#34: Nature is Not Natural: Climate Change's Challenge to Democracy

Summary: <p>It’s the first episode of 2017. Happy new year! Alex interviews Duke University law professor Jedediah Purdy about the political history of nature and its uncertain future. </p> <p>Anywhere you look on the planet, you will find evidence of human behaviour: metalloids in the soil, greenhouse gases in the air, a vortex of trash in the oceans. That is why some scientists have proposed that we are now living in a new geologic epoch. It’s called the Anthropocene: the age of humans. Now that we are a literal force of nature, what world will we make? <a href="https://twitter.com/JedediahSPurdy">Jedediah Purdy</a> wrestles with that question in his book, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674368224">After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene</a> (Harvard University Press).</p> <p class="wp-caption-text">Jedediah Purdy in Grayson Highlands State Park, Virginia.</p>