The renewal of the old paradigm of the limits to growth perspective, which has always been a key principle of classical environmentalism, is not by chance coincidental with the consolidation of climate change as a major environmental threat. In order to diminish our impact on the climate, we seem to be forced to scale capitalism back, thus radically re-organizing society around new principles and practices that involve less growth and consumption. Paradoxically, climate change has also brought about a new understanding of the socionatural relationship, one that the emerging concept of the Anthropocene attempts to portray. According to it, human beings and societies are inextricably linked to the natural world and systems, already humanized in a way that hinders the very distinction between the social and the natural. A question follows: How does a post-natural understanding of nature and sustainability affects the normative idea of a post-growth society? Moreover, is the former a mere revival of green utopianism or does it actually represent an alternative to a liberal politics of nature and to a post-natural view of sustainability itself? This paper will reflect upon this issues, being especially concerned about (i) the relationship between the post-growth ideal and the Anthropocene hypothesis; (ii) the contradiction between the centralized views of economy and society that are implicit in post-growth politics as opposed to the epistemological value that liberal democracies attach to political pluralism and market interaction; (iii) the way in which post-growth ideals are related to the debate about environmentalism itself, i.e. about its role as either either a reformist or a radical current of political thought. My contention is that post-growth debates and politics cannot be oblivious to the way in which the socionatural relationship is being dramatically reframed in the wake of the Anthropocene.
