The Anthropocene: Mankind’s Grim Legacy Writ in Stone
All living species have a finite shelf life, a certain point in their evolutionary history when their time runs out in the face of a changing environment and they give way to better suited organisms. For what will humankind ultimately be remembered when its earthly story inevitably concludes? Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance painting? Polyphonic harmonies and The Complete Works of Shakespeare? Or simply the harnessing of fire and baking of bread? Sadly for our species – and even more so for those thousands of other creatures fortune has fated to share this time with us – future extraterrestrials poking cautiously through the desolate and emptied world of tomorrow will point to the ruins of our headlong civilization and assign blame accordingly: the end began with the Anthropocene.
Geologic epochs are periods of what geologists call deep time, specifically subdivisions of a longer era called a period. The present is currently referred to as the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period. Layers of petrified matter (rock) that have been gradually deposited over the course of an epoch by vegetation, wind, water, erosion, and increasingly by human activity are called a series. Series are subdivisions of the stratigraphic column, a striated horizontal story in stone that speaks to the awesome antiquity of planet Earth.
Our own story appears to be headed for an unhappy ending. The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the scientific body charged with defining divisions of geologic time based on the evidence at hand, is considering designating our current age as a distinctly separate period of time marked, and marred, by anthropogenic alteration of the planet’s face and features. The Holocene, which has been ongoing since the retreat of the glaciers and the onset of the Middle Stone Age 11,500 years ago, would be said to have ended when the startling shriek of James Watt’s steam engine ushered in an age of industry that would transform the world’s weather itself.
Like all good scientists the ICS must weigh hard evidence for such a fundamental change in our relationship with the planet to be accepted. So let’s start with just a few basic facts about the world we live in now:
· Seventy-five percent of the planet’s surface has been radically altered by and for people, leaving a mere 23 percent for wildlife and their habitats. The great majority of dry land now consists of farmland, industrial zones and human habitation.
· The long-term acidification of the oceans by our ongoing buildup of industrial carbon dioxide is killing off coral reefs around the world, resulting in the loss of a critical barrier to storm surge and further endangering coastal areas at heightened risk from rising seas and stronger and more frequent storms.
· Hydropower is increasingly being developed in South America, southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, assertively preventing the migration of anadromous fishes and destroying the elaborate flood-regime ecosystems of biomes like the Amazon.
· The accelerating rate of animal and plants extinctions under the twin hammers of climate change and habitat loss is being compared to Earth’s five other extinction events (the last one was 65 millions years ago) that followed catastrophic geophysical change such as meteor impact or sudden tectonic shifts. In the case of the sixth great extinction, however, the root cause is purely biotic: us. Either from directly causing species decline through poaching, habitat conversion and the introduction of competitive exotic species, or indirectly altering ecosystems through our industrial assault on the planet’s atmosphere, because of human activity one in eight birds, one in four mammals, one in five invertebrates, one in three amphibians, and half of the world’s turtles are facing the black night of extinction.
The surface of the earth has been completely transformed to accommodate its cleverest species; an unfortunate side effect has been the disaster our success has visited upon less dominant animals. Having brought our world to the brink, it is our clear responsibility to reverse course while we still can. Otherwise, with our skyrocketing population, toxic technology, and a remorseless manifest destiny to extend our selves and our appetites into every remaining wild place, it appears likely that we will leave this world a poorer place … hotter, flooded, poisoned, and peopled only by those hardened creatures that have shaped their lives according to our own. The Anthropocene has served anthropos very well, as was its sole purpose, but in eons to come our thin layer of geologic history could tell a sad tale indeed.
Geologic epochs are periods of what geologists call deep time, specifically subdivisions of a longer era called a period. The present is currently referred to as the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period. Layers of petrified matter (rock) that have been gradually deposited over the course of an epoch by vegetation, wind, water, erosion, and increasingly by human activity are called a series. Series are subdivisions of the stratigraphic column, a striated horizontal story in stone that speaks to the awesome antiquity of planet Earth.
Our own story appears to be headed for an unhappy ending. The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the scientific body charged with defining divisions of geologic time based on the evidence at hand, is considering designating our current age as a distinctly separate period of time marked, and marred, by anthropogenic alteration of the planet’s face and features. The Holocene, which has been ongoing since the retreat of the glaciers and the onset of the Middle Stone Age 11,500 years ago, would be said to have ended when the startling shriek of James Watt’s steam engine ushered in an age of industry that would transform the world’s weather itself.
Like all good scientists the ICS must weigh hard evidence for such a fundamental change in our relationship with the planet to be accepted. So let’s start with just a few basic facts about the world we live in now:
· Seventy-five percent of the planet’s surface has been radically altered by and for people, leaving a mere 23 percent for wildlife and their habitats. The great majority of dry land now consists of farmland, industrial zones and human habitation.
· The long-term acidification of the oceans by our ongoing buildup of industrial carbon dioxide is killing off coral reefs around the world, resulting in the loss of a critical barrier to storm surge and further endangering coastal areas at heightened risk from rising seas and stronger and more frequent storms.
· Hydropower is increasingly being developed in South America, southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, assertively preventing the migration of anadromous fishes and destroying the elaborate flood-regime ecosystems of biomes like the Amazon.
· The accelerating rate of animal and plants extinctions under the twin hammers of climate change and habitat loss is being compared to Earth’s five other extinction events (the last one was 65 millions years ago) that followed catastrophic geophysical change such as meteor impact or sudden tectonic shifts. In the case of the sixth great extinction, however, the root cause is purely biotic: us. Either from directly causing species decline through poaching, habitat conversion and the introduction of competitive exotic species, or indirectly altering ecosystems through our industrial assault on the planet’s atmosphere, because of human activity one in eight birds, one in four mammals, one in five invertebrates, one in three amphibians, and half of the world’s turtles are facing the black night of extinction.
The surface of the earth has been completely transformed to accommodate its cleverest species; an unfortunate side effect has been the disaster our success has visited upon less dominant animals. Having brought our world to the brink, it is our clear responsibility to reverse course while we still can. Otherwise, with our skyrocketing population, toxic technology, and a remorseless manifest destiny to extend our selves and our appetites into every remaining wild place, it appears likely that we will leave this world a poorer place … hotter, flooded, poisoned, and peopled only by those hardened creatures that have shaped their lives according to our own. The Anthropocene has served anthropos very well, as was its sole purpose, but in eons to come our thin layer of geologic history could tell a sad tale indeed.
