War and peace in an age ecological conflicts

While politics has always been linked to geography, the Earth itself has largely been seen as playing a backstage role, the mere window-dressing for human intention and interest. With the advent of the epoch known as the ‘An-thropocene’, the Earth is no longer in the background, but very much in the fore-ground, in constant rivalry with human intentionality. In the meantime, human ac-tion has taken on a dimension that matches that of nature itself, and consequently the definition of geo-politics has been transformed. Appeals to nature, therefore, do not seem to have the same pacifying and unifying effect that they did in earlier ecological movements. By drawing on anthropological and philosophical literature, this lecture will discuss this new geo-political framework and show how the exten-sion of politics into nature must modify our views on war and peace in the future.