Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene

Global warming changes all previous understanding of what human beings are in the universe Raymond J. Salmond An exciting and clear survey of the philosophy of humanity's role in the universe, leading to Hamilton reclaiming hope from the current trajectory of failure of human beings to take responsibility for saving the Earth from the rapidly approaching climate change inferno."What is this being who has changed the course of the Ea. "Power Without Wisdom" according to David Wineberg. In the Preface to Defiant Earth, Clive Hamilton asks a hard question: if science says the climate is changing cataclysmically, why are we still making plans as if it weren’t? Why do we study the century of China, the future need for a 15 hour workweek, or life under the internet of things? Why are we whistling past the

Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change and Earthmasters: The dawn of the age of climate engineering.

These truths call for a new kind of anthropocentrism, a philosophy by which we might use our power responsibly and find a way to live on a defiant Earth.. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'.The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself.What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. It's too late to turn back the geological clock, and there is no going back to premodern ways of thinking.We must face the fact that humans are at the centre of the world, even if we must give the idea that we can control the planet. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment – even to the point of geoengineering&

An essential reading for our times." - Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago"Drawing his observations from the humanities as much as the sciences, Hamilton offers a robust view of the current state of play; not a warning – we’re past that stage – but an attempt at understanding." - Geographical Magazine. The book is highly original in its synthesis of the scientific, philosophical and religious issues raised by the coming of the 'Anthropocene.' Hamilton mines each of these traditions for ways to make sense of the new and frightening epoch that is upon us." - Adrian Wilding, University of Jena, Germany "For those entertaining the idea that we should just rocket away from an overheated planet to some new world, or perhaps fill the atmosphere with sulphur to block out the sun, here's a remarkably power