Living in the Anthropocene

I. The Philosophical Argument

I find the concept of the Anthropocene to be the most philosophically compelling notion of the current age. Technically, the Anthropocene is not a philosophy, it’s a physical manifestation, but one that has critical implications for how we think about the world, relate to one another, and to nature.

I grew up in a time when wild places, unexplored places, no longer really existed, the Poles conquered, Everest climbed, and then a Man on the Moon. Nonetheless, the residual memory of unexplored places existed vividly, at least in the imagination, and I would argue, in our consciousness. There was the notion of Nature, red in tooth and claw, the need to explore, to conquer, paddle down an unmapped Amazonian River with no knowledge of what lies around the next bend, the way Teddy Roosevelt did.

Those feelings are gone now. We’ve seen it all on TV, on Youtube, or Tiktok, or Google Earth. Sure, you can go big game hunting in Africa, and, I suppose, sit around a campfire in the shadow of your $120,000 Range Rover, and try to imagine what it was like to be the white hunter of a 100 or 200 years ago, to really stalk and be stalked by lions, kind of ignoring the fact your African guides ancestors have lived and survived here for more than a 100,000 years, just as indigenous people have lived in the jungles of the Amazon for 1,000s of years. There are plenty of wild places left, but no places that can’t be reached by satellite phone, or, according to TV ads, the all-wheel drive SUV of your choice. But the notion of going mano a mano with nature has lost it’s edge.  We, Homo sapiens, have won. This is the Anthropocene, we have created it, we live in it, whether we consciously accept it or not.

It is in this change of consciousness where I believe the Anthropocene blends into a philosophical concept that defines the conceptual Anthropocene. Essentially, it is the tacit admission that humans have ‘conquered the planet’. As a species we now occupy a unique niche on Earth. The existence of life, primarily microbes, has made Earth habitable for animals, but so far as we know in Earth’s past, no single species has become so dominant as humans now are in influencing Earth’s very history as a planet. And in such a short time, whether measured from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, or the origin of our species a mere 300,000 years ago. As a species we, and by ‘we’ I really mean our genes, evolved in the Nature Red in Tooth and Claw world; the paradox, is that it is our ability to cooperate and form cohesive societies that has ultimately given rise to our dominance, and not coincidentally, our consciousness of ourselves and our place in the world. Or, perhaps it’s the other way around, a uniquely form of human consciousness has led to our dominion over nature?  

Perhaps the most important aspect of developing an “Anthropocene consciousness’ is the changes in our beliefs about the world we live in. Acceptance of the Anthropocene may also require letting go of some beliefs about the sanctity of the world before humans. Just as other geological epochs are marked by transitions in Earth-scale geological and biological changes, so to the Anthropocene. Perhaps the most profound is that the Anthropocene will almost certainly mark an end to our most recent Era’s cycles of ice-ages. In geologically recent times, the Earth alternated between longer times when ice sheets covered much of the globe to latitudes below 45° (e.g. I would be sitting under a mile of ice), and shorter periods of inter-glacials (the current situation). These have occurred on approximately regular intervals on a 100,000 year time scales for at least the past 500,000 years. One estimate now predicts the next maximal ice age would have occurred 90,000 years in the future, but with current atmospheric CO₂ levels, that’s been pushed to at least 200,000 years away. In other words, human modification has fundamentally changed the glacial/inter-glacial aspect of Earth's history during which Homo sapiens evolved. This is a profound change in Earth’s natural processes.

It also likely means we can’t save every species. As a biologist, I find this disturbing. As a species ourselves we now can decide what other species may be doomed to extinction. And with advances in science and technology our knowledge of our world is now such that many of these decisions are essentially conscious ones. So how do we make decisions like these?  Based on facts, as they are imperfectly understood, and trade-offs equally well poorly understood, or just raw emotion?

Perhaps the value of going all in on the Anthropocene is thinking about balancing these trade-offs. I would argue the balance should always on the side of the natural world, the root of our own evolution, and just as assuredly, our potential demise. Of course, others might argue otherwise/ This is also where things move from the philosophical to the societal and economic. Are we willing to pay the conscientious cost of saving another species versus saving some money?

The North Atlantic Right Whale is a prime example. This species of whale, itself a charismatic megafauna, put itself in a terrible predicament, first by being the ‘right whale’ meaning it had the best blubber for producing whale oil used extensively in the 19^th century, and then by the misfortune of its habitat encompassing the entire east coast of North America, the busiest stretch of water used by humans in the world. And, coincidentally providing easy access for whaling fleets of the 18^th and 19^th century, based largely in New England, that hunted it nearly to extinction. This is a confluence of place and events that could make an argument for letting ‘nature run its course’ regarding the North Atlantic Right Whale. Nature now is the Anthropocene, so based on this argument we are essentially letting the Anthropocene run its course.

Herein, to me, lies the great challenge of the Anthropocene, and in being our planet’s (and who knows, maybe any planet in the entire Universe) first ‘conscious epoch’. To make conscious decisions about the value of life’s diversity to the extent that it simply becomes part of our existence. Our responsibility to the Right Whale is integral to our responsibility to ourselves as humans.  This is easy to say, sitting in my home in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth with everything I need and then some, in a world of fellow human beings, who on average live on less than $20/day. But changes in consciousness are driven by influences, first a few, then some, then more, then a lot, then a majority. This takes time (but way, way less than the blink of an eye in geological time), but is infective, and therein lies the benefit of fully recognizing the Anthropocene, and taking responsibility for it such that it permeates all aspects of our culture across the planet. Indeed, the rudiments are already there, in the world’s major religions, in international law, and in our day to day lives as humans in our appreciation of nature.

Of course, there are many outcomes to the Anthropocene at it ‘runs its course’. These possibilities range from this being a remarkably short Epoch that resets to future epochs guided by the varied natural Earth processes that led to our current age, and with no (or not enough) humans to either influence them, or to systematically record them. Then not Epochs at all?

Or perhaps we will end up with humans moving beyond Earth to colonize other worlds, and there comes to be an Astro-Geological Union (see below) that begins to record Epochs on other planets. Most likely we will end up following some intermediate trajectory between these two extremes. How well we take responsibility for the current Anthropocene Epoch that is ours alone will undoubtedly determine the arc of the Anthropo in the Cene.  

II. The Anthropocene – The Scientific Argument

The concept of Earth’s ages is, of course, an entirely human construct.  Specifically, they are determined by democratic vote, by a subsection the Geological Sciences Union called the International Commission on Stratigraphy. This commission is made up of geologists from around the world whose expertise is stratigraphy. Stratigraphy at its most basic is studying rock and sediment layers. It’s remarkable what these layers can reveal about Earth’s history. When geologists can identify significant changes in these layers or related aspects of the rock record, they denote these as epochs, periods, eras, and eons, in order of increasing numbers of years. If you ever get a chance to go in the field with a stratigrapher, or other geologist who can ‘read the rock record’, don’t pass it up, it can be an amazing experience.

Based on a recent vote of the International Commission on Stratigraphy for officially calling the Anthropocene a new Epoch to replace the Holocene Epoch that we are currently in, the Anthropocene lost and so we remain in the ‘official’ Holocene. As I understand it, one key issue in the debate around naming the Anthropocene as a new Epoch centers around the proposed date when the Anthropocene started, and the Holocene epoch ended. One group has proposed that based on sedimentary layers, and particularly one well studied lake sediment in Canada, the date should be 195x. Another camp argues that the evidence is not strong enough for this date and without a date you can’t declare a new ‘Epoch or Age’. Our current Epoch, the Holocene began 11,700 years ago, a time when the rudiments of modern human civilization were developing, but well before there was a Geological Sciences Union, or a science of stratigraphy, thus although the Holocene is given a (relatively) precise date, it wasn’t determined essentially in real time. As an outsider, these arguments around precise starting dates for the Anthropocene seem a bit pedantic to me. Of course, science and scientists do have a love for the pedantic, my own pet peeve is taxonomy).

The majority of geologists involved in this debate all agree that human-induced changes to the environment, first and foremost climate change, along with the presence of radioactive layers of cesium and other radionuclides due to nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, the ubiquity of plastics that are now part of the rock record, as well as the signatures of other man-made chemicals in soils, air, and waters are all rational arguments for the Anthropocene. Other factors like anthropic-driven mass species extinction, or dramatic changes in sea-level, need a longer lens of time to assess. I strongly suspect the acceptance of the Anthropocene as a new Epoch will happen, and I’d personally have no qualms with it being as driven by a change in consciousness as any direct technical/scientific evidence.

This graph provides the context for the Anthropocene relative to the two previous epochs, the Pleistocene and Holocene. The top three lines show variations in Earth’s orbital path and relative movement of Earth’s axis (obliquity) that impact the amount of the sun’s energy that reach the Earth’s surface (insolation). Recent evidence has shown based on these factors alone, Earth would have initiated a new Ice Age in 11,000 years. These orbital processes coupled with geological processes (e.g. plate tectonics, or volcanism) and biological processes (e.g. photosynthesis) are what have given rise to previous Epochs and Eras. The bottom four graphs show Earth’s surface temperature, and then the concentrations of major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. All of these show a dramatic spike, essentially since the beginning of the industrial age, demonstrating how anthropic activities have impacted Earth. An important point is that Earth’s temperature, e.g. global warming, is now independent of the non-human influenced planetary processes, that have controlled Earth’s past climate for over four billion years.  Figure Source