A Paradox of the Anthropocene
Résumé
This chapter explores how the meanings ascribed to nature may evolve in the Age of the Anthropocene. Using growing interest in solar geoengineering as a case study, it aims to show that Modern dualism, which is often blamed for bringing about our current environmental predicament and causing the emergence of the Anthropocene, could remain influential and central, because of difficulties encountered by its critics in imposing alternatives. Further climate disruption could thus prompt some governments or private organizations to double down on complex and speculative technological solutions, in the form of solar geoengineering schemes, meaning that the Modern vision of nature, which was instrumental in precipitating humanmade climate change, may be given a new lease of life as a consequence of the predicament it helped create in the first place.