No Future, No Past? How Consciousness of the Anthropocene Changes Environmentalist Narratives

Abstract

How we relate to environmental questions depends on the narratives we use to describe them: on the narrative connections that we establish, for example, between the causes and effects of what we perceive as environmental problems, and in turn on how we narrate possible solutions and alternative pathways. What we could call our ‘environmental consciousness’ is therefore very much shaped by such narratives. The narratives used to frame environmental issues are also likely to have an influence on human action – on what we do in order to deal with what we regard as environmental problems.