Views from nowhere,somewhere and everywhere else: The tragedy of the horizon in the early Anthropocene

Abstract

The ability to anticipate, plan for and adapt to the changes of the early Anthropocene is limited by human behaviour, political inertia, and short-termism. This ‘tragedy of the horizon’ is explored through three specific lenses on early Anthropocene futures. We begin with the dominant scientific evidence: mathematical and probabilistic modelling synthesised into increasingly rigorous and sophisticated scenarios for assessing policy options and broadening societal understanding. We then draw on the set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols through which people imagine their social whole in what Sheila Jasanoff describes as sociotechnical imaginaries. We also draw on institutional epistemologies as reflected in two global assessment initiatives: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has been described as a ‘view from nowhere’, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a ‘view from everywhere’, though analysis has concluded that both organisations merely offer ‘views from somewhere’. We then present examples of other early Anthropocene imaginaries from writers, activists, and philosophers. The arc through these suggests both common themes and broad variation in underlying assumptions and world views. We argue that, especially in a post-truth world, a much richer form of (re)visioning the future is required in a project that must span far beyond the biophysical and include the full breadth of the social sciences and humanities. Without the inclusion of multiple underlying, competing, and creative long-term perspectives, society in general, and research in particular, may not adequately illuminate the complex possible future trajectories.

Introduction: The tragedy of the horizon

The ‘tragedy of the horizon’, was a phrase coined by Mark Carney in 2021, then the Governor of the Bank of England, in a speech at Lloyd’s of London. ¹ The term highlights a defining aspect of the early Anthropocene ² where the long-term impacts of global environmental change take place well beyond the traditional perspectives of most businesses, politicians and investors. The issues arising are certainly beyond the event horizon of most individuals and communities for whom imminent issues most often dwarf long-term ambitions. Indeed accommodating long-term foresight is not a default behaviour in a world often focused on short-term returns and immediate necessities.

Nonetheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has provoked nations, institutions and individuals to reimagine their perspectives of the future in unprecedented ways. Those views, in turn, illuminate how groups conceive of and respond to change in the early Anthropocene (Frame et al., 2021; Heyd, 2021; Turhan, 2021). These responses are shaped by sets of values, institutions, laws and symbols through which groups imagine their social whole. There are many terms that can be attached to this – futures, foresight, scenarios and so on. Here the term ‘imaginary’ is used as a shorthand for the more nuanced term ‘sociotechnical imaginary as defined by Jasanoff (2020, 2021). This is particularly important in a ‘post-truth’ world, where attitudes, trust in science and knowledge sharing have become politically polarised, with some rejecting scientific evidence when it appears misaligned with their personal or political preferences (e.g. Bufacchi, 2021; Iyengar and Massey, 2018). In this essay we review some of these perspectives and examine how knowledge practices differ. Although there is no suggestion these perspectives be forced into a common approach, we argue that they could be more widely declared and accommodated.

Our aim is to stimulate discussion about the medium-term future under increasingly unsettled Anthropocene conditions through pandemics, the escalating climate and biodiversity emergency, and a fragmented geopolitical backdrop. This is done with the knowledge that future-making can be developed with both scientific and political but will, like much research, also be influenced by the exercise of authority. Imagining various futures requires subtle forms of co-production to address the pressing global issues (Jasanoff, 2020, 2021; Wenger et al., 2020a). We follow Hulme (2009) and Borie et al. (2021) in arguing that, by revealing how different groups make sense of the world, a much more reflexive approach to the governance of both institutions and the response to global change might develop. In turn, this builds on Hulme’s (2009) observation that climate change requires ‘a more creative and less pejorative discourse’ (p. 20530196211059199iv), a point echoed by others (e.g. Krauss and von Storch, 2012; Page, 2020; Pereira et al., 2020; Rigg and Mason, 2018).

To achieve this, we summarise some theoretical background, followed by a brief methodological note, and then look at how the future is imagined in examples from differing disciplinary approaches: in the predominantly biophysical research and mathematical modelling approaches in global environmental assessments; in the portrayal of the Anthropocene in contemporary arts and humanities; and in various forms of what we refer to, loosely, as belief systems, including new approaches to philosophical thought. We conclude with comments that emphasise that the contemporary context is affected physically, emotionally and intellectually by the pandemic and other emergencies. Consequently, for effective interventions to be developed and implemented, new imaginaries are increasingly important. Without an understanding of the multiple underlying and competing perspectives, researchers may not adequately illuminate how change occurs for institutions and communities. We go on to argue that these sociotechnical imaginaries must take place at local scales – both spatial and through distributed social networks involving multiple world views – and not just at national and global levels.

Theoretical considerations

Looking across the long-term futures literature, we draw on the politics of future-making as described, variously by Borie et al. 2021, Rickards et al. 2014, Jasanoff (2020, 2021), and what Wenger et al. (2020b) refer to as the politics and science of prevision. In particular, we take Jasanoff’s (2015) definition of sociotechnical imaginaries, as ‘Collectively held, institutionally stabilised, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of advances in science and technology’ (p. 4). Or to put it much less precisely: narratives that are widely, but not universally, accepted about how the world could be. The development of these sociotechnical imaginaries into social practice offers a framework for questioning the relationship of science policy to culture, and for exploring issues surrounding technological design and development. Jasanoff highlights that her definition privileges the word ‘desirable’ and emphasises that the interplay between positive and negative imaginaries (sometimes described as utopian and dystopian) is an inherent component of their vision of social progress.

‘Knowledge is never neutral’ (Borie et al., 2021: 2) however and the undertaking of science needs to be understood as a practice where securing credibility for scientific claims contains social and political processes (Shapin, 1995). Borie et al. (2021) developed the concept to provide a vocabulary for characterising the ways in which knowledge is developed and used within international expert organisations. This can then be used to provide an understanding of how organisations operate in the environmental domain including their use of futuring. In turn, this builds on Jasanoff’s (2004) statement that ‘the ways in which we know and represent the world (both nature and society) are inseparable from the ways in which we choose to live in it’ (pp. 2–3). We are also wary that, while conceptual papers are often quoted, their ‘recommendations are rarely used beyond the point of acknowledging that they exist’ (Elsawah et al., 2020: 13). This short article is therefore an attempt to synthesise current positions and, hopefully, provoke discussion.

Our methodological perspective

It is not feasible to be exhaustive in our sweep through global environmental change imaginaries. Our intent is, simply, to observe various perspectives on how global society is contemplating the medium-term future. We position ourselves based on several decades’ working on climate change issues and note that a deeper investigation would require sizeable investment in capacity and skills beyond strict disciplinary confines and with very broad engagement. Furthermore, we consider our work here to be inter-disciplinary rather than transdisciplinary as we are not directly involving external parties (Lang et al., 2012).

Inevitably our brief sweep is selective and subjective. We stress that we are not suggesting a universal set of imaginaries with appeal to multiple audiences across jurisdictions and scale accommodating global north and south, multiple indigenous perspectives and political considerations. On the contrary, it is the rich diversity that provides the insights, particularly if they resist capture, or colonisation, by any overarching set of interests. In this regard, our methodological approach is intended to illuminate issues through some specific imaginaries, not to provide a reductionist solution. In taking a broad arc across many texts, we have attempted to reduce the many, rich and technical languages, yet jargon will have, inevitably, crept in but we hope that this proves to be stimulating rather than onerous to those in the research community.

Some imaginaries of the early Anthropocene

Global environmental assessments: Views from, nowhere, everywhere and somewhere…

Global environmental assessments (GEAs) are ‘largescale, highly deliberative processes where experts are convened to distil, synthesize, interpret and organize existing scientific knowledge (on environmental issues) to inform decision-making’ (Jabbour and Flachsland, 2017: 193), and are an established artefact of the contemporary science–policy interface. They are the primary conduit for information and knowledge flow, and, as such, the basis for multiple public imaginaries, even if the pathways are circuitous. Two GEAs are considered: first, the almost four decades of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate change scenarios; and second, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) scenarios, which seek to incorporate diverse forms of knowledge across multiple scales. Both have built on previous futures exercises such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005) which assessed the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and the work of the Global Scenarios Group (Raskin, 2016). There is indeed a long history of futures works, from war-gaming scenarios through popular accounts (e.g. Johansen, 2017; Harari, 2016) to the more speculative (e.g. Kurzweil, 2005).

Unsurprisingly, the dominant approach for climate change scenarios is through biophysical research and mathematical modelling, with regular synthesis of the monumental literature. The IPCC prepares comprehensive Assessment Reports (ARs) about knowledge on climate change, its causes, potential impacts and response options for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (e.g. IPCC, 2014, 2018, 2019). This influential, almost overwhelming, body of work is a central component of the scientific evidence for the early Anthropocene and elicits a broad spectrum of responses within societies’ geopolitical and social fabric. It is the evidence on which nations are declaring climate emergencies and setting ‘net zero’ goals for 2050. While there is a much more modest social science and humanities literature (e.g. Brown et al., 2019; Galafassi et al., 2018) relating to this, integration of social science in general and the understanding of social drivers and their consequences is generally much less developed than biophysical research in global change research programmes (e.g. Mooney et al., 2013).

For the IPCC, climate imaginaries are developed using quantitative and, to a lesser extent, qualitative content from the ARs, via the parallel climate change scenarios process (hereafter, parallel process) (O’Neill et al., 2014, 2017, 2020). Combining multiple social, economic, and environmental drivers, the scenarios are increasingly used to explore potential impacts and implications, identify and assess the suitability of adaptation options, and support stakeholders in planning climate change actions (Elsawah et al., 2020). A key challenge, however, is nesting global, national and local spatial scales in ways that meaningfully link complex adaptive systems, and for these to be accessible for those seeking to implement adaptation processes (e.g. Cradock-Henry et al., 2021a, 2012b; Oteros-Rozas et al., 2015). This can be expensive and time-consuming, and often privileges expert biophysical knowledge with little or no social science component.

In reviewing the progress of the parallel process, O’Neill et al. (2020) accepted that, while widely adopted, there are challenges, and recommended several new directions for the framework’s development. They emphasised that the parallel process appears to underplay the role of human activities and the multiple ways in which knowledge about climate change is generated and used outside the borders of biophysical research. However, it is important to recognise that climate change scenarios will be relevant at more than spatial and temporal dimensions. Interest in climate change occurs in distributed non-spatial networks, such as religious and political groupings, business interests and across the arts and humanities. Indeed, in a post-COVID 19 world, such distributed networks and their successors may well take on new roles. Yet specific local scenarios can lead to confusion if applied to other jurisdictions without reference to their underlying assumptions. We suggest that this is where imaginaries less based in the biophysical GEAs have the most potential impact.

There is also criticism of the processes by which technocratic approaches gain traction (Oppenheimer et al., 2019; O’Reilly, 2018). If the IPCC and other global bodies are captured by technocracy, then the parallel process should, ideally, enable opportunities to bridge ‘the virtually incommensurate material worlds science and policy occupy’ (O’Reilly, 2018: 7). In other words, as O’Reilly (2018: 8) states, the ‘dominant, though unrealistic, idea that strong science feeds neatly into policy decision-making’ is unrealistic and research is needed that considers ‘the scientific and environmental impacts of climate change immediately alongside the power dynamics that enable and can solve this problem’. ³ So while models of future conditions may be technically robust, there is a concurrent need for institutional modelling of the social transformations required to achieve change (Oppenheimer et al., 2019; O’Reilly, 2018; Vardy et al., 2017).

In other words, organisations may not often view the system in which they operate as an ‘ecosystem’; with its own barriers and enablers. This lack of institutional reflexivity, to give it its technical term, combined with a need for greater transparency between science and politics at the global level would require the type of inclusive and generative processes apparently lacking at present in the climate change domains (Vardy et al., 2017). As Mahony and Hulme (2018: 410) highlight, ‘The objective of the IPCC to make knowledge which is “policy relevant, but policy neutral” is . . . a chimaera and needs calling out’ because knowledge and practice are never independent of culture. This point is taken further by Rigg and Mason (2018) when discussing climate science reductionism that potentially ‘narrows the evidence base, limiting visions of possible futures and the ways they might be achieved’ (p. 1030), and reinforces the claim that the climate crisis and the tragedy of the horizon requires three technological solutions (engineering, political and financial) (Carney, 2021).

In contrast to the IPCC, the IPBES (2016) scenarios deliberately sought to include a diversity of stakeholders’ voices and values as part of assessing global biodiversity and ecosystem services and identifying normative pathways to reach desired visions for sustainability (Pascual et al., 2021; Pereira et al., 2020). IPBES proposes a framework that is deliberately values-based and designed to consider multiple (albeit simple) values of nature, so-called ‘target-seeking scenarios’, which are then combined in complex ways with IPCC-related exploratory scenarios. In other words, the IPBES is not different from the IPCC just in terms of process, but also in content and overall perspective. Furthermore, these scenarios seek to include indigenous and local knowledge (Brondizio et al., 2019). The scenarios and models are used for agenda setting and policy design, and to determine multiple international sustainability objectives for 2050 (Ruckelshaus et al., 2020). This is supported by annual horizon scans of emerging issues for global conservation and biological diversity (e.g. Sutherland et al., 2018). The result, however, is, as described by Borie et al. (2021), an attempt to develop a unified conceptual framework, a ‘Rosetta stone’, that encompasses all aspects of an overarching vision for all IPBES’s goals.

In reviewing the IPCC and IPBES approaches, Borie et al. (2021) also identified weak internal reflexivity, including struggles with the interests, priorities and voices of powerful actors, noting, somewhat pithily, that ‘the IPCC has produced a view from nowhere’ [while] ‘the IPBES appears to seek a view from everywhere’ (2021: 1), before concluding that both offer, in effect, a ‘view from somewhere’ (2021: 12) as the specific knowledge practices become stabilised within international expert organisations. If this ‘somewhere’ is taken as a valid perspective, then it could potentially be addressed through ‘elaborating and challenging their respective institutional epistemologies’ (Borie et al., 2021: 12).

The arts and humanities: Views from everywhere else

While the IPCC and IPBES examples provide important and high profile sociotechnical imaginaries, it is important to examine other perspectives. Within the sub-discipline of futures studies these could be loosely gathered under the concept of Integral Futures (Inayatullah, 1998, 2010; Slaughter, 2008a, 2008b, 2011, 2020). This aims to provide ‘deeper insight into the nature of human beings and, in particular, the structure of their own unique interior worlds’ (Slaughter, 2008b: 121). It is grounded in a literature that draws on artistic and spiritual perspectives and assumes extended participation, active citizenry and the maintenance of multiple interdisciplinary perspectives. Specifically, the idea of integral futures supports the development of the reflexive processes by which society can address a world characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (Johansen, 2017). This means moving beyond tools such as scenarios and trend analysis to new processes that allow widespread engagement with diverse communities who can together articulate ‘the truly new, the novel and the extraordinary’ (Slaughter, 2008b: 130). Undertaking an Integral Futures approach implies working simultaneously across personal, institutional, national and local dimensions. In summary, Integral Futures attempts to accommodate a humanities perspective within its imaginaries.

We now look at some specific examples of anthropogenic futures in literature, namely science-fiction which Sheila Jasanoff identifies as:

. . . a repository of sociotechnical imaginaries, visions that integrate futures of growing knowledge and technological mastery with normative assessments of what such futures could and should mean for present-day societies. Utopic or dystopic, these fictions underscore the self-evident truth that technologically enabled futures are also value-laden futures. (Jasanoff, 2015: 337).

Climate change features in literary fiction through acclaimed works such as McEwan’s (2010) Solar where the lead character is a climate change scientist and Kingsolver’s (2012) Flight Behaviour with its monarch butterflies as well as Powers’ (2018) The Overstory. Collectively these and other works of genre fiction, such as Robinson’s (2020) Ministry for the Future, make up an emerging literary ‘cli-fi’ genre (Johns-Putra, 2019; Johns-Putra, 2016; Milner, 2020; Milner and Burgmann, 2018; Trexler, 2015). This is complemented by works of literary fiction examining multiple aspects of the Anthropocene, such as McCarthy’s (2006) The Road, DeLillo’s (2020) The Silence and Ishiguro’s (2021) Klara and the Sun. All of which present various dystopian imaginaries in a world where society is, to various extents, unravelling. Other interpretations on environmental degradations are, of course, present in literary non-fiction (e.g. Macfarlane’s, 2019 Underland: A Deep Time Journey); in poetry, such as the work of Jorie Graham and many others; in theatre (e.g. the performance of Waters’s, 2009 The Contingency Plan); in the visual arts (e.g. Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at the Tate Modern) and in music (e.g. Billie Eilish, Childish Gambino, Coldplay, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Orchestra for Change). While these narrative forms may glide over underlying assumptions, they are a highly visible form to stimulate discussion across multiple publics (e.g. Johns-Putra, 2016).

This intersection of climate change and literature is of increasing academic interest (Hendersson and Wamsler, 2020; Johns-Putra, 2019; Johns-Putra, 2016; Morris et al., 2019; Nikoleris et al., 2017; Trexler, 2015; Tyszczuk and Smith, 2018; Veland et al., 2018). Yet these literary and artistic works can only loosely be termed a sociotechnical imaginary as they are, when using Jasanoff’s definition, neither collectively held nor institutionally stabilised that is, they are works of art by individuals albeit with large audiences. They do, however, provide descriptions for imaginaries unconstrained by the boundary conditions of mathematical modelling. In other words, they provide a contrast to the development of global scenarios and assessment processes, and suggest that the parallel process does not have significant traction outside its formal structures. In other words, if the IPCC is seen to provide an evidential ‘view from nowhere’, then the literary world is concerned not just with climate change’s physical challenges ‘but with its emotional and psychological dilemmas’ (Johns-Putra, 2016: 276). Put differently, the arts and humanities offer a view from, almost, everywhere else.

In his critique of literary climate fiction, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016), Amitav Ghosh explores the links between climate, history and politics, and proposes that literature has not yet fully engaged with the climate emergency. ⁴ In part Ghosh relates this to the origins of climate change – a view to the receding horizon perhaps– which he attributes to colonialism and identity politics. He sees Asia (and to a lesser extent Africa) as not only the site from which climate change was enabled but also where the most important response must now come. In other words, Ghosh’s perspective continues a long-running theme that centres climate change on the global south (Agarwal and Narain, 1991). He proposes that this historical legacy has a significant part to play in any viable future which addresses climate change and the broader issues of the Anthropocene. However, he also suggests that, to date, the realist literary tradition has not found it easy to grapple with a world in which catastrophe is a regular occurrence. While claiming that ‘literary fiction and the arts . . . betray no signs of a heightened engagement with climate change’ (2016: 150), he also suggests that it is religious leaders not political ones, even those outside formal institutions, that are likely to provide progress. In other words, ‘it is hard to see how popular protest movements could gain enough momentum within such a narrow horizon of time’ (2016: 150–162). To explore this we now turn to what we term, somewhat loosely, belief systems relating to ‘the end of the world’ with their associated political and philosophical manifestations.

Belief systems: Views from above

In discussing belief systems, our scope takes a very broad interpretation of socio-political perspectives. There have been many such global movements related to global change and the climate crisis; notably Greta Thunberg and the Friday for Futures (FFF) movement (De Moor et al., 2020; Mucha et al., 2020), along with other local activities (see, e.g. Herbert, 2021; Temper et al., 2020). Extinction Rebellion (XR), for example, declare a need to ‘Tell the Truth ⁵ ’ through an alternative reading of global science, and are accompanied by other anti-establishment movements, including Ende Gelände and Gilets Jaunes though the latter was more focussed on economic than environmental justice (Roser-Renouf et al., 2014; Stuart, 2020; Westwell and Bunting, 2020). As a counter to XR, writers like Rosenow (2018) argue for far greater attentiveness to indigenous stories through careful deliberation. Macintosh (2020) reviews these and the roles of climate alarmism and climate denialism to conclude, along with Ghosh, that attitudes towards climate change could be aligned through a new form of spiritualism with that portion of the population for whom climate science is anathema.

Unravelling and the Dark Mountain Project

The Dark Mountain Project is a highly distinctive imaginary with a quite different vision. Launched in 2008 through Philip Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine’s Uncivilisation Manifesto, it critiques many aspects of contemporary society and argues against the possibility that technological solutions to climate change are possible. It notes that ‘we reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of “problems” in need of technological or political “solutions”’. (Principle 2 of the eight principles of Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto, Kingsnorth and Hine, 2009: 29). It also argues that notions of ‘progress’ should be re-evaluated and it attempts this primarily through its network of ‘Mountaineers’ – writers, artists and thinkers. Their many diverse narratives are unified in not accepting the dominant global discourses around ‘the myth of progress’ and responses to global environmental change. Their response, however, is not through direct political action but through the development of stories, of sociotechnical imaginaries, that seek to re-align people with nature in, what the movement refers to as ‘uncivilised’ times through a re-wilding (Kingsnorth and Hine, 2009). That is to say it seeks to create art that doesn’t take the centrality of humans for granted and attempts to trace the cultural roots of the global crises. It has worked to achieve this through multiple forms, most notably its bi-annual journals of prose, poetry and art, extended to include festivals, online events and, over time, various spin-offs such as Homeward Bound: The Climate Sessions. ⁶

At one level this could be criticised as nihilistic, an act of denial that doesn’t engage with planetary issues. At another level it could be seen as an almost romantic tradition of portraying nature ⁷ that includes, among many, the poet Robinson Jeffers, the writers Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard, and the photographer Ansell Adams. However, the main title of their manifesto, ‘Uncivilisation’, speaks to another dimension and a rebuttal of the dominant global trajectory towards increased wealth and comfort. The enduring tone throughout Dark Mountain’s work speaks to a creative and spiritual aspect. While its contributions are predominantly from the English-speaking global north, it folds in global south artists and writers. For such an eponymously dark perspective, it presents an often considered and affirmative tone. Wonder and beauty are frequently not illuminated in a classical sense, but are couched in a deconstructed, worldly sense tinged with loss and a quietly assertive anger. As such it generates a body of work that could be considered much closer to a sociotechnical imaginary than individual literary works, and it can be seen as having been informed by, albeit tangentially, the climatic and ecological imaginaries of the IPCC and IPBES.

Its many varied works nurture a historical sense of story-telling while simultaneously presenting new ways of examining the ecological, social and cultural aspects of the Anthropocene, or, what they describe as the ‘unravelling’. However, more in keeping with Haraway’s (2016) Chthulucene and Myers’s (2015) Planthroposcene, the centrality of humans is not assumed, a point we return to shortly. In tracing these cultural roots they seek to make sense of a time of disruption and uncertainty. Viewing the largely Eurocentric works of the Dark Mountain from contemporary bicultural Aotearoa New Zealand, this emphasis on decentralising the human role relates to shifts in declaring the personhood of natural features, as discussed in Dark Ecology below. Like others, Dark Mountain also seeks to address issues of environmental justice and, in the global north, environmentalists’ privileged proximity to power, built on long-established and influential networks. Although environmental justice is not a dominant presence in the IPCC scenarios, it is highlighted in the IPBES (Pascual et al., 2021; Pereira et al., 2020; Zafra-Calvo et al., 2020) and features in some cli-fi, such as that by Amitav Ghosh, and by researchers such as Martinez-Alier’s (2014) ‘Environmentalism of the poor’.

Further along this continuum, quite some distance beyond the Dark Mountain Project, the FFF movement and XR, are those advocating for violent protest (also a feature in other works such as Powers’ (2018) The Overstory and Robinson’s Ministry for the Future (2020)). For example, the Swedish academic Malm (2021), in his manifesto How to Blow Up a Pipeline, suggests that most political changes globally have not arisen from non-violent conflict, and he takes the intrusion of the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point towards violent disobedience. His radical political perspective doesn’t accept diversity of views or alternative understandings of the broader issue. In short, he is evangelical, committed to his cause and, apparently, unwilling to accommodate world views outside his Eurocentric world. This is very much in contrast to the multiple perspectives expressed through the Dark Mountain Project.

Looking at both the literary and the spiritual, there is a clear disconnect from the unified whole of the sociotechnical, climate GEA imaginaries. This is explored, at least in part, in the philosophical explorations of Timothy Morton and others.

Dark ecology and hyperobjects

Philosophy provides multiple perspectives on the early Anthropocene, including those by Haraway’s (2016) Chthulucene, Latour’s (2017) lectures on ‘natural religion’ for a new climatic regime and Harman’s (2018) object-oriented ontology (OOO), and as developed in Morton’s deliberations on dark ecology, hyperobjects and hyposubjects (Morton 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2021; Morton and Boyer 2021). Collectively, these, like the Dark Mountain Project reject human specialness and the privileging of human existence over the existence of non-human objects. The world, as Harman states, is not the world as manifest to humans. Critically, OOO states that reality itself is not a unified whole and that the climate predicament can only be coherently understood through an alternative framing.

In so doing, OOO builds on earlier, more pragmatic writings, such as Naess’s (2005) Deep Ecology and, more importantly, numerous indigenous perspectives. For example, the landmark political decision in 2017 recognising the legal personhood of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa New Zealand provides insights into the injustices of the country’s colonial history, future environmental challenges such as resource exploitation and how relationships with non-human nature may be recognised into the future through the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017 (Rodgers, 2017). In 2017 courts in India and Colombia recognised the legal personhood of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers, and of the Atrato River, which in turn is leading to this being considered in other jurisdictions (O’Donnell and Macpherson, 2019). Collectively, these examples suggest the dualistic view of nature and society with its emphasis on seeking optimal use and management of ‘nature’ is under increasing pressure to change. A theme also explored in depth in the diverse ‘more-than-human’ literature as summarised most elegantly by Choi (2016). From this specific examples emerge such as urban greening (Cooke et al., 2020) and multispecies justice (Celermajer et al., 2021; Tschakert et al., 2021). While too abstract for detailed discussion here they do challenge current concepts of contemporary politics from which alternative futures for navigating the complex responsibilities and politics of the Anthropocene may well emerge. In other words, given the impact of biophysical degradation will impact in the future on all species, human and non-human, perhaps these narratives also attempt to glimpse a view from everything else.

In his development of dark ecology. Morton introduces hyperobjects as a means to describe objects so massively distributed in time and space relative to humans that they transcend spatiotemporal specificity. He states that ‘Hyperobjects don’t inhabit some conceptual beyond in our heads or out there. They are real objects that affect other objects’ (Morton, 2013: 73). Hyperobjects then are products, often but not always of human making, that exist on almost unthinkable timescales, and have many varied forms such as global warming, styrofoam and radioactive plutonium (Morton, 2010, 2013). Hyperobjects not only become visible during an age of ecological crisis, but alert humans to the ecological dilemmas defining the age in which they live. He also proposes that the environment cannot be understood from any single position but as a ‘mesh’ of many objects (Morton, 2010, 2013). Morton’s writings are not easily accessible to those outside modern philosophy and have yet, to be ‘translated’ into forms that might appeal to a wider audience including those in the biophysical traditions. This is unfortunate as the proposed existence of hyperobjects may well provide important insights into culture and science including, of course, ecology. This capacity of hyperobjects to outlast contemporary cultural values, coupled with their threat to organic matter, gives them, potentially, according to Morton, an almost spiritual quality. How these hyperobjects might be considered by future societies poses numerous questions, both practical and philosophical.

By placing humans on the same level as all other objects, Morton has, however, been criticised as the antithesis of spiritual thinking (Dickerson, 2019). Perhaps hyperobject framing provides a means of addressing both the usefulness of the sociotechnical futures and imaginaries, but also its apparent weaknesses. While there is much more in the expansive universe of dark ecology and OOO that is worthy of deeper exploration, the main observation here is of an exposition of how the world ‘is’ and ‘ought’ to be – at least at the edge of philosophy. What it appears to lack are the boundary objects that can bring this into sharper relief (Braje and Lauer, 2020) and, perhaps, an indulgence in what Shapin (1995) termed ‘privileged meta-languages’. However, it is a consistent theme across multiple literatures, and this artificial boundary between the social and the physical creates difficulties between the imaginaries of the late Holocene and the early Anthropocene that may well shift if decentring from the human to the more-than-human becomes more widely accepted.

Discussion: Views from here and now

The perspectives presented are but a sliver of the vast number of imaginaries emerging, evolving and re-visioning the future. They represent sizeable portions of global society, though mostly the global north, grappling with the impact of the early Anthropocene, through their own priorities and perspectives, seeking to comprehend multiple biophysical and social narratives regarding, inter alia, climate change and environmental justice. Within these, the IPCC and IPBES scenarios have a critical role in synthesising and presenting the research formulated and funded to create information and knowledge through which institutions and individuals can, potentially, come to informed decisions. However, as Jasanoff notes, science is not neutral in this respect. It is bound up in the ‘competing ideas of how to know and govern’ and she notes that:

Science in the co-productionist idiom tells stories that are not merely descriptive but also profoundly normative. These stories blend the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ into integrated acts of world-making that seek to tell us both how things are and how we should behave. . .. Far from being a linear, progressive and friction-free account of growing climate awareness, this is a narrative of diverse epistemic traditions meeting and clashing around competing ideas of how to know and govern this looming threat to humanity’s future. It is a story of alternative moral imaginations of how our species should accommodate itself to global challenges, and of imperfect attempts to institutionalize those imaginations by embedding them in technical and political discourses that are never fully adequate to contain them. (Jasanoff, 2021: 3)

The alternative ‘moral imaginations’ to which she refers show a distinct departure from those generated through the IPCC and IPBES scenarios. Not only is there no reductionist logic between the two, but they also, equally unsurprisingly, employ quite different knowledge-building processes. This latter aspect is central to current science and technology studies (e.g. Borie et al., 2021; Horton et al., 2018; Low and Schäfer, 2019; Shackley and Wynne, 1996; Shapin, 1995).

Within these views from where ‘we’ are now lies, of course, another of the dilemmas of the universal approach of the IPCC and IPBES. There really is no ‘we’. The pronoun disguises sweeping disparities between, at the most macroscopic level, some form of global north and south. In so doing it disguises many disparities: landowning and landless, powerful and disenfranchised, colonial and indigenous, human and non-human and more. Imbalances and inequities exist, even within the smallest of local catchments, and well before we begin to accept the role of nature as having its own identity and legal personhood. As Pereira et al. (2020) note, ‘If humanity is to achieve its goal of a more sustainable and prosperous future rooted in a flourishing nature, it is critical to open a space for more plural perspectives of human–nature relationships’.

Engaging with multiple perspectives, exploring future possibilities and generating imaginaries, be they pragmatic or fantastic, biophysical or cultural is clearly central to the early Anthropocene. It is much more than documenting anthropocentric change. These various narratives appear to be the tools by which the changing dynamics of the so-called nature-society divide might be better understood. By encouraging exploration of multiple values and perspectives outside the apparent neutrality of science (Lövbrand et al., 2020), these sociotechnical imaginaries need to, quite deliberately, include multiple voices – north and south, governmental and non-governmental, human and more-than-human. Researchers and policymakers need to engage with a broader sweep of disciplines and perspectives than contained in, for example, the current GEAs. Decentring the role of human agency is more developed in the humanities than the biophysical sciences and is developing a theoretical constituency through more-than-human geography, political ecology and philosophical turns such as OOO.

New imaginaries might include greater recognition of the interdependence of policy, law, and the biophysical and social sciences, with the acknowledgement that no single comprehensive reductionist answer will be forthcoming. This might require an acceptance that new questions need to be asked by the research community, as the current responses are based on assumptions that do not fully accommodate social aspects such as environmental justice. To do so would also recognise the inherent power and privilege inscribed in the ‘normal’ way of doing things and commit to a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable future vision going beyond business as usual (Fazey et al., 2020). As Jasanoff (2020) highlights, guiding future actions is only meaningful through co-production undertaken with humility and openness to engage with other perspectives, and to listen to previously marginalised voices. In other words, imagining in the Anthropocene should provoke a rethink about what ‘is’ and what ‘ought’ (Jasanoff, 2020) to be our engagement with the world of the early Anthropocene.

None of this will lead to – nor indeed would one wish there to be – a comfortable synergy between the humanities and the biophysical sciences on issues as complex as climate change or biodiversity. However, the divide between them appears unnecessarily vast. There is a need, especially in a post-truth environment, to be much more explicit about power relations, social inequalities and political structures and the roles these assume. This should appear in emerging sociotechnical imaginaries through three shifts. First, it highlights the importance of scale, and not just the physically local but also the influential distributed social networks of specific interest groups. Secondly, it emphasises decentring of the human in ways that are currently emerging in quite isolated contexts. Finally, it is likely to require increasingly participatory approaches, requiring time and energy to avoid the pitfalls of tokenism, shallow engagement and polarised world views.

It seems implausible that the immense biophysical research effort on global change can provide a lasting testament to the human condition without paying far greater attention to how humans and non-humans are perceiving (and will perceive in the future) emotionally and intellectually the immensity of these compounding crises and the multiple interpretations of what it means. Perhaps there is a much greater leverage point for debates regarding adaptation in the early Anthropocene than through the biophysical sciences alone (Olazabal et al., 2021). This appears to lie in some form of humanistic or spiritual being, as suggested, in their various ways, by Borie et al. (2021), Ghosh (2016), Hulme (2009), Macintosh (2020), Morton (2018) and many others.

Perhaps this brief traverse of some early Anthropocene imaginaries could conclude by paying respects through a Māori (Aotearoa New Zealand’s indigenous peoples) whakataukī or proverb: ‘Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua’ (I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past). It speaks to Māori perspectives of time, where the past, the present and the future are viewed as intertwined with life weaving through as a continuous process. As Rameka (2016) notes, within this time is both past and present. She points out that, from a western perspective, the past tends to be behind and goals and aspirations relate to the future, which is ahead. From a Māori perspective, the opposite is the case. The past and the present are knowable, and so are viewed as in the forefront of human consciousness, whereas the future cannot be seen and is behind. Could then, there be greater clarity and openness (what Jasanoff refers to as ‘humility’) about what lies within the imaginaries and how they are portrayed and used?

All of the views explored – from nowhere, somewhere and everywhere else – are valid imaginaries from the early Anthropocene. All adequate, yet none appear sufficient to perform as a universal imaginary. Not, of course, that a singular vision is appropriate to the messy, clumsy world of wicked problems (Frame, 2008) and if we put mechanistic future narratives such as Kurzweil’s (2005) ‘Singularity’ to one side. The contemporary world is not a simplistic binary of biophysical scenarios versus social imaginaries that can be fixed through insertion of qualitative parameters into advanced modelling algorithms. It will require an increased shift to co-production involving multiple forms of imaginaries. These will be at a scale far removed from the global and will require participatory, values-based scenario planning processes at the local scale (e.g. Cradock-Henry et al., 2021a, 2021b, 2021c; Oteros-Rozas et al., 2015; etc.) and potentially involving distributed interest groups. In their current formulation, the scenario architectures – no matter how well intended – limit the capacity to imagine and so are unable to provide the role of fully effective sociotechnical imaginaries. In a sense, an inability to address and embrace multiple sociotechnical imaginaries and their importance at the local and distributed scale in a meaningful way may yet provide the real tragedy of the horizon.