Living the Good Life in the Anthropocene

Copyright © 2024 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org. LIVING THE GOOD LIFE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE by Karrigan Börk, Karen Bradshaw, Rebecca Bratspies, Cinnamon Carlarne, Bruce Carpenter, Robin Kundis Craig, Sarah Fox, Josh Galperin, Francis Hicks, Keith Hirokawa, Kevin Lynch, Ruhan S. Nagra, Michele Okoh, Jessica Owley, Amber Polk, Melissa Powers, Shannon Roesler, J.B. Ruhl, Danielle Stokes, and Anastasia Telesetsky The authors are members of the 2023 Environmental Law Collaborative. SUMMAR Y The Stockholm Resilience Centre has concluded that the number of “planetary boundaries” we are crossing has increased from three in 2009, when the Centre’s researchers f‌irst introduced the concept, to six in 2023. Crossing these boundaries means humans are changing basic attributes of planetary systems to the point of risking the future of civilization. And the distinction between “safe” and “just” planetary boundaries raises questions regarding how to conceptualize the “good life.” In this latest in a biannual series of essays, members of the Environmental Law Collaborative explore conceptions of the “good” as well as the various elements necessary to a good life in the Anthropocene, from choice to respect to requirements like freshwater to amenities like outdoor recreation. The Environmental Law Collaborative (ELC) 1 comprises a rotating group of law professors who assemble every other year to think, discuss, and write on an important and intriguing theme in environmental law. he goals of this meeting are both scholarly and practical, as ELC participants seek to use their diverse areas of scholarly expertise to study trends and important events in the Authors’ Note: The 2023 Environmental Law Collaborative thanks the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and Vanderbilt Law School for their generous support of the collaborative’s July 2023 meeting in Hood River, Oregon. 1. ELC was founded in 2011 by Michael Burger, Elizabeth Burleson, Keith Hirokawa, and Jessica Owley to collaborate on important environmental issues. ELC has since hosted more than a dozen conferences and published countless blog posts, law review articles, and books—shaping contemporary legal scholarship on vital environmental topics. See Jessica Owley & Keith Hirokawa, Rethinking Sustainability to Meet the Climate Change Challenge ix-xi (2015). law and ultimately to improve the environmental conditions of the world in which we live. Participants at the ELC’s most recent meeting in July 2023 were asked to consider what it means to live the good life in the Anthropocene. To frame the conversation, participants irst considered the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s concept of “planetary boundaries.” 2 As the Anthropocene progresses, the Centre has concluded that the number of planetary boundaries that we are crossing is steadily increasing, from three in 2009, when the Centre’s researchers irst introduced the concept, to six in 2023. 3 Planetary boundaries represent a safe operating space for humanity 4 ; crossing them, in turn, means that 2. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Planetary Boundaries , https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html (last visited Aug. 13, 2024). 3. All Planetary Boundaries Mapped Out for the First Time, Six of Nine Crossed , Stockholm Resilience Ctr. (Sept. 13, 2023), https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2023-09-13-all-planetary-boundaries-mapped-out-for-the-irst-time-six-of-nine-crossed.html. 4. Johan Rockström et al., Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity , 14 Ecology & Soc’y art. 32 (2009), https://www. ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/. 10-2024 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 54 ELR 10857 Copyright © 2024 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org. humans are changing basic attributes of planetary systems—such as biodiversity, climate change, freshwater use, and toxic loadings—to the point of risking the future of human civilization. However, for the irst time, in May 2023 in Nature , these researchers assessed not only the safe planetary boundaries but also the just ones. 5 Considerations of equity and justice, the authors concluded, require that we rethink three of the planetary boundaries: (1) nitrogen, which is critical for fertilizing crops but also creates water pollution, harmful algal blooms, and marine dead zones; (2) aerosols; and (3) climate change, which imposes disproportionate impacts on some populations. he distinction between “safe” and “just” planetary boundaries raises several questions regarding how to conceptualize the “good life” in the Anthropocene. he ELC discussions and the essays that follow played with various conceptions of the “good”—from “enjoyable” to “moral”— as well as the various elements necessary to a good life in the Anthropocene, from choice to respect to requirements like freshwater to amenities like outdoor recreation. I. A “Good Life” in the Anthropocene his section was authored by Karen Bradshaw, Professor of Law and Mary Sigler Research Fellow, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University; Senior Sustainability Scientist, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University; and Faculty Ailiate Scholar, Classical Liberal Institute, New York University School of Law. What is the good life in the Anthropocene 6 For three days in July 2023, roughly 15 environmental law professors met in Hood River, Oregon, to discuss this question. hroughout the conference, a brain trust of legal minds worked on some of the trickiest questions of our time, unpacking topics as varied as unsheltered populations in the heat 7 to solar geoengineering. his was an ordinary academic meeting, with a typed, preset agenda, structured presentations, and formal meal and break times. Although interesting, however, it was not the conversations at the formal meeting times that interested me most. Instead, what caught my attention was what was happening outside of the formal discussions. What did people do during breaks? Where did their interests tend 5. Johan Rockström et al., Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries , 619 Nature 102 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06083-8. 6. Robin Craig provides a useful deinition of the “Anthropocene” as “the era in which human interactions with ecological processes at multiple scales has become the major driver of planetary function and dysfunction.” Robin Kundis Craig, George Perkins Marsh: Anticipating the Anthropocene , in Pioneers of Environmental Law 3, 3 (Jan G. Laitos & John Copeland Nagle eds., Carolina Academic Press 2020). An essential part of this is grappling with reactions to climate change. See Cinnamon P. Carlarne, Climate Creep , 52 ELR 10374, 10374 (May 2022) (“By now, we know that climate change is ongoing and unavoidable—that climate change is not just coming, but is here and is reshaping our world before our eyes.”). 7. For a fascinating study of thermal inequity in Richmond, Virginia, see Danielle Stokes, From Redlining to Greenlining , 71 UCLA L. Rev. 628 (2024). after hours? What were the “of-point” conversations people made? It was here, in these spaces between what we were “supposed” to be doing, that law professors—unaware that they were being observed—unconsciously revealed their preferences of what the “good life” meant to them. What came forward was observations of tactile, physical connection with the natural world. When academics aren’t performing the job of being academics, they are humans—humans on a planet spinning around the sun, one species among countless others with a thirst for contact with the natural world. Here are some of the things I observed my colleagues doing: y Swimming in the Columbia River Gorge at 9 PM. hey submerged their bodies in lukewarm water, dark blue, framed by the hunter green fringe of a tree line contrasting against the warm pink of a not-quite-visible sunset. y Standing in the sun between meetings, arms outstretched. “I am like a lizard, taking in the sun,” my colleague said. Her animal body wanted sunlight as a repose from the air-conditioning. y Wandering down to wild blackberry bushes and picking a few misshapen ripe berries to share with others back in the conference room. he store-bought blackberries in a plastic carton were larger and sweeter—almost double the size of the berries held in the hands. But, although a bit more bitter, the wild ones touched something in the soul. y Sneaking of to a yarn store during a break, in pursuit of the texture of wool shorn from a sheep to pass through one’s hands during long hours of meetings. Knitting, ingers against the soft blue and dark blue yarn, looping over needles as voices spoke. y Holding a colleague’s squishy, smiley little baby— tickling toes and making eye contact to elicit a smile from the tiny person. Parents whose children were grown held the baby’s back against their chest, rocking it with an instinct once gained and never lost— body to body in a gentle bouncing motion. y Walking with dogs, bringing them to the river, and watching them bark, stretch their leashes, and pull. y Drinking wine at a tasting at a local vineyard. Allowing the sensation of elements on grapes wash over the tongue to compare different vintages and varietals. hese observations reveal people in animal bodies, interacting with space and one another in unguarded ways; this is the good life and what we all want. It is true that without shelter or physical safety, or adequate health care, 54 ELR 10858 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 10-2024 Copyright © 2024 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org. many cannot access the good life. 8 But it is also true that by reducing life to things and possessions, we forget what my colleagues’ actions revealed: the good life exists in small bits of pleasure that...