Introduction

Abstract

With the definition of the ‘Anthropocene’, which at the same time refers to the temporal limitedness of human activities in Earth’s history, an hardly reversible influence of humans on the development of Earth is being related. This concerns the imprinting of Earth’s surface for settlements and infrastructures, the cultivation of agricultural products, the extraction of raw materials as well as the decline of animal and plant species, but also the enrichment of Earth’s atmosphere with substances that modify the climate. Although there are also successes of environmental policy in terms of the decline of gases that damage the stratospheric ozone layer, or also—at least in parts of the world—the decline of atmospheric pollution with ‘classical’ air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide or carbon monoxide, in view of these developments in combination with a often understood as ‘unjust’ distribution of economic (but also social and cultural) capital, the ‘end of history’ hoped for as a result of the overcoming of system contradictions has given way to a revival of utopian thinking.