This art icle was downloaded by: [ Linnaeus Universit y] On: 03 March 2014, At : 03: 06 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ sj ht 20 Tourism and the Anthropocene a b Mart in Gren & Edward H. Huij bens a School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus Universit y, Sweden b Icelandic Tourism Research Cent re, Universit y of Akureyri, Iceland Published online: 17 Feb 2014. To cite this article: Mart in Gren & Edward H. 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HUIJBENS∗∗ ∗ Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Sweden, and Centre, University of Akureyri, Iceland ∗∗ Icelandic Tourism Research A BSTRACT The Anthropocene is a proposed term for a new phase in the history of both humanity and the Earth – a geological epoch in which their respective forces intertwine on a planetary scale. As a concept, the Anthropocene has recently gained momentum also in the humanities and the social sciences, but not yet in Tourism Studies. The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of the Anthropocene to Tourism Studies and to explore and outline scientific, political, and ethical challenges. In the context of the Anthropocene, tourism becomes a geophysical force censoriously interrelated with the capacity of the Earth to sustain the human species. K EY W ORDS : Anthropocene, tourism theory, ethics, environmental change, Iceland Introduction The Anthropocene refers to a geological epoch in which humans, en masse, constitute a “geophysical force on the planetary scale” (Morton, 2012, p. 8), for example by shifting more sediments than all rivers combined and through global climate impacts due to carbon emissions (Crutzen, 2002, 2006; Rockström & Klum, 2012). Although not officially recognized by the geological community (Zalasiewicz et al., 2011), the Anthropocene is now increasingly used in ways that signifies a new phase in the history of both humanity and the Earth, one in which their respective forces become intertwined. The concept of the Anthropocene originates from the natural sciences (Steffen, Crutzen, & McNeill, 2007; Steffen, Grinevald, Crutzen, & McNeill, 2011), but has recently gained considerable momentum also in the social sciences and the humanities (Alberts, 2011; Chakrabarty, 2008, 2012; Cohen, 2012a; Lorimer, 2012; Mathews, 2011; Pálsson et al., 2012; Robbins & Moore, 2013; Rose et al., 2012: Slaughter, 2012; Solli et al., 2011; Sussman, 2012; Urry, 2011; Yusoff, 2010). The concept has recently appeared in tourism research (Hall & Saarinen, 2011) and in articles dealing with tourism ecosystem impacts (Bradbury & Seymour, 2009; Fuentes, 2010), but has never before been formally introduced or investigated in Tourism Studies. The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of the Anthropocene and to explore and outline some of the challenges it might raise with regards to research and theory in Correspondence Address: Martin Gren, School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Sweden. E-mail: martin.gren@inu.se # 2014 Taylor & Francis 2 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens Tourism Studies. As a contribution to further critical engagements, we offer three components that we believe will need to be addressed: . the conceptualization of tourism as a geophysical force that is part of the relationship between humanity and the Earth in the Anthropocene; . the implications of the concept of the Anthropocene for the science and politics of tourism in the context of planetary boundaries and governance and; . the ethics of tourism in the Anthropocene. Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 The paper will move through these components, discussing the first two in relation to tourism on/in Iceland. The paper concludes with points on tourism and Tourism Studies in the Anthropocene. Welcome to the Anthropocene and the Earth! Humans have always had an impact on their environment. In prehistoric times and the time of the early civilizations, humanity’s impact on a global scale was limited. It is only with the industrial era that human enterprise on the Earth becomes a geophysical global force. The onset of the Anthropocene commonly dates back to 1750, but humanity’s geological and ecological impact has steadily and rapidly increased during the years after the Second World War. Therefore, scholars speak of the “Great Acceleration”, represented by the exponential growth of nearly all facets of human activity, including international tourism which has been recognized as one marker of the Anthropocene transition (Crutzen & Steffen, 2003). The Anthropocene is presented as an uncharted territory full of uncertainties and risks for humanity. Those associated with climate change and global warming are not the only ones but often seen as particularly salient. For example, a recent report commissioned by the World Bank, with the telling subtitle Why a 48C Warmer World Must be Avoided, points out that pulling the breaks and reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will most likely not save humanity from entering a danger zone in terms of global warming (The World Bank, 2012). While the calls for action become more and more urgent, CO2 emissions continue to track the high end of emission scenarios, making it highly unlikely that global warming will stay below 28C. A shift to a 28C pathway, if at all possible, is said to require immediate substantial and sustained global mitigation, with an additional probable reliance on considerable net negative emissions in the long term. In Anthropocene literature claims are often made that a rapid development of emission reduction technologies in the “next 10 –15 years” is not only necessary, but also sorely needed in order to “reduce global emissions by 80 per cent or more by 2050” (Hamilton, 2010, p. 168). A frequently used estimate of the “climate sensitivity parameter” (Hansen et al., 2008) is that a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of about 450 ppm corresponds to about 28C above the pre-industrial level. As far as atmospheric CO2 goes, there are climate scientists who like Hansen consider 350 ppm to be an upper safe limit for humanity, on the basis that these concentration levels correlate with the global temperature. However, the level of atmospheric CO2 has actually remained above 350 ppm since the late 1980’s and is rising decade after decade. During the time it has taken Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Tourism and the Anthropocene 3 the present authors to write this article, the value of atmospheric CO2 has increased from 392.92 to 395.15 ppm according to one source (http://co2now.org/, retrieved 12 August 2012 and 14 September 2013). Human enterprise makes a global impact in the Anthropocene. At the same time, humanity is sustained by Earth’s capital. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 15 out of 24 ecosystem services are being degraded or used unsustainably (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). In recent attempts to define a “safe operating space for humanity” by analysing the dynamics of the Earth and to identify parameters crucial to critical global-scale processes beyond which humanity should not trespass, it was shown that three out of nine planetary boundaries have already been exceeded (Rockström et al., 2009a, 2009b; Steffen et al., 2011). Will the Earth of the Anthropocene be conducive for humanity? Will it threaten human civilization as we have come to know it, even put the future of humanity as a biological species in serious jeopardy? And how will this change come about? Historical records show that the Earth “does not engage in gradual change” since “rapid changes have been the norm, not the exception” (Clark, 2011). The state of exception, mistaken for the norm, has been the remarkable climate stability of the interglacial geological epoch of the Holocene. Based on paleo-climate evidence, this was the only state of the Earth that we know for certain has been able to support the modern human species. As humanity and the Earth move further into the territory of the Anthropocene, climate scientists are worried about such things as: the feedback loops that are difficult to anticipate but have the ability to trigger vast changes in the biosphere and spike the Earth’s temperature to far higher levels than the models now project. (Rifkin, 2011, p. 26) It is too early to know if it is already too late. After what is now often considered to be a small window of opportunity, the decades ahead in the Anthropocene will show if the Earth has passed a point of no return, a threshold beyond which a return to the more Holocene-like conditions is no longer possible. The state of emergency that comes with the Anthropocene seems to be unequivocal. Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre recently pleaded in a major Swedish newspaper: At stake is literally everything that we have, the biosphere that is the foundation for our lives. We are the first generation that knows this. We must act now. (Rockström, 2012, our translation) In the Anthropocene, “[w]e are now farmers on Earth’s troubled land, forced to come ‘down to earth’” (Latour, 2011b, p. 74). The conceptual and practical implications are daunting. In this moment, when human history and geological time have become intertwined, the Anthropos will have to “decide about the greatest object of scientific knowledge and practice, the planet Earth” (Serres, 1995, p. 30). However, as Morton disturbingly notes, “We have barely become conscious that we have been terraforming Earth all along” (Morton, 2010, p. 133). The Earth of the Anthropocene seems to be a strange encounter in a modern frame of understanding (Head & Gibson, 2012). By looking back and shrugging off the shackles Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 4 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens of Nature, the moderns should have come further towards their utopian Society, not backwards to an Earth that threatens the survival of their species. Although the modern constitution was founded on the conceptual separation of Society and Nature (Latour, 1993, 2004), the project of modernity also relied on a specific enactment of the Earth where geological time resides in the background clearly separated from human history and Society. As represented in modern geography, this enactment “teaches that all points on the earth’s surface can be described through the postulate of homogeneous accessibility and availability” (Elden, 2012, p. 169). This enactment of the Earth has also underpinned modern tourism and its “tourist imaginationings” (Gren & Huijbens, 2009). Available Nature and accessible landscapes readily lend themselves as objects for various tourist experiences. Served as an oyster for tourism commodification, the possibilities of this Earth to sustain the human species, so central in the Anthropocene, have at best appeared de-territorialized as Nature, landscapes, and destinations to be taken care of through the generic concepts of conservation and sustainability. This “technological enframing of Earth as manipulable stuff” (Morton, 2012, p. 16) corresponds with a geography of high-carbon path-dependent tourism systems that are thoroughly imbricated in anthropogenic global climate change (Gössling, 2002; Urry, 2010, 2011). As part of the Great Acceleration, this fossil-fuel propelled tour de geoforce of tourism, catalysed by science and technology, is epitomized by international aviation and intimately related to climate change (Gössling, Scott, Hall, Ceron, & Dubois, 2011; Hares, Dickinson, & Wilkes, 2010). In Anthropocene understanding, modern tourism is a geophysical force which has contributed to the reshaping of the Earth for human purposes and to climate change. We do not yet know what will happen to tourism in the Anthropocene, but here is John Urry’s attempt to envision a tourism future in less than four decades from now: This scenario involves the substantial breakdown of many mobility, energy and communication connections currently straddling the world. There would be a plummeting standard of living, a relocalization of mobility patterns, an increasing emphasis upon local warlords controlling recycled forms of mobility and weaponry, and relatively weak imperial or national forms of governance. There would be increasing separation between different regions, or ‘tribes’. / . . . / Systems of repair would dissolve, with localized recycling of bikes, cars, trucks, computers and phone systems. Only the super-rich would travel far, and they would do so in the air, within armed helicopters or light aircraft, with very occasional tourist-type space trips to escape the hell on Earth in space, the new place of excess. (Urry, 2010, p. 207) If tourism no longer will be an escape for the many from the drudgery of everyday social life, but from material hell on the Earth for a very few, one will eventually arrive also at “a world in which concerns over tourism development would largely be considered inconsequential” (Scott, Hall, & Gössling, 2012, p. 370). It is with this Anthropocene inconsequentiality in mind that we now turn to the case of Iceland. Tourism and the Anthropocene 5 Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Iceland – A Tourist Destination in and of the Anthropocene The Icelandic tourism industry almost entirely relies on international arrivals. Those who come to visit Iceland arrive mostly by air. They not only leave the mundane behind when they travel to Iceland, but also ripples in the sky as visible traces of humanity’s geophysical force. Those travelling by cruise ships or ferries also emit their geophysical shares and, even more so, yet remain marginal in the statistics (Table 1). The political efforts to environmentally come to terms with international travel have been prescribed by the international community’s Kyoto protocol. Under the terms of the protocol, the Icelandic Environmental Agency (IEA) is responsible for a national inventory on carbon emissions, and the IEA maps the amount of carbon stored in reclaimed wetlands and increased forestry. Table 2 presents data from the inventory report on transport emissions for years 1990, 2000, and 2009. The data on international aviation are based on oil products sold to Keflavı́k, and the deviations between nationally and internationally operated flights from the airport are deemed to level out (Hallsdóttir, Finnbjörnsdóttir, Guðmundsson, Snorrason, & Þórsson, 2011, p. 72). When finding the share of international aviation in national totals, it has to be noted that they are presented separately in the National Inventory Report, following intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) guidelines (Hallsdóttir et al., 2011, pp. 55 and 71). Here, however, in order to estimate the share of Iceland’s total emission (last column Table 2), it is added to the total and that sum is used as a base for the percent calculations. As for the interpretation of the data, it is likely that: the economic crisis had led to fewer air flights abroad and therefore more travel within Iceland during summer vacation. This would explain why emissions from road transport have not decreased more during 2008 and 2009 despite significantly higher fuel prices, owing to the depreciation of the Icelandic króna during the year, thus can also be seen in decreased international aviation in 2008 and 2009. (Hallsdóttir et al., 2011, p. 31) An economic downturn is set to have an impact on international tourism, although the adverse is true for Iceland in this case, underlining that it remains firmly outside efforts to reduce fossil-fuel-dependent modern tourism mobility. When it comes to mitigation strategies aimed at reducing CO2 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Icelandic Table 1. Entry point Number % of total in 2012 Means of transport for those visiting Iceland and total number of visitors in 2012. Keflavı́k international Other airports Reykjavı́k harbour in cruise ships Seyðifjörður harbour with Smyril line Total 672.900 85 13.072 1.5 91.954 12 12.780 1.5 790.706 100 Source: Icelandic Tourist Board (2013). 6 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens Table 2. Icelandic GHG transport emission in CO2 equivalents 1990, 2000. and 2009. Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Transport sector CO2 equivalent in Gg % of transport sector % of Iceland’s total CO2 emission 222 411 337 27 38 26 6 10 7 32 28 22 4 3 2 0 0 0 561 633 893 69 59 71 15 15 18 International aviation 1990 2000 2009 Domestic aviation 1990 2000 2009 Road transport 1990 2000 2009 Source: Hallsdóttir et al. (2011). tourism is dependent on aviation, but also on one single company, Icelandair. In 2010 and 2011, 82.5% of all passengers passing through Keflavı́k airport came in on an Icelandiair flight. Iceland is well known for volcanoes and geothermal energy, but in an Anthropocene, understanding Icelandair must be included as one among its geophysical forces. That CO2 emissions are decreasing (Table 2) and are on paper paralleled by strategies outlined in Icelandair’s environmental policy which has aims to minimize: ...the environmental impact of Icelandair’s operations and adopt working practices which facilitate sustainability through utilising as possible the resources available to the company. (Icelandair, 2012, our translation) The company relates its ambitions to the goals and targets set by International Air Transport Association (IATA), stating that they aim for carbon neutral growth by 2020 and that they support the future vision of IATA that carbon emission from air transport should cease by 2050. Icelandair’s environmental policy includes the following: . The introduction of winglets on wing tips to lessen drag and reduce fuel consumption by 4%. . Introducing navigation technology (P-RNAV (Precision Area Navigation) and ADSB (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast)) allowing for less distance between airplanes en-route, thus opening up more short distance flight routes. . Rules for take-off, landing, and taxi involving even descend and selected altitudes and flight routes to lessen fuel consumption. Taxi to use only one engine. Tourism and the Anthropocene 7 Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 . Lessening material used on board in, e.g. catering services to reduce weight. . Carbon-offsetting scheme, offering passengers the chance to off-set their trip with trees planted in Iceland. . Ground services using biofuels or electricity. . Support the European carbon trading scheme, stating “a firm belief that by partaking in this other airlines will follow suit and this will benefit the environment”. Many of the strategies refer to fuel efficiency which is closely associated with oil prices rather than environmental concerns. Although the aim for carbon neutral growth by 2020 is conspicuous in Icelandair’s environmental policy, it appears only as part of IATA’s vision for the future. The company’s environmental policy offers nothing to be measured up against at the global scale of sustainability (see here also Greaker, Stoknes, Alfsen, & Ericson, 2013). Meanwhile, the number of passengers continues to increase (Figure 1). Icelandair’s route model epitomizes the universal accessibility and availability of destinations in our “one world”. A way to move “beyond a single destination focus” is to examine “tourism strategies and the roles given to the dimensions of sustainability and climate change in these strategies” (Tervo-Kankare & Saarinen, 2012, p. 228). The Icelandic Tourism Policy for 2011–2020 makes no mention of climate change or global sustainability (Icelandic Tourist Board, 2012), and sets no specific aims, or policy measures, for tourism mobility in terms of ground transportation to and from destinations and attractions. There is a blank space between environmental concerns at the level of the destination and on a planetary scale in the Icelandic public tourism policy. Figure 1. Icelandair number of passengers transported in 2009 –2012 (source: Icelandair Group, 2012). 8 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens The Icelandic caesura between global sustainability issues and tourism policy, be it at the company level or in the public realm, illustrates a central aspect of governance in the Anthropocene. As often lamented, “we seem in the grip of a profound political inertia” (Gardiner, 2012, p. 241). Longing for action is easy, but any attempt to steer an Anthropocene type of global policy even onto the geophysical force of a single tourist generating company in a small country like Iceland, and in face of their growth (Figure 1), will most likely be a daunting task. Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Politics and Science in the Anthropocene The relationship between humanity and the planet Earth is being foregrounded in the Anthropocene epoch. This political conundrum of the new “human condition” represents “unprecedented conceptual and political challenges” (Pálsson et al., 2012, p. 7) and becomes the overarching concern for politics and science (Biermann, 2012b; Ellis, 2011; Vinthagen, 2013; Young, 2012). Both are called upon in the attempts to simultaneously scientifically and politically understand and govern the intertwined complexity of the Earth-and-humanity nexus aimed at increasing the likelihood of a “safe operating space for humanity” (Rockström & Klum, 2012). That politics and science are in the same boat means that the modern boundaries between them begin to blur. As for politics: Who would have thought only twenty years ago that no political scientist could ignore the Earth climate system and all its uncertainties? Who would have thought that, in addition to constitutions, administrative law, economics, he or she should be aware of the chemistry of high atmosphere or of the precise layering of Arctic ice cores? (Latour, 2011a, p. 2) Drawing on Latour (1993, 2004), one could say that for modernity the Earth always remained a mere backdrop on which Society and Nature were erected. How could one expect politicians to have the tools that enable them to govern the scale and complexity of geophysical forces of humanity and the Earth when they have been raised as rulers of a Society consisting of social relations between people? In addition, the Earth that humanity is up against in the Anthropocene is most often presented as an unpredictable entity, even a threatening enemy that one meets in times of war (Hird, 2010; Lovelock, 2006; Sussman, 2012). In modernity, the Earth was not recognized as part of the political domain per se, and there is no corresponding humanity, or political institution or form of governance, to which the challenges of humanity’s geoforcefulness at a planetary scale can be addressed (Chakrabarty, 2012). Hence the various pleas for developing the structures, aims, and ambitions of various “earth system governance” remain questionable (Biermann, 2012a), compounded by the fact that there is “no single rational solution for climate change” (Chakrabarty, 2012, p. 13). The Anthropocene represents for humans a “wicked problem” (Rittel & Webber, 1973) par excellence. New entanglements needed and moulded in the Anthropocene represent the erosion of the modern division of labour between science as a domain of facts and politics as a domain of values. It becomes increasingly difficult to “draw the boundaries between the Tourism and the Anthropocene 9 Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 legitimately political and the legitimately scientific” (Sörlin, 2013, p. 15). Both politics and science will have to play their cards of values and facts on the same table. For example, how many degrees of global warming should “we” agree is acceptable; 28C, 3.58C, 4.58C, 5.18C, 6.58C? On the basis of what values and facts, what science and politics, should “we” make this decision? This conundrum is novel and troubling: both for politicians who can no longer turn to scientists and experts to stop political controversies once and for all and who can’t hide anymore behind the hard facts of science to disguise their arbitrary decisions, and for scientists who are suddenly forced to unveil the complex ecology that gives authority to their voices (and they have now to defend themselves against the accusation of being a special interest among others...). (Latour, 2011a, p. 3) It is no surprise that scientists may find themselves be drawn “into unfamiliar ethical – political quandaries and affective intensities” (Clark, 2011, p. xix) when they are called in as scientific witnesses presenting hard facts from science to those who “do not appreciate the gravity of the situation” (Hamilton, 2010, p. 14). The task ahead in the Anthropocene is no longer to modernize relations between Nature and Society but to ecologize those between the Earth and humanity. Most central here are scientific and political aspects of planetary boundaries and limits (global sustainability), and the governance of geophysical forces at a planetary scale. This suggests to us that the production of knowledge in, of, and for the Anthropocene will increasingly have to be dependent upon transgressing modern scientific divisions and disciplinary boundaries, for example by developing new forms of interdisciplinarity (Holm et al., 2013; Seidl et al., 2013; Tábara & Chabay, 2013). A science equipped for this task has yet to be born, but recently five specific challenges for the humanities and social sciences relating to the Anthropocene were identified (Pálsson et al., 2012, p. 7): 1. Efforts must be made to integrate the humanities and social sciences more fully into transdisciplinary environmental change research programmes and to further encourage the ongoing “environmental turn” in the humanities and the social sciences. 2. Planetary limits and boundaries ideas need to incorporate human experience and must be sensitive to context and to the nature constructed by humans, embedded in a framework that includes issues of equity and environmental effects on humans. 3. It is time to articulate the culture of emerging Anthropocene societies, drawing on natural scientists, humanities scholars, and social scientists to emphasize the new fusion of the natural and ideational, transforming the contemporary syndromes of anxiety, drift, and self-delusion into a more positive task of building a culture of sustainability. 4. We must explore how Western thought traditions, hitherto heavily dependent on the dualism of nature and society, can confront their internal limits and intellectual tipping points. Their flexibility needs to be enhanced and adapted to the human condition of the Anthropocene. 10 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens 5. To remedy the lack of understanding of how to steer society in the Anthropocene, it is essential to further develop social sciences and the humanities work on how directionality could be articulated, democratically anchored, and implemented in the search for new technologies, medical knowledge, and ideas of economic and social organization. What we would like to foreground in combining these five points is how the relationship between humanity and the Earth also raises ethical considerations that pave a way into tourism. Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Ethics in the Anthropocene Ethics has traditionally foregrounded human subjectivity, but in the Anthropocene, life and existence can no longer be reduced to “humans among themselves”. For the first time in history, humanity is confronted with the task of having to carry the Earth on its own shoulders. Adding to the ethical burden in the Anthropocene, Steffen (2008) formulates the principal option as “Sustainability or collapse?” (p. 513). In the language of Nobel laureates: We can no longer exclude the possibility that our collective actions will trigger tipping points, risking abrupt and irreversible consequences for human communities and ecological systems. (The Stockholm Memorandum, 2011, p. 781) Ethical concerns also appear to be fundamental in the planetary boundaries approach to global sustainability. In the landmark paper “Planetary boundaries”, authored by an overwhelmingly natural science team, it is explicitly recognized that: normative judgements influence the definition and the position of the planetary boundaries. The selection of planetary boundaries emerges from the definition of what constitutes unacceptable human-induced environmental change. (Rockström et al., 2009b, p. 4) Humanity’s braiding with the Earth implies that judgements about a common good in the Anthropocene would “need to include more earthlings in the swarm of actants” (Bennet, 2010, p. 111) and consider the more-than-human (Gibson-Graham & Roelvink, 2009), for example temperatures, carbon-dioxides, cars, forests, hotels, fishes, credit cards, bacteria, barbed wire, vegetables, and computers. In practice, the ethical “considerations facing humanity in the Anthropocene is choosing which elements of the non-human world / . . . / are conserved, transformed, or simply liquidated” (Barry, Mol, & Zito, 2013, p. 369). The Anthropocene ethical bottom line is that taking “responsibility for a restored wetland or a threatened species is considerably different from taking responsibility for the ecology of the whole earth” (Preston, 2012, p. 198). The overarching Anthropocene ethical query is how to “solicit a more profound attachment to the future of the earth” (Braun & Whatmore, 2010, p. 82, see also Karlsson, 2013), but an ethics of care that relates to the global earth-world is still lacking Tourism and the Anthropocene 11 (Gibson-Graham, 2011). It would also require emotional attachments on the scale of the Earth, some kind of “geo-philia”, which humans collectively have not yet developed. Taking responsibility for the Earth and humanity may also lead to another kind of ethics: Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 With runaway climate change now jeopardizing the stable, prosperous and civilized community that our laws are designed to protect, the time has come for us to ask whether our obligations to our fellow humans and the wider natural world entitle us to break laws that protect those who continue to pollute the atmosphere in a way that threatens our survival. (Hamilton, 2010, p. 226) Breaking the law on the grounds that the purpose is to protect humanity from the threats of the Anthropocene is one option. Another is geoengineering whereby “humans for the first time are faced with the prospect of entering the domain of the Gods with full intentionality” (Preston, 2012, p. 189). The geophysical force of humanity has thus far developed as an aggregated sum of unintended consequences, but by applying geoengineering humans would intentionally and deliberately change their relationship with the Earth, and in ways that possibly “turns the earth into something different, a giant artifact” (Preston, 2012, p. 191). And there “would be no place on earth – or under the sky – where anxiety-producing questions such as ‘Are we succeeding?’ could be avoided” (Preston, 2012, p. 197). There are also those that look at the technological transformation of the Earth from the bright side, and who paint a promising and hopeful future for humanity and the Earth: Hopefully in the future the ‘anthropocene’ will not only be characterised by continued human plundering of Earth’s resources and dumping of excessive amounts of waste products in the environment, but also by vastly improved technology and management, wise use of Earth’s resources, control of human and domestic animal population, and an overall careful manipulation and restoration of the natural environment. There are enormous technological opportunities. (Crutzen, 2006, p. 17) However, Crutzen’s technical approach to humanity’s future in the Anthropocene effectively means that the ethical dimension is bypassed. It also signals that ethics is entangled with politics and difficult to separate from ideology: The declaration that we live in the Anthropocene has the ideological effect of discouraging deep questioning and dismissing even discussion of revolutionary action. / . . . / The real problem – the industrial-consumer complex that is overhauling the world in an orgy of exploitation, overproduction, and waste – is treated with kid gloves, taken as given, and regarded as beyond the reaches of effective challenge. (Crist, 2007, p. 55) In a similar vein, Hamilton argues that the climate engineers who “want to decouple global warming from growth of carbon emissions”, should rather instead devote their 12 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens attention to “decoupling growth of the economy from growth of carbon emission” (Hamilton, 2010, p. 101). Perhaps, the economic quandaries of the Anthropocene will someday transform into an earthly ethics of common concern for the Earth and humanity. In the meantime: Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Not a single government in the world is suggesting a radical change in the structuring of economic life that would bring us anywhere near the 350 parts per million level [of CO2] that Hansen says is necessary to save human civilization. (Rifkin, 2011, p. 28) For tourism policy and practice in the Anthropocene, this implies that tourism needs to be measured up in specific relation to the boundaries and limits vis-à-vis the Earth and humanity at the global scale (Kosoy et al., 2012). Otherwise, tourism practice and policy will merely continue the modern enactment of the Earth as a surface on which points are transformed into accessible destinations for tourists. As the momentum of the Anthropocene continues, there is not even in a small country like Iceland, a single institution, level of political governance, or agency of tourism that is able to manage the scale and complexity of tourism as a geophysical force. It is certainly difficult enough even to operate a small-scale tourist destination or a minor tourist attraction, but imagine when the task in the Anthropocene becomes to find a way to govern the entire planet and all of its geophysical relations with humanity! The geo-ethical space of humanity and the Earth is an unknown and risky territory which neither of them has ever been in before. What is the ethical at stake for tourism scholars and researchers “if there were a dominant species that accelerated its own disappearance by consuming and altering its planet” (Cohen, 2012b, p. 32), and if an ideology of tourism happened to be one of the accelerating agencies? Perhaps an ethical Anthropocene a-tourism geo-gaze will eventually evolve that exchanges the tourist bubble for the Earth that is one with humanity. Like MacCannelĺs “second tourist gaze” (MacCannell, 2011), this one will be designed so that it ensures a subversive critical unmasking of the ideology of tourism. It will conceive of tourism less as a geographying force and more as a geophysical one that already from the inception of tourism has been glued into the Earth and contributed to the present legacy of tourism systems that has all given their geophysical shares to wicked problems such as climate change and global warming. Concluding Points The Anthropocene implies that humanity have “come up against a greater force, the Earth itself” (Hamilton, 2010, p. 30–31), and that humans have now to “view themselves as members of a forced commune that no longer permits any escape” (Elden, 2012, p. 171). Yet, the Earth of the Anthropocene that is “rushing towards us is not a foreign planet but the only one out of which we are all born and that we should have considered much earlier as our only abode” (Latour, 2013, p. 6). The overall challenge for tourism theory and research in Tourism Studies is to consider the subject Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 Tourism and the Anthropocene 13 matter in relation to the Earth as our common and only abode. No ready-made maps are available, the Anthropocene is still uncharted and contested territory. To begin with, we have not been able to find any example in Tourism Studies of a theorization of tourism as a geophysical force which is so central in the Anthropocene. In previous attempts (Gren & Huijbens, 2012a, 2012b), we tried to conceptualize tourism as a “geographying force” in terms of re/de-territorialization of the Earth, but we did not explicitly recognize tourism as a geophysical force. In addition, we also here suggest that the tourist needs to be conceptualized and studied as a geophysical weaver of threads of matter/energy between humanity and the Earth. As for Tourism Studies, responding to the scientific challenge posed by the Anthropocene implies a need to further develop the cross-border traffic also to the natural sciences, rather than confirming its place as a social science (post)discipline. Tourism is undoubtedly an inevitable part of those geophysical forces that characterize the Anthropocene, and it shares the common characteristics of the exponential growth with other phenomena of the “Great Acceleration”. Tourism must also be regarded as a fundamental part of the Anthropocene environmental problem of global sustainability. Given that there is considerable evidence that tourism is becoming less sustainable (Gössling, Hall, Lane, Weaver, & Aall, 2008), it seems to matter little whether destinations follow the heralded modern doctrine of sustainable development. A decade ago Gössling (2002, p. 299) claimed that it “seems necessary to deepen the debate on sustainability in tourism, and address the existing problems from a social, ecological and economic perspective”. A decade later, we would argue that it is now necessary to deepen the debate on sustainability in and of tourism by addressing the existing problems from the perspective of the geophysical forces of humanity and the Earth in the Anthropocene. “Sustainability is shorthand for human and planetary future” (Buckley, 2012, p. 537), and an understanding of tourism in the Anthropocene will have to move beyond traditional sustainable development frames coupled with business and economy such as the following one: A +48C world would entail great risks for tourism regionally, and potentially globally, for as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development reminds us, “business cannot succeed where societies fail”. That climate change raises uncomfortable questions about sustainable tourism is not a justification for retrenchment, but rather demands greater reflection on the future of tourism development in a carbon-constrained global economy. (Scott, 2011, p. 29) Tourism will in the Anthropocene most likely also continue to be a “meta-policy problem” (Scott et al., 2012, p. 373). This is so not only because of the diverse character of the business and the dire opportunities for destinations to become socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable at the destination level, but also because tourism is part of those geophysical forces at the planetary scale. Once up against that Earth tourists appear as late-coming earthlings that, eventually, may realize that they have not only managed to escape from the bores of ordinary everyday life. Through their travel behaviours, carbon emissions, and consumption of earthly resources, they have also become vulnerable and increasingly dependent on the fragile web of 14 M. Gren & E. H. Huijbens matter–energy transformations between themselves and the Earth, although tourists have yet to incorporate this in their modal choices (Barr, Shaw, & Coles, 2010; Dickinson, Robbins, & Lumsdon, 2010). The task ahead for Tourism Studies in the Anthropocene is as urgent as it is difficult and it should not be ignored. Downloaded by [Linnaeus University] at 03:06 03 March 2014 References Alberts, P. (2011). Responsibility towards life in the early Anthropocene. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 16(4), 5 – 17. Barr, S., Shaw, G., & Coles, T. (2010). ‘A holiday is a holiday’: Practising sustainability, home and away. Journal of Transport Geography, 18(3), 474 – 481. Barry, J., Mol, A. P. J., & Zito, A. R. (2013). Climate change ethics, rights, and policies: An introduction. 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