There is a common argument that the idea of the Anthropocene is a joke. That in terms of geological time the idea of the Anthropocene is meaningless; it is currently much shorter than the margin of error for declaring a geological epoch, and that the traces of humanity are unlikely to be marked because “If 100 million years can easily wear the Himalayas flat, what chance will San Francisco or New York have?”. Geological time stretches for billions of years, not millions, and especially not hundreds of years. Even radioactivity is irrelevant “If there were a nuclear holocaust in the Triassic, among warring prosauropods, we wouldn’t know about it.” Personally I like the idea that there were intelligent dinosaurs – there apparently were big brained dinosaurs who were co-operative pack animals with opposable thumbs, and it is interesting to think that no traces of their civilisation survives. However, that is a digression
Basically the argument is that humans are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and that we have an inflated opinion of our ability to control events. Any human effect on the planet is transient and meaningless (just as was the effect of our imagined intelligent dinosaurs). We will probably be gone in a blink of God’s eye, in geological terms. The idea of the Anthropocene, according to this position, is stupid; nothing that humans can do matters.
I’d have to say this argument does not convince me.
The problem with geological time is precisely that humans, or other genus and families of creatures, don’t matter. It is true, we are probably not going to be here for 10s of millions of years, never mind 100s of millions of years, because if we survive we won’t be the same – evolution will change us. Taking a geological approach to human problems is probably why it seems that geologists are usually the scientists who don’t care about climate change or ecological destruction. In terms of geological time such destruction is totally trivial. The Earth goes on.
However, the problem comes when this position is used to imply that social action is not resulting in a series of ecological crises, that the sixth great extinction of life on Earth is not likely to be happening, that climate change is a mere blip, that we are not leaving forms of pollution all over the global eco-system, or disrupting that system to an extent which is dangerous for many species, and possibly for human survival. Such an implication is simply wrong, and when pushed, most geologists would probably deny they are making it.
The term ‘Anthropocene’ is useful because it recognises that contemporary human societies are having a marked effect on global ecological, climate and geological systems. We are potentially changing the ecology to such a degree that our current civilisations may not be able to survive, and possibly billions of humans will die off. These crises would probably not have arrived, or been the same, without human action.
In human terms, as opposed to geological terms, this recognition is relevant. Having a term that recognises those changes and our role in creating them is useful. Suppressing it, almost certainly makes it harder to think about it, which is probably why articles like this get published.
Now, I’m certainly not going to argue that we can reverse the crises and return to the world we have destroyed, or that people always achieve the results that they intend. The world involves interconnecting complex systems, and consequently unintended consequences are routine and reversibility is not generally on.
If human social action results in unintended, unplanned, consequences which involve ecological catastrophe and (as far as we can tell) the deliberate actions of bees (for example) don’t, then I think humans are more responsible than bees, dolphins, or koalas, for those consequences. Furthermore, I’m not convinced bees, or other creatures, can take responsibility or act differently, while we can.
Yes, the Earth goes on, but I would rather it went on with us, than it went on without us. This is irrespective of the billions of years of Earth history in which humans have not, and will not, exist. This may be selfish or self important, but if we are to think about humans and the creatures who share the Earth with us, then we cannot think primarily in geological time – that is an abrogation of responsibility, and of our own, and other species, survival in the immediate future – and, if we do cause a mass extinction, then we are affecting the future history of life on Earth – no amount of saying we don’t matter in geological time will change that.
Lack of total control of the world does not mean we cannot mitigate and lessen the crisis. Who says that we have to “defeat” an ecological crisis, rather than, say, refrain from causing one – given we know how we are causing it? We do not have to have complete control to take action. If we had to take control of the world before we did anything, we would never act.
Even stopping causing the problem as much as we can individually, or as groups, is an improvement on the actions of the Australian and US governments (to take two of many examples), who seem to be trying to encourage corporations to pollute more for higher profits and to make things worse for us.
Refraining from making the situation worse may not be enough, but it is better than nothing – and because we are living in complex systems with unintended consequences as normal, we cannot be sure a particular action won’t start something which eventually becomes enough.
Tags: Anthropocene, complexity, Disinformation
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