All of which is now a key theme in the discussions of geopolitical ecology that requires careful evaluation of both how geology has recently become so important in global politics and discussions of humanity’s future and how political geographers might usefully contribute to the discussion.Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. How the Anthropocene is interpreted, and who gets to invoke which framing of the new human age, matters greatly both for the planet and for particular parts of humanity. As with the classic Western movie, in the search for the gold neither ‘the good’ nor ‘the bad’ have the whole story ‘the ugly’ will probably turn out to be decisive in determining how things play out. These discussions are key themes in the discipline of geography, but the geopolitics of all this, which may be very ugly in coming decades, requires much further elucidation of the common Anthropocene tropes currently in circulation. While eco-pragmatists argue that present circumstances present opportunities and possibilities for a thriving future for humanity, a ‘good Anthropocene’, critics suggest that the future will be bad for at least most of humanity as we accelerate the sixth extinction event on the planet. The Anthropocene has become a key theme in contemporary speculations about the meaning of the present and the possibilities for the future. Doing so may allow IR to provide necessary insight into the contemporary and historical effects of the state system as an enabler of planetary change, and the future possibilities for global politics within the Anthropocene.

It is argued that earth-system changes wrought by human action require the discipline to demystify its own ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches that are culpable in ushering in the Anthropocene. First, to consider the challenges to environmental IR that the Anthropocene concept presents second, to probe what it means for IR to respond to the end of nature and third, what is required of IR to deal with the prospect of mass extinction. ' The focus of this paper therefore is threefold.

It also presents us with the prospect of failure in existential terms, if indeed we are living in (and causing) ' the sixth mass extinction. This silence may exist however because contemporary theories of international relations are troubled by the Anthropocene, which shifts basic assumptions about how humans live in the midst of perpetual danger, harm, and risk.

This is perplexing given the monumental stakes involved in dealing with planetary change and the discipline's overriding focus on crisis.

The concept of the Anthropocene – the geological epoch defined by human action – has so far remained largely absent from international relations (IR) analyses.

Kolbert the sixth extinction