UC Berkeley

Words are integral to thinking and communicating. Words also carry old baggage. The Anthropocene necessitates new thinking and communication at the human-nature interface. Words like progress, natural, and thresholds are pervasive in both scientific and policy discourse, but carry baggage that will likely slow understanding of the Anthropocene and appropriate adaptation. The dynamic systems thinking with emergent properties of ecology needs to replace the efficiency and growth framework of economics. Diversity and resilience are productive and less historically burdened words.