The Theodicy of the “Good Anthropocene”

To the dismay of those who first proposed it, the Anthropocene is being reframed as an event to be celebrated rather than lamented and feared. Instead of final proof of the damage done by techno-industrial hubris, the ‘ecomodernists’ welcome the new epoch as a sign of man’s ability to transform and control nature.

Although the ecomoderns write as humanists, they construe the new epoch in a way that is structurally a theodicy, that is, a theological argument that aims to prove the ultimate benevolence of God.

The ‘good Anthropocene’ argument is founded on a belief in the ultimate benevolence of the whole, a goodness that in the end transcends and defeats the structural obstacles, sufferings and moral lapses that seem to threaten it. …

A talk to the Breakthrough Institute Dialogue, Sausalito, 22 June 2015

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