The anthropocene has been discussed primarily in terms of climate change. Here, the concept is applied to a key task of the environmental community - that of actually managing the human/environment interface. Whether the approach is utilitarian managerialist, conservationist, or preservationist, the implications of the anthropocene are quite profound here for two key reasons. First, in a climate-changing world, what we mean by “the environment” is now unstable, with human actions affecting the very makeup, functioning, and evolution of global and local ecosystems, pushing them in new, and uncertain directions. Second, the new reality of an Anthropocene has consequences for the founding principles of environmental management. The use of the past – a chosen historical moment to represent a more “natural world” to be mimicked and restored – is simply no longer an option. Climate change is pushing ecological systems out of their Holocene comfort zone, and our conceptions of a “natural” world will have to change with them. There is no longer a past to return to, but instead a rapidly and ever-shifting future; hence, the era of preservation as the basis of environmental management is over. Some suggest a bold and hubristic new path of geoengineering the planet to avoid the worst of climate change. There may, however, be productive and fecund ways that a notion of the Anthropocene – human control over the direction of global ecological systems – can be reflexively managed to provide for both ecosystem and human functioning. But this also means taking responsibility for the reality and impacts of our globally eco-engineering and terra-forming selves.
