MAKING THE MOST OF
THE ANTHROPOCENE: Facing the Future
by Mark Denny. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. 224 pages.
Hardcover: ISBN 9781421423005 $24.95
The idea of the Anthropocene is, I have to admit, a
disturbing one. Modern humans have
changed the planet to such an extent that future scientists will see human
influence everywhere they look, even in the remotest places: in the geologic record (due to nuclear
tests), in the fossil record (due to rampant relocation of species), in ice
cores (due to climate change), and in sediments (due to pollution by chemical,
nutrients, plastics, etc.). Given that
human fingerprints are now all over everything, how then should we live? This, asked in the collective sense, is the
driving question behind Mark Denny’s Making
the Most of the Anthropocene.
Of course, to chart a course for the future, either personal
or collective, we’d need some predictions about the challenges we will be
facing, so that we can be prepared to meet them when they arrive. But how predictable is the future,
really? Denny’s book digs into this
problem with, as he claims, “shtick,” although if I had to pick a Yiddish term
to describe his approach, I would have chosen “chutzpah.” Taking a realpolitik
approach to human nature, Denny argues that humanity will not be able to
mount an adequate defense against, for example, climate change, due to our
collective willingness to cheat when it comes to protecting the common good,
and to follow narrow paths of self-interest rather than cooperate. Certainly the past 25 years of U.S. history,
with its glaring lack of action to address climate change, not to mention millennia
of Jewish and Christian teachings on the fallenness of human nature, suggest
that he is correct. Denny lumps these
human failings under the term “collective stupidity,” while you or I might use
“original sin” to describe the same tendencies.
Is this another example of an elite member of the
intelligentsia looking down on Joe Average?
The “shtick” of this book is that Denny spins his dark tale with
disarming humor and cleverness, without a shred of anger or bitterness. In this day and age, Denny’s humane tone
makes reading his book feel good for the soul, like a day at the spa – in spite
of where he is taking you. It’s a bit
like enjoying an entertaining, byzantine bus tour of a city and realizing part
way through that you are being kidnapped.
In reality, Denny is using all of his powers of persuasion – charm,
logic, data, experience – to make his readers think differently, perhaps more
realistically, about the future.
Climate activists sometimes say that only hope will motivate
us to take action. Denial on the one
hand, or gloom-and-doom on the other, are immobilizing. But Denny is trying to offer reality, not
motivation, a little like the jaded author of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. Each book is a shock to the system and a
pleasant surprise, containing unvarnished attempts at truth-telling that contrast
starkly, in content and tone, with everything else you’ve read.
In the end, Denny argues that we need to use all the tools available
– science, technology, diplomacy, and our very limited supply of wisdom – to
avoid the worst effects of climate change.
For example, he recommends that we nurture and develop, rather than
reject, the “technological monster” of nuclear power, in spite of our
disappointments with it (three accidents so far). Don’t like nuclear power? He demonstrates the human brain’s general inability
to understand risks in a 1-page chapter entitled “You Suck at Statistics.”
It is stunts like this that make reading Making the Most of the Anthropocene so enjoyable. Many of Denny’s chapter-essays are
fascinating, opinionated, and subversive.
Love, peace, and granola, anyone (chapter 31)? While at first they seem loosely connected to
each other, eventually they form a web.
Why does it matter that “Nobody Understands Economics” (chapter
35)? Economic scenarios are a larger
uncertainty in next-century climate projections than the scientific uncertainty
in climate models, and this has been true for many years.
Denny has written at least nine previous books about science
for a general audience, and his ability to avoid jargon and hold your attention
while still getting the science right rarely wavers in this one. The only error I noted in the entire book had
to do with details of the history of the discovery of the ozone hole by members
of the British Antarctic Survey – minor stuff, in any case, that does not
substantially detract from the overall achievement. In this book, Denny has expanded his scope to
cover a lot more than science, and readers will benefit from his ambition.
--This book review published in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 70 (3) Sep 2018
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