Anthropocentric Environmental Degradation in the Era of Globalization: Catastrophe in the Making

The ecological critique of modernity put forward the anthropogenic thesis as a critique of the modernization theory of development in the 1970s and pointed out the negative impact of industrial development in the Western as well as in the developing worlds. This has given rise to several environmental and social movements throughout the world in the last five decades. The notion of sustainable development was coined to address these problems and various measures were taken at the global and local levels to deal with the problems of global warming and climate change at various fora and several debates are still on. These issues can be addressed at different levels. ‘Not all environmental problems can be described as global, nor all responses to environmental threats global’. Many threats are highly localized in both their origins and consequences with little or no stretching of social relationships or movements of pollutants through space and time. It is not possible to reduce an account of ecosystems, environments, and environmental change purely to the language of social sciences or to describe a distinct environmental action in different spheres of social life. Thus, our central concern must not be on the environment in general but on environmental degradation in particular and social action or processes that either cause environmental degradation or respond to it. However, it is also not altogether clear what is meant by environmental degradation as some of these like, radioactive emissions, are invisible and can be identified through the use of sophisticated technologies and are only conceivable in terms of complex scientific models and languages. Thus, our focus must be on anthropocentric environmental degradation, on how the interaction of natural and social worlds generates constraints, opportunities, and problems for other forms of social action- political, military, ethical, or economic.