What does The Odyssey tell us about climate change?

August was the world’s hottest month on record, and Europe continues to experience historic drought. During this extreme summer, Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film adaptation has brought the nearly 3,000-year-old epic The Odyssey into the zeitgeist. Some scholars argue that the ancient story could help humanity navigate our era of global warming caused by burning fuels.

Philosophers have long read The Odyssey as an allegory about how humans relate to nature. In the 1940s, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued Homer’s epic teaches that dominating nature backfires. They saw Odysseus as a metaphor for civilization: he controls all living things through reason and technology, but each time he outwits or out-brutes nature, he pays a price.

Adorno and Horkheimer weren’t writing about human-driven climate change, but philosophers today are extending their idea to it. Felix Kämper, of Goethe University Frankfurt, writes that Adorno and Horkheimer saw The Odyssey “as an allegory for the idea that humans who seek to become masters over nature fall prey to subjugation by it.” Today, that subjugation comes in the form of extreme weather caused by climate change, Kämper argues.

Few people have explored the ancient epic’s climate connection more than Professor François Prouteau, director of humanities at the Catholic University of Lille. He framed The Odyssey as a survival guide for the climate era in his book Odyssée pour une Terre habitable – or Odyssey for a Habitable Earth.

Here, Prouteau offers a guest essay, proposing lessons for our era from The Odyssey‘s age of collapse. — Introduction by Maggie Quinlan

What can The Odyssey teach us about climate change? What is an environmental reading of Homer for the Anthropocene?

What The Odyssey offers contemporary debates on climate change is not a technical solution but a narrative of human transformation. Read through an environmental lens, Homer’s epic traces the journey of a man who begins by believing he can master the world and ends by learning how to inhabit a world he cannot fully control.

The very first word of The Odyssey, andra (the accusative of anēr, “the virile man”), already announces the central problem running through the epic and sheds light on contemporary ecological crises. This “virile man” represents the ideals of power, conquest, and strategic cunning. He is the conqueror of Troy, a hero convinced that human intelligence and power are sufficient to overcome any obstacle and transcend all limits. In many ways, he anticipates the mindset of humanity in the Anthropocene.

The pride of Odysseus, the greed of his companions, and their inability to respect limits trigger a cascade of disasters. The man who sought to master the world discovers that he is in fact dependent upon forces greater than himself.

For this reason, some ecofeminist thinkers have proposed the term Androcene rather than Anthropocene. Their argument is that the ecological crisis stems not simply from humanity as a whole, but from a cultural model that valorizes domination, conquest, extraction, and competition, traits traditionally associated with a particular model of virility.

Yet the originality of The Odyssey lies in the fact that the story does not end there. Odysseus is not condemned to remain the “virile man” of the opening line. Through a series of trials, he cultivates the virtues of vulnerability, prudence, moderation, and attentiveness to others and, above all, comes to regard hospitality as the highest value of civilization. The conquering hero is transformed into a shipwrecked wanderer and, ultimately, into a man capable of recognizing both his own limitations and his place within a larger world.

The question posed by The Odyssey is ultimately whether humanity will persist in the logic of domination or embrace a wiser mode of inhabiting the Earth. Homer’s epic suggests that genuine greatness lies not in limitless power but in the capacity for transformation. Odysseus begins as the archetypal “virile man,” triumphant at Troy through the ingenuity of the Trojan Horse and convinced that intelligence grants mastery over circumstances. Yet the episode of Polyphemus exposes the dangers of such confidence. Having escaped through cunning, Odysseus succumbs to hubris by revealing his name, seeking glory rather than prudence. The disastrous consequences demonstrate that power exercised without restraint ultimately turns against its possessor.

The remainder of his voyage functions as an education in ecological and moral responsibility. The Lotus-Eaters symbolize denial, while Circe’s transformation of men into swine illustrates how unchecked desire reduces human beings to consumers of immediate gratification. The Sirens reveal that knowledge alone is insufficient; Odysseus survives only by accepting self-imposed limits. Likewise, the destruction of his companions after they consume the Cattle of the Sun teaches that not everything possesses merely instrumental value. Some realities demand respect rather than exploitation. Crucially, Odysseus evolves through humility and mentorship with Athena. The herb moly, which Hermes reveals to Odysseus as an antidote to the potion of the enchantress Circe, enables Odysseus to resist her transformative powers. His refusal of Calypso’s offer of immortality further rejects fantasies of transcendence and affirms commitment to human relationships, place, and mortality. As a castaway among the Phaeacians, stripped of glory and power, he finally recognizes his place within a larger order.

Odysseus’ environmental and naturalistic intelligence, evident in the attentive way he engages with the lands he traverses and the people he encounters, as well as, upon his return to Ithaca, with the orchard carefully tended by Laertes and with his faithful dog Argos, reflects an awareness of his belonging to the living world.
Telemachus’ parallel journey reinforces the same lesson. Through Athena’s guidance, marked by remarkable perseverance in her role as mentor, and through an intergenerational dialogue with Penelope and Odysseus, he matures into a responsible leader. By the time he returns to Ithaca, he has acquired the wisdom, resilience, and moral discernment necessary to help an Ithacan governance model that is both just and respectful of the delicate balance upon which the island’s ecological, social and civic order depends.

Do the climatic changes and societal collapses of the Bronze Age parallel circumstances today?

Read through the lens of environmental history, The Odyssey illuminates the relationship between ecological disruption and political fragility. Although Homer’s epics primarily reflect the socio-political realities of eighth-century BC Greece rather than the historical Trojan War itself (Pourstat, 1995), they emerge from a cultural memory shaped by the Late Bronze Age collapse. Archaeological and palaeoclimatic research suggests that this crisis resulted from the interaction of severe drought, food insecurity, migration, conflict, trade disruption, and institutional weakness rather than from a single cause (Cline, 2021). This systemic perspective resonates with contemporary analyses of the Anthropocene, where climate change acts as a multiplier of existing social, economic, and political vulnerabilities.

Within this context, Odysseus’ journey can be interpreted as a navigation through a fractured world in which resilience, adaptation, and prudence become essential virtues. This reading emphases migration, displacement, identity, and hospitality (xenia) as central themes (Mendelsohn, 2026). The epic repeatedly evaluates societies according to their treatment of strangers, a question that remains highly relevant in the era of climate-induced mobility. Ultimately, The Odyssey traces a moral transformation from conquest and domination toward care, responsibility, moderation, and the preservation of the oikos.

Conclusion: A lesson for the Anthropocene

Read in light of climate change, The Odyssey suggests that our greatest challenges are not merely technical. They are relational: our relationship with the Earth; our relationship with future generations; our relationship with other living beings; our relationship with migrants and the vulnerable.

The ultimate lesson of Odysseus may therefore be this: a society becomes resilient not by accumulating ever greater power, but by cultivating capacities for hospitality, solidarity, and care. In a century likely to be marked by environmental disruption, migration, and political fragmentation, this may be one of Homer’s most enduring contributions to Anthropocene thought.

In-Text References

Cline, E.H. (2021) 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Revised and Updated edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mendelsohn, D. (2026) ‘The Odyssey and its migrations: displacement, wandering, identity’, Athens and Jerusalem: Literature, History, Writing, Guest Lecture, Collège de France, 9 March.

Pourstat, J.-C. (1995) La Grèce préclassique des origines à la fin du VIe siècle. Paris: Seuil.

What does The Odyssey tell us about climate change?

Maggie Quinlan

François Prouteau

What can The Odyssey teach us about climate change? What is an environmental reading of Homer for the Anthropocene?

Do the climatic changes and societal collapses of the Bronze Age parallel circumstances today?

Conclusion: A lesson for the Anthropocene

In-Text References

Further Reading: François Prouteau’s Work on The Odyssey and the Anthropocene

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