Biopolitics and climate security in the Anthropocene

- The Anthropocene encapsulates humanity's new geological condition.
- Biopolitical risk strategies securing 'biohumanity' are no longer appropriate.
- Military risk analysis suggests novel forms of security are needed.
- Other forms of biopolitics are necessary after biohumanity.

The discussion of the Anthropocene focuses attention on the changing geological context for the future of humanity, change wrought by practices that secure particular forms of human life. These are frequently discussed in geography in terms of biopolitics. In particular liberal societies powered by carboniferous capitalism and using their practices of war secure 'biohumanity'. Climate change is one of the key dimensions of the future that biopolitical strategies of managing risk and contingency have so far failed to address effectively. The debate about the relationship climate and security emphasises that the geological circumstances of the Anthropocene require a different biopolitics, one that understands that securing the biohuman is now the danger, and as an exigesis of the E3G analysis of “Degrees of Risk” shows, one that conventional understandings of risk management cannot adequately encompass. The Anthropocene provides a political recontextualisation for possible new forms of biopolitics after the biohuman.