ABSTRACT

The last 50 years have witnessed a set of changes in the scale of humankind’s ecological imagination toward ‘thinking globally’. Developments in earth and planetary sciences have elaborated a creation story that dethroned humans from a position of claimed supremacy to a status on a par with other systemic forces that have shaped the planet. So marked is the human imprint that it has earned its own name in the annals of geology, environmental history, and geopolitics: the anthropocene. The scientific refutation of human exceptionalism has not elicited either instant humility or greater self-awareness in the uses of expert knowledge to combat global problems such as climate change. This paper looks at sites of struggle between a persistent human imperialism, expressed through the continued commodification of nature, and more humble ways of knowing and guiding humanity’s planetary future from standpoints in ethics, politics and law.

摘要

过去 50 年见证了人类生态想象力向“全球思维”的一系列变化。地球和行星科学的发展阐述了一个创造故事，将人类从声称的至高无上的地位推翻到与塑造地球的其他系统力量相当的地位。人类的印记如此显着，以至于它在地质学、环境历史和地缘政治的编年史中赢得了自己的名字：人类世。对人类例外论的科学反驳并没有引起在使用专业知识来应对气候变化等全球问题时的即时谦卑或更高的自我意识。本文从伦理、政治和法律的角度审视了通过自然的持续商品化表达的持久的人类帝国主义与了解和指导人类行星未来的更谦虚的方式之间的斗争地点。