:49.000 these also seems to be too narrow in scope and the sort of a problem here it is that it might 00:21:49.000 --> 00:21:54.800 suggest technological determinism, that's the driving force to the anthropocene is the 00:21:54.800 --> 00:21:56.800 technology itself. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:21:56.800 --> 00:22:03.500 It does something that the birth of our culture doesn't do which is to bring attention to 00:22:03.500 --> 00:22:13.200 extraction and to certain humans rather than humanity as a whole so in that sense it will help avoid 00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:22.600 some of the universalizing tendency. Now these two are the ones that have been most openly debated 00:22:22.600 --> 00:22:26.699 and the geologist favour number four here the mid- NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:22:26.699 --> 00:22:34.300 20th century and one reason for this is that this starting point as I mentioned earlier for this one 00:22:34.300 --> 00:22:41.449 we can clearly see measurable changes in the Earth's system indicators and we also get a clear 00:22:41.449 --> 00:22:51.000 Golden Spike this point with would definitely be visible on the stratigraphic record. Davis and Todd 00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:56.650 And many others meanwhile favour the 1610 starting point which is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:22:56.650 --> 00:23:02.450 is the early period of colonization in the Americas NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:23:02.450 --> 00:23:12.550 and so with that one with 1610 the anthropocene and colonialism are inseparably tied together, this 00:23:12.550 --> 00:23:19.250 starting point very clearly does not apportion responsibility equally to All Humans NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:23:19.250 --> 00:23:26.650 and we might also make the argument that early colonialism is visible on the stratigraphic record 00:23:26.650 --> 00:23:31.900 and this is kind of shocking or at least it was shocking for me and when I learned about 00:23:31.900 --> 00:23:40.900 it first. By some measures the indigenous population in South and Central America fell by 90% 00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:48.300 in the first 100 Years of colonization, 56 million people died many of them from diseases that 00:23:48.300 --> 00:23:50.500 Europeans brought over NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:23:51.200 --> 00:24:00.800 so in a sense what we might say is a genocide led to changes in land use because people weren't 00:24:00.800 --> 00:24:07.800 alive to use the land anymore which led to more regrowth which then led to a dip in the CO2 content 00:24:07.800 --> 00:24:16.100 in the atmosphere and this deep in CO2 which is most noticeable around 1610, can be measured today by 00:24:16.100 --> 00:24:20.800 scientists by looking at the Antarctic ice cores. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:24:21.500 --> 00:24:29.100 In other words so many people were killed and then so much vegetation that previously would have 00:24:29.100 --> 00:24:37.700 been used or harvested was able to grow that it changed the composition of the atmosphere so many of 00:24:37.700 --> 00:24:43.600 the indigenous people were killed in the Americas in the first hundred years of colonisation that it 00:24:43.600 --> 00:24:48.400 had an impact on the earth's climate, that's shocking. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:24:48.400 --> 00:24:54.800 This is sort of the argument then all the horrors of 20th century the 00:24:54.800 --> 00:25:04.100 environmental crisis of today this is not disaster it just seems like it from a certain 00:25:04.100 --> 00:25:11.400 European perspective Instead this is the aftershock this is the reverberation of colonial violence 00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:17.400 us here in Europe we think the disastrous is happening right now right, but this is just a time when 00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:18.699 it's coming around to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:25:18.699 --> 00:25:27.000 Effecting us or that's the that the argument. So to name the current period the anthropocene then is a 00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:32.600 political act is something that opens up for action it directs attention to certain things rather 00:25:32.600 --> 00:25:39.700 than others, but deciding when it began is also a political act. The different starting dates give 00:25:39.700 --> 00:25:43.950 basis for different kinds of thinking and acting in the world NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:25:43.950 --> 00:25:53.200 they each point to some people processes, governments and ideologists more responsible 00:25:53.200 --> 00:25:58.900 than others there are differences in complicity according to which starting point you choose. 00:25:58.900 --> 00:26:07.500 Different starting points also invite different people into the debate and the third point that 00:26:07.500 --> 00:26:14.050 Davis and Todd points out and this is really important NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:26:14.050 --> 00:26:21.500 our question is which start date is best suited to help us undermine the conditions that drive the 00:26:21.500 --> 00:26:23.400 anthropocene. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:26:23.600 --> 00:26:32.400 What are those conditions? well what they say is that these conditions like in universalising 00:26:32.400 --> 00:26:41.100 the logic, the anthropocene is an era and the phenomenon that the anthropocene points to so the world 00:26:41.100 --> 00:26:47.900 that we live today is is shaped by universalizing logics. These are patterns of thought and 00:26:47.900 --> 00:26:54.350 assumptions that underlie actions and patterns of thought that render place and locality NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:26:54.350 --> 00:27:05.800 irrelevant that universalise across different places and they are logic that seek to overcome local 00:27:05.800 --> 00:27:13.200 specificity that create these kind of global and cosmopolitan ecologists that stretch across the 00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:24.350 globe and have no concern for what's local and so these are patterns NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:27:24.350 --> 00:27:31.200 of thoughts that erase local specificity and contribute to severing relations between people 00:27:31.200 --> 00:27:38.100 and place and ultimately we need a concept that helps undermine the processes that cut people off from 00:27:38.100 --> 00:27:44.800 the world and a concept that helps us make the alternatives more visible, and the 1610 starting 00:27:44.800 --> 00:27:51.100 point according to Davis and Todd is the best one for those purposes.