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Liberalism in the Anthropocene

This emerg­ing nar­ra­tive of cat­a­stro­phe is putting enor­mous pres­sure on all our polit­i­cal beliefs. Now there’s still some con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties, some US Republicans for exam­ple, who deny the basic facts, but we can be pret­ty sure I think that any pol­i­tics that denies the facts does­n’t have much of a future.

The Conversation #22 — Wes Jackson

You’re deal­ing with timescales that are beyond humans’ inter­est. I mean, it’s sor­ta like glob­al warm­ing. The heat that we have now built up, that car­bon was burned thir­ty years ago. It’s going to take a while for the cor­rec­tion process. So, if you have the ele­ments of the phos­pho­rus, the potas­si­um, the man­ganese, and so on, it can be built back pret­ty fast. But a short­hand way of putting it is that soil is as much of a non-renewable resource as oil. And, more impor­tant than oil. I mean, we’re talk­ing about stuff we’re made of. So that’s why I’ve said that the plow­share has destroyed more options for future gen­er­a­tions than the sword.