The Anthropocene, Ethics,

and the Nature of Nature

Zev Trachtenberg
Environmentalists have always valued the idea of thinking globallyand
the idea of the Anthropocene is certainly a planetary thought. That thought,
of course, is that Earth has entered a new geological epoch, characterized most determinately by human activity. To speak precisely, geologists
have advanced the hypothesis that at this moment (geologically speaking) human activity is making a detectable contribution to the materials
presently forming the rock that will be an entry in Earths permanent
record.1 On this hypothesis, observers in the distant future will be able
to observe a geological stratum marking a boundary between two broadly
distinct conditions of the Earth system: the Holocene coming before, and
the Anthropocene coming after.2 But what originated within geology has
come to assume a less specific meaning and a wider significance. I wish to
explore one particular sort of significance: the implications of the Anthropocene for ethical thinking about human activity in the environment.
From an ethical perspective, the Anthropocene can provoke a sense of
moral disquiet. This disquiet stems from a misleading belief about human
activity in nature: namely, that human activity tends to disrupt natural
systems that would otherwise tend toward equilibria, causing harm to
people, other creatures, or the natural systems themselves.3 The state of
1. Jan Zalasiewicz et al., Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 103655.
2. Jan Zalasiewicz et al., The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time?
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 83541.
3. For an overview and critique of the balance of nature idea, see Daniel Botkin,
Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Oxford
UP, 1990). On the implications of the rejection of this idea to the law, see Mark Sagoff,
Telos 172 (Fall 2015): 3858
doi:10.3817/0915172038
www.telospress.com

38

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 39

the system prior to human intervention is often held to have a normative

status: it would be morally right to allow natural systems to continue on
from that state, undergoing such natural changes as they might. Because
human beings transformations of the physical environment interfere with
the dynamics of natural systems, it is thought they involve environmental
wrongs. The Anthropocene represents the aggregation of this invidious
human interference, on a global scale.4 That Earth is no longer natural
in itself seems morally distressingand the projected effects, climate
change being simply the most familiar, make us imagine that our children
will condemn us for what we have left them.
In this paper, I want to explore this moral concern, with the aim
of suggesting that it is misdirected. Obviously, human beings will face
many vital moral choices stemming from the pervasive changes wrought
by human activity. To my mind, however, part of the significance of the
Anthropocene is the opportunity it gives us to begin clarifying the human
place in nature, indeed for revising how we understand nature itself. Thus I
consider the conception of nature, and the human place in it, which seems
to be presumed by the moral concern about the Anthropocene, specifically,
the conception that though human life is embedded in natural systems,
there is a sharp conceptual boundary between nature and humanity that
entails that they be understood as distinct. I critique this view of nature
as misleading, and observe that it is currently under substantial revision
across a number of fields. I sketch out an alternative view, according to
which the conceptual boundary between nature and human activity is
much less sharp. This alternative recognizes and accepts the pervasiveness of human influence even in places that have been imagined as purely
natural. And I will conclude by considering how such an understanding of
nature can improve our moral understanding of the Anthropocene.
v

Let us begin by quickly reviewing the standard account of moral evaluation of human action in nature. On a very general understanding, a persons
action is morally right or wrong to the extent that the action advances or
compromises an ethical value. I mean this understanding to be neutral as
Muddle or Muddle Through? Takings Jurisprudence Meets the Endangered Species Act,
William and Mary Law Review 38 (1997): 825993, esp. pp.888ff.
4. Will Steffan et al., The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369 (2011): 84267.

40 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

between formal ethical theories that identify the right with the attainment
of good consequences (e.g., utilitarianism) and theories that stress adherence to moral principles (e.g., deontological ethics); I take both alternatives
to be encompassed by the notion of ethical value. Thus, actions bearing on
the natural environment are evaluated in light of an understanding of the
moral value associated with nature. Specifically, if an action works against
the value, the action is morally wrong.
I take it that the moral concern about the Anthropocene emerges
from one (or perhaps both) of two standard beliefs about the kind of
value attributable to nature.5 On the one hand, nature can be taken to
have instrumental value: it can be seen as valuable for what it provides
to human beings. On this view, natures value is only indirect; what is
directly valuable is the human good, which in turn can be interpreted as,
for example, human well-being, or as the ability for people to exercise
autonomy, or to fulfill their capabilities. That is, nature has value precisely
to the extent that it can be used to help people reach any or all of these
directly valuable conditions. It is not relevant to consider the range of
ways in which nature can be instrumentally valuable; for our purposes the
case of natural services is most important. The services provided by ecological and strictly a-biotic processes are the foundation of human social
systems, hence of human good on any conception, and thus are valuable in
this instrumental way. Disruption of those vital natural systems impedes
the ability of people to attain their good, however conceived. Therefore it
is morally wrong.
The concern about the advent of the Anthropocene, of course, is that
it brings with it massive disruptions of the planet-wide systems that have
enabled human civilization to emerge and grow throughout the Holocene
epoch.6 Human-induced climate change, perhaps the most familiar feature
of the Anthropocene, illustrates the point best: effects such as sea-level
rise, changing weather patterns, and habitat change pose just this risk of
limiting the ability of human societies to provide for the human good.
Thus the threats associated with the Anthropocene can be understood as
moral wrongs from the purely instrumental perspective on nature.7
5. John ONeill,Ecology, Policy and Politics (London: Routledge, 1993), pp.8ff.
6.This claim generalizes the argument Al Gore popularized in An Inconvenient
Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (New
York: Rodale Books, 2006).
7. Ibid.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 41

On the other hand, nature can be taken to have intrinsic value: it can
be seen as valuable for its own sake. On this view, natures value is direct;
nature itself is the valuable entity, independent of any good it may provide
to people. Indeed, natures intrinsic value is independent of the human
activity of valuation: nature has its value whether or not human beings
acknowledge it. On this account value is not created by human beings
subjective appreciation of nature, either for its utility regarding human
purposes, or for its own inherent properties: human beings may or may not
recognize natures value, but that value is there as an objective moral fact.8
The belief that nature has intrinsic value is typically associated with
a concern that, morally speaking, nature is improperly subject to human
domination, which in turn is seen as the result of the belief that natures
value is strictly instrumental. If nature has intrinsic value, the argument goes, then its independent moral status determines the rightness or
wrongness of relevant human action, i.e., action that affects the natural
environment. But, licensed by the belief that nature has instrumental value,
human beings tend to treat nature instrumentally, i.e., merely as a resource
or means to be exploited for their own ends. The disruption of natural systems that this exploitation involves necessarily compromises natures own
proper valuehence it is a direct moral wrong.9 The Anthropocene can
be seen as the destructive culmination of this wrongful process. Independent of any consideration of its consequences, the wholesale alteration of
Earths systems manifests a blindness to their value just as they were. As
the result of the conversion of nature into human dominion, the Anthropocene epitomizes the attitude of human domination, and represents a moral
wrong of planetary scope.10
Despite their important differences, then, on both beliefs about the
value of naturethat it is instrumental, that it is intrinsicthe anthropogenic transformations in Earth systems that have yielded the Anthropocene
involve moral wrongs. Thus, both views of value can be enlisted to support
8. Holmes Rolston, III, Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in The Natural
World (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1989), pp.3ff.
9. Cf. Aldo Leopolds classic statement of the land ethic: a thing is right when it
tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong
when it tends otherwise (Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac [New York: Oxford UP,
1989], pp.22425).
10. Though it appeared before the idea of the Anthropocene became prominent, Bill
McKibbens argument in The End of Nature (New York: Anchor Books, 1989) seems to
express this moral outlook.

42 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

the claim that there is a moral imperative to address those changes. The
range of responses is obviously vast. But I take it that, considerations of
practicality aside, the strongest form of that imperative includes a demand
for mitigation, i.e., a demand to counteract the forces that are producing
the Anthropocene, with the goal of restoring less compromised conditions,
i.e., the state of Earth systems at an earlier stage of human intervention.
Though complete restoration to natural conditions is no doubt impossible
from a practical point of view, from a moral point of view it is an appropriate goal. Though we are certain not to reach it, at least it will help us get as
close as we can to a morally justifiable situation.11
v

Let me make two observations about the standard moral views I have just
summarized. First, both views rest on a conceptual separation of humanity
and nature.12 This claim might be contentious, because environmentalists
have long criticized the separation of humanity from nature, in a host of
different ways that that separation can be interpreted. Some conventional
(if not banal) tropes are that our lives, as individuals and as societies,
should be closer to nature, or be led in harmony with nature, or should
respect natural patterns or limits, or should recognize our dependence on
nature. At a more conceptual level, environmentalists have attacked what
they have taken to be the prevalent view, at least in the West, that humanity occupies a higher level of creation than non-human nature, and that
the distinction grounds the human entitlement to domination. Thus, the
intrinsic value position we just reviewed seems geared to undercut the
notion that humanity and nature are meaningfully distinctinsofar as the
11. For arguments in this spirit see Reed Noss, Wilderness Recovery: Thinking Big
in Restoration Ecology, and Dave Foreman, Wilderness: From Scenery to Nature, in
The Great New Wilderness Debate, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson (Athens:
Univ. of Georgia Press, 1998).
12.Discussion of the human/nature divide is widespread; three valuable contributions are William Cronon, The Trouble With Wilderness, in Uncommon Ground:
Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton &
Co., 1995), pp.6990; Tim Ingold, Building, Dwelling, Living: How Animals and People
Make Themselves at Home in the World, in The Perception of the Environment: Essays
on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp.17288; and the
exchange between Eric Katz (Preserving the Distinction between Nature and Artifact)
and Steven Vogel (Why Nature Has No Place in Environmental Philosophy) in The
Ideal of Nature: Debates About Biotechnology and the Environment, ed. Gregory Kaebnick
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2011), pp.7197.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 43

claim that nature has intrinsic value is an assertion that natures value is on
par with humanitys.
In my view, however, the intrinsic value position in fact recapitulates
a fairly strict conceptual separation between humanity and nature. For precisely because natures value is taken to be objective, i.e., not the product
of the process of valuation by humans, this understanding of valuation
categorizes nature as an object, distinct and independent of the human
subjects who engage in valuation. That distinct object has an intrinsic
characteristicits valuewhich the human subject is capable of recognizing, perhaps through some form of moral intuition. Nonetheless, this
value is a feature of nature in and of itself, not by virtue of any relationship
with the human subject. On this view, that is, the separation of humanity
and nature is a conceptual necessity.13
What about the instrumental value position? Rather than making a
conceptual argument, I will suggest that this view internalizes a metaphor
for the relation between humanity and nature that expresses the conceptual separation I have in mind.14 On this metaphor, nature is pictured as a
stage onto which humanity has entered, and whose various systems are
the infrastructure we rely on to support the way of life we value. Human
activity typically defaces this stage, through pollution, or more radical
transformations of its very fabric, at the risk of damaging the systems on
which we depend. Hence, for purely prudential reasons we must limit our
activities: our stage must keep as much of its original integrity as possible
if the human drama is to be sustained.15 This metaphor encodes the understanding of nature as the condition of human life, but at the same time
highlights its otherness: the metaphor allows us to imagine the stage as
empty, i.e., to conceive of nature without the human presencethe clearest way of thinking of humanity and nature as separate.
The second observation is simply this: the Anthropocene invites us
to fundamentally reconsider the separation of humanity and nature. This
is perhaps ironic, at least if I am correct that the Anthropocene is morally
troubling to views that seek to overcome the separation but in fact rely on
13. Cf. Vogel, Why Nature Has No Place in Environmental Philosophy.
14. On the use of metaphor, see Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000), pp.3ff.
15. Cf. the discussion of environmental services, e.g., in Robert Costanza et al.,
The Value of the Worlds Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital, Nature 387 (1997):
25360.

44 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

it. But obviously the term itself brings the two ideas together quite vividly:
it represents humanity as a force of nature. Indeed, the idea of the Anthropocene seems very much in keeping with current interest in ideas like the
end of nature, the post-natural, and hybridity.16 I will therefore propose a
conceptual context for the Anthropocene idea that might help make the
boundary between humanity and nature a bit vaguer, thus making the relation between them the focus of moral attention.
v

There is, as just noted, a way of thinking about nature that de-emphasizes
its distinctness from humanity. I will articulate it with a distinction, broadly
inspired by J.S. Mill, between two senses of the word: nature-as-process
and nature-as-place.17 The former sense calls attention to the underlying
play of forces that produce the phenomena we attend to with the latter
sense: the arrangement of physical objects caused by the operation of those
forces. For example, we speak of geological forces working to produce a
valley. As Mill observes, and as we will consider further in a moment,
human beings make use of natural forces in their own activitiesindeed,
there is no reason not to think of human activity itself as a natural force:
Art is as much Nature as anything else; and everything which is artificial
is natural.18 Nonetheless, as Mill intimates, when we think of nature in
the sense of place, we are prone to think of places produced solely by nonhuman forces. It is such forces we have in mind when we speak of going
out into nature. For example, when we walk in a valley (deploying the
sense of nature-as-place), we think of ourselves as going to a location that
was shaped by geological, not human, processes.
16. Manuel Arias-Maldonado surveys these ideas in Real Green: Sustainability after
the End of Nature (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2012). A standard reference for
the end of nature idea is McKibben, The End of Nature. On the post-natural paradigm,
see Erle Ellis and Peter Haff, Earth Science in the Anthropocene: New Epoch, New Paradigm, New Responsibilities, EOS Transactions 90 (2009): 473. The idea of hybridity is
closely associated with Bruno Latour; for an application of it that is relevant to the Anthropocene, see Love Your Monsters, in Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and
the Anthropocene, ed. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (Oakland: Breakthrough
Institute, 2011).
17. John Stuart Mill, Nature, in The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill: Ethical, Political
and Religious, ed. Marshall Cohen (New York: Modern Library, 1961). Mills view is widely
influential; see, e.g., Vogel, Why Nature Has No Place in Environmental Philosophy.
18.Mill, Nature, p. 448.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 45

In my view, when we think of nature as distinct from humanity, we

likewise typically deploy the place sense of the term: nature is conceived
as an arrangement of objects in space, the characteristics of which came
about without human activity. Indeed, the metaphor of nature as a stage
expresses this conception: human beings enact their activities in a natural
setting that preexisted them. An increasing body of scholarship suggests,
however, that much of what we think of as natural in this sense was in fact
substantially influenced by human beings.19 The field of environmental
history, for example, in large measure developed as an empirical investigation of this theme.20 I would like to consider the theme more abstractly,
by looking at human activity in the environment as an example of the
biological phenomenon of niche construction.
The term niche construction refers to the efforts that all organisms
make to enhance their chances at survival by modifying their physical
surroundings.21 Beavers construction of ponds is perhaps the most obvious example, yet such biotic activity is pervasive and can be regarded
as a characteristic of life. Ecologists have studied it under the rubric of
ecosystem engineering and have suggested that all habitats on earth
support, and are influenced by, ecosystem engineers.22 An important line
of inquiry examines niche construction as a factor in evolution. Species
are taken not simply to adapt to selection pressures presented to them
exogenously by their environment: the arrow of influence, so to speak,
is not only one way. Rather, members of a given generation manipulate
their environment to create more favorable conditions, thus modifying the
selection pressures the species faces. Instead of a unidirectional arrow, that
is, there is a feedback loop through which species recursively influence
19. See, e.g., Emma Marriss discussion of Biaowiea Primeval Forest in Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011),
pp.37ff.; William M. Denevan The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in
1492, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (1992): 36985; W.G.
Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape, new ed. (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1990); and, a fascinating example, Robert C. Walter and Dorothy J. Merritts, Natural
Streams and the Legacy of Water-Powered Mills, Science 319 (2008): 299304.
20. See, e.g., Donald Worster, Transformations of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History, The Journal of American History 76 (1990): 10871106.
21. John Odling-Smee et al., Niche Construction, The American Naturalist 147
(1996): 64148.
22. Clive Jones et al., Organisms as Ecosystem Engineers, Oikos 69 (1994): 373.

46 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

their own evolutionary pathway, precisely by influencing the physical

environment in which they evolve.23
Niche construction by human beings is obviously relevant to our discussion, and I will turn to it in a moment. But the phenomenon in the
abstract is relevant to us, at the conceptual level, in several ways. First,
niche construction stands in obvious contrast to a-biotic natural forces,
e.g., geological forces. It is not simply that the forces are exercised by living beings; more than that, they are aimed at a goal. I will simply assume
that a-biotic forces play out as they do, and that they are not in any way
structured by their outcome. Niche construction activities, however, have
been selected by evolution because they contribute to the organisms
chances to survive and reproduce. Of course, I do not assert that this is the
conscious intention of individual organisms engaged in niche construction
activities, even in the case of humans. Still, these activities are structured
by their outcome: the organism works to the goal of arranging the material
in its environment in a particular way, and that arrangement serves the
broad purpose of survival and reproduction.
Second, we can interpret niche construction in terms of the two senses
of nature discussed above. Niche construction activities are instances of
a broad natural process, and their operation leads to the arrangement of
the materials that characterize a given place. When we think of a visit to
a beaver pond as going out into nature, we think that the beavers activity
in creating an environment more conducive to their survival is entirely
natural, and recognize that it is responsible for the characteristics of the
landscape before us. Thus, the idea of niche construction contributes to
our recognition of the dynamic quality of nature-as-place: the places we
think of as natural are not the product of a single, definitive act of creation,
which stamped on them a static form, but rather are the result of ongoing
processes, biotic as well as a-biotic. That is, natural places are shaped by
inorganic forces and also by their living constituents, interacting with the
a-biotic setting and each other. Niche construction reinforces Heraclitus
image of nature as the realm of becoming, where biotic activity helps
make natural places venues of ever-present change.
Finally, however, the niche construction idea invites us to blur the
boundary between organism and environment. It gives us a way to think
of them not as separate but as essentially related. For just as it views the
23.John Odling-Smee et al., Niche Construction Theory: A Practical Guide for
Ecologists, Quarterly Review of Biology 88 (2013): 226.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 47

habitat of a species as shaped by the organisms activity, it likewise views

the activity as shaped by the habitat, in a recursive loop. The species acquired
the characteristics it has, including its members behavior of modifying
their environment, as an adaptation to the environment: individuals with
that behavior had greater reproductive success. In effect, the species helps
create an environment that selects for individuals whose modifications of
the environment suits them to the environment they modify. The idea of
niche construction thus invites us to understand the changes in a species
and its environment in terms of the dialectical interrelation between them.
We can understand them best not as sharply distinct entities but rather
as different aspects of a complex system they help constitute. In Richard
Lewontins phrase, Just as there can be no organism without an environment, so there can be no environment without an organism.24
In sum, the niche construction idea in general works against the metaphor of nature as a stage presented above. It challenges the notion that
species enter into already given niches, to which they must simply adapt.
Instead, many species help shape the stage on which they perform the
pageant of survival. But further, that activity of shaping the stage yields
changes in the shape of the species itself. In this light, the stage metaphor
becomes less useful, precisely because it encourages us to hold organism and environment apart. I will suggest a possible alternative metaphor
shortly.
How, then, does the niche construction idea apply to human beings?
Human beings are clearly the preeminent niche constructing species; three
quarters of the land on Earth has been affected by human niche construction activity.25 What is exceptional about human niche construction is
that it is carried out through cultural practices.26 Thus, the behaviors that
underlie niche construction activities are not necessarily directly encoded
in the human genome; rather, they are transmitted from one generation to
the next by culture. It is quite likely that the genetic basis for our ability
to engage in cultural practices, and in particular to participate in social
learning, is the result of niche construction. The early individuals who
24.Lewontin, The Triple Helix, p.48. Lewontin examines and develops the dialectical character of this outlook, along with Richard Levins, in The Dialectical Biologist
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985).
25. Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty, Putting People in the Map: Anthropogenic
Biomes of the World, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6, no.8 (2008): 43947.
26. Jeremy Kendal et al., Human Niche Construction in Interdisciplinary Focus,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366 (2011): 78592.

48 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

found ways to use certain traits to render their environment more habitable would have transmitted the relevant genes to their descendants. But
even more noteworthy is the transmission of the relevant memes, i.e., their
cultural capacity to construct their niche. This shift in transmission from
the genome to culture allows for a substantial acceleration in the transmission of the skills those capacities make possible. The ability of a species to
manipulate its environment in a given way is a trait acquired over an evolutionary time-scale, i.e., many, many generations. A human social group,
by contrast, can acquire and transmit an ability over a single generation,
since the ability is not the expression of particular genes but rather of the
shared knowledge embedded in the groups culture, typically conveyed
linguistically. Thus, improvements in the skills involved in niche construction can develop quite intensively, and disperse quite widely, over a short
period of time.27
Nonetheless, it seems entirely appropriate to see human niche construction as continuous with niche construction by other species. The
manifestly greater efficiency of the human version notwithstanding, in
transforming the physical environment human beings are doing what living things do. To imagine human beings as part of nature demands that
this fact of life be recognized. This does, I recognize, raise profound moral
questions. If it is no more than natural for people to modify their surroundings, is it possible to appeal to the unmodified condition of their
surroundings as the basis for a moral evaluation of their activities? What
can be the basis of moral norms regarding human activity in nature? Or,
most troubling, does the effort to naturalize human activity in the environment, by assimilating it to the activities of non-human species, lead to
a moral nihilism that denies the applicability of moral norms altogether?
These are questions that must be addressed, and I will return to them
below. Before taking on the ethical implications of the challenge to the
separation of nature and humanity, however, I will develop the challenge
a bit further. Let me first simply register the fact that the phenomenon
of human transformation of the environmentdescribed as niche construction or notis now studied across a variety of fields. In addition to
environmental historians, mentioned above, anthropologists, geographers,
landscape ecologists, and geologists, among others, have documented and
theorized the way that human activity has shaped landscapes, not just in
27. See Kendal et al. in ibid., along with companion articles in that journal issue,
which is a compendium of research articles on human niche construction.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 49

the present and recent past but throughout the history of the human species.28 Indeed, it is now understood that even landscapes that had been
thought of as paradigms of virgin wilderness have the character they
do because of human activity.29 It may well be that there are areas we can
consider as wilderness, but we must recognize that there was always less
of it than we might have thought.
The lesson I draw from these empirical studies of the human role in
the production of apparently natural places is that there is a touch of
mystification in the tendency to understand nature-as-place precisely as
a-place-produced-by-non-human-processes.30 Our belief in, perhaps our
desire for, the latter can blind us to the human processes that contributed
to the creation of certain places. By eliding the human influence, we conceive of a place as strictly natural, lending support to the belief that the
human and natural realms are separate. A valuable result of the empirical
work I have cited is that it counters this mystification, helping calm the
conceptual reflex that sharply distinguishes humanity and nature.31
As part of the effort to blunt that reflexive distinction, let me propose
some alternatives to the stage metaphor discussed above for conceiving
of nature-as-place. To identify a key feature of nature-as-place we can
use the image of a nest. This metaphor foregrounds the influence of the
niche construction activities of a places biotic constituents: a nest is a
collection of materials brought together by biotic activities for the purpose
of enhancing survival. The advantage of the nest over the stage metaphor
is that it highlights the constructed character of natural places and their
role in the lives of biota as habitat. Nature is more a nest than a stage
because it is, as a physical place, constituted in key ways by the efforts of
the creatures who inhabit it.
28. See, e.g., William Bale, The Research Program of Historical Ecology, Annual
Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 7598; Hoskins, The Making of the English Landscape;
Ellis and Ramankutty, Putting People in the Map; Walter and Merritts, Natural Streams
and the Legacy of Water-Powered Mills.
29. Denevan, The Pristine Myth; Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the
Americas Before Columbus (New York: Vintage, 2006).
30.Cronon, The Trouble With Wilderness. For comprehensive anthologies of
sources on the idea of wilderness as a place beyond human influence, see The Great Wilderness Debate, ed. J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson (Athens: Univ. of Georgia
Press, 1998), and its sequel The Wilderness Debate Rages On (Athens: Univ. of Georgia
Press, 2008).
31.A paradigm here is William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists,
and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983).

50 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

But so far the nest metaphor has two crucial limitations. On the one
hand it suggests the activity of a single organism (or species); on the other
it occludes a-biotic forces, like geological processes and the weather. But it
is crucial that we understand natural places as the product of the activities
of countless organisms, operating within a context of inorganic materials
and processes. To modify the nest metaphor as initially stated, imagine an
indefinite number of creatures all attempting to build nests from the same
materials, in the same place, contending against gravity, wind and rain, not
to mention each other. The result would be a highly complex assemblage,
the constitution of which would reflect the influence of each creature as
well as the a-biotic forces in the background. It is hard to capture this kind
of super nest in a concrete image. Let me offer instead a very abstract
characterization: we can think of a natural place as the physical product of
the interplay of forces exerted by the constituents within itthe complex
material trace of the combined activities of biotic constituents and actions
of a-biotic elements that have an effect in that location. Although this characterization does not have spatial connotations evoked by the stage and
nest metaphors, it does express the idea that nature-as-place results from
the interaction of myriad converging influences.
Thus, I will adopt as a metaphor the idea of a resultant: just as
interacting forces resolve to have a combined effect, we can think of
nature-as-place as a material result of the interactions between the biotic
and a-biotic components present. The niche construction idea, along with
the empirical studies I cite, give some content to Mills characterization
of human activity as a natural force. Thus we can think of human activity
as among the range of natural processes, combining with them to produce
the phenomena we observe. In particular, human activity is a component
of the set of processes that produce the arrangement of materials we find
in places, including, as noted, many places we might have thought of as
produced by non-human processes alone. Human activity, in sum, is very
much part of the nature-as-process that shapes many instances of natureas-place. In those instances, it seems deeply misleading to think of nature
as genuinely distinct from humanity, as if it were a preexisting stage onto
which human beings had somehow wandered. Instead, nature has the
character of a resultantthe product of a combination of forces, each of
which influences the outcome. Human activity, no less than other biotic
and a-biotic forces, is an essential component of the resulting landscape;
its role in constituting that place is as natural as theirs.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 51

Let us bring the foregoing reflections back to the idea of the Anthropocene. I observed that the Anthropocene calls on us to reconsider the
separation of humanity and nature. I then appealed to the idea of niche
construction to point toward an understanding of natural places that allows
for the internalization of the human influencetreating it not as a factor
that compromises nature but as a component of nature. The Anthropocene
is readily conceived in just this way. It is, I hold, conceptually continuous
with niche construction, in the sense that the altered condition of the planet
as a result of human activity is no less natural than is the altered chemistry of soil that results from the activity of earthworms. Human activity,
though no doubt relatively more powerful, has fully entered into the suite
of other natural processes, biotic and a-biotic, that give Earth as a place
the characteristics it now has.32 The metaphor of nature as a resultant helps
us to dispel the notion that these characteristicsthe characteristics of the
Anthropoceneare in a meaningful way unnatural. Rather, the Anthropocene idea helps us recognize what follows from thinking of human beings
as part of nature: we must allow our understanding of nature to embrace
what has traditionally been called second nature, i.e., a nature that cannot be understood apart from human influence.33
v

We are now in a position to address the ethical implications of the Anthropocene. In my view, the most pressing question relates to the idea that
nature has intrinsic value. That idea is hard to accept, i.e., it is hard to
attribute intrinsic value to nature, if the metaphor of nature as a resultant
32. See Steffan et al., The Anthropocene. For a discussion that focuses on the features of landscape, see Erle C. Ellis et al., Used Planet: A Global History, Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013): 797885.
33. Though the idea of second nature is ancient, an important source for the contemporary usage of it is Karl Marxs discussion of alienated labor in the 1844 Manuscripts, in
Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977), pp.77ff.
For an extended study of Marxs view of nature, see Alfred Schmidt, The Concept of
Nature in Marx, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: New Left Books, 1971). For a deployment of
the second nature idea in environmental thought, see Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of
Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism (New York: Black Rose Books, 1996).
For a discussion of the history of the second nature idea, see Clarence Glacken, Traces on
the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End
of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1976). For a delightful
recent exploration of the idea, see Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardeners Education
(New York: Grove Press, 2003).

52 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

is persuasive. As noted above, the idea of intrinsic value rests on a conceptual distinction between humanity and nature; the view of nature as
a resultant works against that distinction. We can track the deflation of
the idea of intrinsic value by considering the practical function of value
claims.34 Claims that an object has intrinsic value function as reasons that
human action should be constrained so as not to affect that object in ways
that would compromise the given value. For example, to say that a painting has intrinsic aesthetic value provides a reason for that object not to be
splattered with turpentine: that action would change the object so that its
aesthetic value would be lost. In the moral domain, the reasons are moral
imperatives. Thus, the attribution of intrinsic value to nature functions as a
moral demand on human beings that, for example, they not interfere with
the integrity of a natural system.35
But consider the distinction we have deployed between nature-asprocess and nature-as-place. On the one hand, from a practical standpoint,
it seems meaningless to attribute intrinsic value to nature-as-process,
because there is nothing human activity can do to affect natural processes
themselves. As Mill notes, human beings make use of natural processes;
this is the reason he denies the difference between nature and artifice. At
whatever scale or power our technology reaches, we can only take advantage of the laws of nature, not change them. Of course we are able to
rearrange the material circumstances in which natural processes operate.
But this points to the other hand: in such cases we are operating as shapers
of nature-as-place, and human beings obviously are prodigious in their
effects on nature in that sense. Indeed, the point of the Anthropocene idea,
broadly construed, is that human activity has become the defining influence on the planet.
Thus, the attribution of intrinsic value to nature is only meaningful
when we are thinking of nature-as-place. Indeed, from a practical standpoint, that attribution functions as a moral demand that human activity
not alter the characteristics of a given place, in particular a place that is
thought to have been produced by strictly non-human forces. But in many
cases human activity was a component in the array of forces that produced
the place as a resultant.36 Though such places may have value as symbols
34. My account is in keeping with John Deweys account of moral values in Reconstruction in Philosophy, enlarged ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948).
35. E.g., with the land ethic in Leopold, A Sand County Almanac.
36. See note 19 above.

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 53

of the idea that nature is in a separate sphere from humanity, it is incorrect (and perhaps dangerous) to ground their value in the purity of their
genealogy.37
More fundamentally, however, in light of our discussion of niche
construction, which reinforces the understanding of human activity as a
natural force, it seems frankly arbitrary to single out human modification of a natural place as unethical. Say that a place produced strictly by
non-human processes were altered by another non-human processe.g.,
beavers appear and flood an area of woodland. Presumably this alteration would not compromise the places intrinsic value.38 Why, other than
that they are associated with humanity, should human activities be distinguished from all other natural processes when it is claimed that the places
intrinsic value is compromised by the changes wrought by human beings?
The differences in degree of impact between human and non-human forces
notwithstanding, why claim that they are different in kind? That claim
reflects the strict conceptual separation of nature and humanity; attributions of intrinsic value do not sit well with the view that that gap should
be narrowed.
It is fair to ask, however, whether the position I am developing leaves
us without a basis for ethical restraint on human activity. Might not the idea
that human activity is simply another natural process license unrestrained
exploitation of naturean attitude nicely encapsulated in the slogan that
emerged in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign,Drill, baby, drill?39
Indeed, at a fundamental level, the approach I have taken might seem to
challenge the project of moral evaluation altogether. My appeal to niche
construction assimilates human activity to activities to which moral evaluation simply does not apply: nature is, traditionally at least, the domain of
a-morality. Indeed, because the natural in human beings can be framed as
the source of immorality, morality has been seen as a kind of battle against
nature.40 Thus, a consequence of the project of narrowing the separation
between humanity and nature might be a kind of moral skepticism. On
37.Marris, Rambunctious Garden; see Simon Schamas account of Biaowiea Forests meaning to the Nazis in Landscape and Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995).
38. Vogel, Why Nature Has No Place in Environmental Philosophy.
39. Siobhan Hughes, Steele Gives GOP Delegates New Cheer: Drill, Baby, Drill!
The Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2008.
40. E.g., natural impulses are the source of heteronomy in Kants moral theory; see
Immanuel Kant, Grounding of Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993).

54 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

this view, moral norms have no transcendent grounding but are, at best,
regularities in behavior that have proven to be adaptive. Or more, it might
lead to an embrace of moral nihilism, in which the brute fact of human
power is taken to be beyond considerations of good and evil.
In the face of such concerns, it might be argued that, even in the face of
the philosophical criticisms I have offered, the idea of intrinsic value has
some utility as a kind of platonic noble lie. That is, it might be interpreted
as useful myth: not strictly true, but worthwhile because it lends support
to ethical norms that inhibit damaging human activity. In the familiar pattern, narrowly self-interested behavior can have adverse collective effects
over a longer term. It is a classical position in political philosophy that
the presentation of ethical values as transcendent, indeed mandated and
sanctioned by divine authority, can mitigate that collective action problem.41 Thus it might be argued, ironically if not cynically, that there is
instrumental value to the idea that nature has intrinsic value. The serious
concern here is that if the considerations I have offered against the idea of
intrinsic value take hold, and that idea loses its force, the result would be
a weakening of such constraints as do exist on the imprudent exploitation
of naturenot a desirable outcome from an instrumentalist perspective.
Let me explore the possible harms that might result from the weakening of the idea that nature has intrinsic value by speculating about the
possibility of a runaway Anthropocene. Here I appeal to the idea of
a feedback process where an effect is amplified with each cycle of the
loop. There are familiar (and frightening) examples in the climate system:
e.g., warming will release more methane from previously frozen tundra,
leading to greater warming. Feedback loops can include human behavior:
e.g., warmer temperatures prompts greater use of air conditioning, hence
greater demand for electricity, hence increased carbon dioxide emissions,
hence increased warming. The possibility I have in mind has to do with
an interaction between behavior and attitudes about nature. Imagine that
as the idea of the Anthropocene gains greater currency, arguments of the
sort I have offered become more widely acceptedand that as a result
the conception of nature as distinct from humanity loses strength, and
that people come to conceive of nature as the human domain.42 Though
41. See, e.g., Machiavellis account of the early Roman king Numas use of religion
to induce his people to obey law, in Niccol Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Julia
Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella (New York: Oxford UP, 1997), ch.11.
42. I imagine here a kind of exaggeration of the attitude of domination that Lynn
White, Jr., describes in his classic essay The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 55

it is easy to imagine some degree of nostalgia for a more natural Earth

taking hold among some people, it is plausible that many human beings
might abandon any remaining ethical inhibitions that limit their activity of
transforming their environment. In this speculative scenario, the idea of
the Anthropocene would help accelerate the activities that contribute to the
Anthropoceneintensifying the human stamp on the planet. In light of the
dangers associated with climate change alone, a runaway Anthropocene
would not be a desirable outcome from any perspective.
To conclude, then, I will offer some thoughts on how to regard the
Anthropocene from an ethical point of view. The outlook I would like
to develop can be framed as an attempt to humanize the Anthropocene. To speak in the language of ethical injunction, we must inhabit the
Anthropocene with responsibility, where that responsibility involves the
acknowledgment that as human activities shape our environment, we must
act in light of values that are humane.43 In sum, we must not regard the
Anthropocene as something alien to us; we must recognize ourselves in it,
and it in ourselves.44
We can take some steps toward the outlook I envision by returning to
some of the ideas I enlisted above. That outlook is meant to be in keeping
with the broad understanding of nature not as a stage but as a resultant.
That is, it is meant to internalize not just an understanding of nature (in
the sense of physical places) as dynamic but also a conception of human
activity as a component of that dynamic process that is identical in kind
(if not in scale) withi.e., as natural asany other component. As we
observed, the term Anthropocene assimilates human activity to natural
forces, specifically geological processes. But the effort to humanize the
Anthropocene modifies this comparison, since unlike geological processes, human activities are directed toward a goal. This contrast recalls
our discussion of niche construction, which I distinguished on just this
Science 155 (1967): 12037. Whites thesis has been subjected to substantial criticism;
see, e.g., Peter Harrison, Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science, and the
Exploitation of Nature, Journal of Religion 79 (1999): 86109.
43.This point is conveyed beautifully in Bruno Latours masterful interpretation
of the Frankenstein story, Love Your Monsters, in Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene, ed. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (Oakland:
Breakthrough Institute, 2011). It is also central to Manuel Arias-Maldonados arguments
in Real Green.
44. I am simply eliding the essential question of precisely who is included in the
anthropos of the Anthropocene. The companion papers in this issue address that question
squarely.

56 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

basis. Hence, it strikes me as important to think of the Anthropocene as

the product of human niche construction, and to frame human activity in
those terms.45 I hope that this is in keeping with the science. But further,
I believe it is more promising from an ethical standpoint. For, niche construction involves an effort by a species to make its environment more
habitablei.e., to transform its surroundings so that they better afford the
requirements of its specific form of life.46 In that light, I offer a very broad
suggestion, which I can only begin to substantiate, namely, that we seek a
moral grounding for human activity by conceiving it as action in pursuit
of habitability.
I take it is as obvious that habitability is a notion replete with ethical
valueand I take it to be central to the moral outlook I envision. Let me
offer three brief reflections on it. First, I have presented a critique of intrinsic value but have not had much to say about instrumental value. Though
I am frankly less hostile toward the latter than the former, I do not mean
to gloss over well-known problems with basing concern for the environment on instrumental value.47 I regard habitability as an improvement on
instrumental value, because it is more intimate. Though it is indeed associated with the human use of nature, it is in keeping with the effort not to
think of humanity and nature as separate. The notion of instrumental value
suggests drawing resources out of one realm (nature) and depositing them
in another (the human). By contrast, the notion of habitability suggests
a more intimate embeddedness; it suggests a single realm, shaped, to be
sure, by its inhabitants.
45. Again, I acknowledge that I am not discriminating between the differential effects
of different economic actors and social groups. This kind of analysis is suggested by Gisli
Palsson et al. in Reconceptualizing the Anthropos in the Anthropocene: Integrating the
Social Sciences and Humanities in Global Environmental Change Research, Environmental Science & Policy 28 (2013): 313. See also the companion papers in this issue.
46. Cf. Ingold, Building, Dwelling, Living; for further illustration of his analysis of
human habitation, see The Appropriation of Nature (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1987).
Ingold makes use of James J. Gibsons notion of affordances: the possibilities the environment provides to an organism to carry out actionse.g., a puddle of water affords
a bird the opportunities to drink or bathe. Gibson observes, Why has man changed the
shapes and substances of his environment? To change what it affords him. He has made
more available what benefits him and less pressing what injures him (The Ecological
Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979), p.130).
47. I have in mind Mark Sagoffs critique of environmental economics; for a compilation of his arguments, see his Price, Principle, and the Environment (New York:
Cambridge UP, 2004).

THE ANTHROPOCENE, ETHICS, AND THE NATURE OF NATURE 57

Second, I do not regard the elements of habitability to be objectively

given, as indisputable facts. The variety of human culture makes it obvious
that the standards of habitability are elastic, and likely to differ even under
similar environmental conditions. No doubt there are elements that are
more and less pervasive, which answer to more and less essential organic
needs. But in particular because of the social character of human habitation, the details of implementation will be up for social decision. Hence
they are susceptible to revision, influenced by the full range of human
value considerations. Thus, third, to the extent that people value the experience of places (at least seen as) produced by non-human forces, the notion
of habitability has ample scope for the idea of room for nature. Parks
and gardens are essential contributions to the habitability of the places
people live, and it is not difficult to make the case that wilderness areas,
where human influence is minimized, are important to the habitability of a
nation, or indeed of Earth as a planet.
I will close with a further bit of speculation, to the effect that the ethical
value of habitability might function to forestall a runaway Anthropocene
due to the abandonment of the idea that nature has intrinsic value. To the
extent that people came to understand that their activities were fashioning
a place they did not in fact want to inhabit, and to the extent that they
were able to restrain those activities, e.g., through governance at some
scale, we can imagine that they might attenuate the feedback loop: greater
understanding of the Anthropocene might lead to a lessening of the intensification of the Anthropocene. I will ignore the obvious political obstacles
in order to note the role I have projected for a new array of Anthropocene
sciences. A virtue of the Anthropocene idea is that it encourages a systemic
view, from local to planet-wide scales, of human activity as a component
of what I have characterized as nature as a resultant.48 Thus, Anthropocene
science is in a position to provide human agents, at the individual and
social levels, with assessments of the impacts their activities impose on the
habitability of the nature they are helping to produce.49 Those assessments
might work as feedback, dampening down the activities in question, and
lessening the chances of a runaway Anthropocene.
48. See Matthew J. Kotchen and Oran R. Young, Meeting the Challenges of the
Anthropocene: Towards a Science of Coupled HumanBiophysical Systems, Global
Environmental Change 17 (2007): 14951.
49. Michael Ellis and Zev Trachtenberg, Which Anthropocene Is It to Be? Beyond
Geology to a Moral and Public Discourse, Earths Future 2 (2014): 12225.

58 ZEV TRACHTENBERG

The call to monitor and manage the Anthropocene in this way is,
quite clearly, opposed to the ethical demand that the Anthropocene be
reverseda goal that may be even less intelligible than possible. Rather,
the ethical demand is to approach it with the essentially human virtues of
intelligence: to strive to make it a product of deliberation rather than an
unreflective by-product of the un-moralized assertion of power. To adopt
Manuel Arias-Maldonados term, we should aim for an Anthropocene that
is a expression of human refinement, where refinement involves the realization of the potential that human beings have to conduct their affairs
with a concern for justice.50 This is the ethical vision of an Anthropocene
that has been humanized.51

50.Arias-Maldonado, Real Green.

51. This paper is based on research I conducted on a Fulbright Fellowship at the
Institute of Governance at Queens University Belfast, and which was also supported by
the Research Council of the University of Oklahoma.