The chapter uses the terminology as a “citizen of the anthropocene”, but another way to look at the same concept is to look at the various actors that are within the anthropocene. Humans are generally the most effective actor, for better or for worse. Therefore, what is an actor to do in the anthropocene. Especially when your entire existence is being threatened by your environment around you? Individually there is not much one human can do to combat a global system. This is often born out in practices like end-user recycling and driving hybrid vehicles. These can be effective tools to combat climate change, but big impacts toward mitigating climate change must be on a global-scale. So, it is often the case that the individual actor feels very little empowerment, unless we can all work together. As the chapter notes, it is a sense of dread that may be needed to make true action, but each individual actor has a different threshold for experiencing dread before doing something to improve their state. Simply, just waiting for a critical mass of actors to experience this dread may not be enough to truly make an impact, and instead the most powerful actors must be the first to feel this dread in order to make a real impact on anthropogenic climate change.
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