For six years, I was a member of the Working Group on the Anthropocene, a panel weighing evidence humans are shaping a new epoch of Earth history. The group's work is almost done, but debate rages on.
This was a fascinating read Andy, and it was interesting to know that you coined Anthrocene prior to Anthropocene. (This reminds me of the word the Institute for Humane Education coined and has been promulgating – solutionary – which was also coined prior to us by at least two others, along with someone coining "solutionist.") At any rate, you asked about our responses to the different alternatives, and I have come to find Anthropocene works well, while the other options feel too narrow.
Reading your essay, I also found myself resisting the idea that people shouldn't be categorized as "we" in this context. Of course not all people are causing the problems typified by the Anthropocene, and those who are living in poverty and without power within societal structures suffer the gravest consequences. But as you point out, the great decline in poverty across the globe has been a result of the Anthropocene, too. So it's a mixed bag. And as Jared Diamond's (and others') work suggests, many indigenous peoples throughout the ages have contributed to Anthropocene-caused harms to the environment and other species – causing extinctions long before modern times.
While different societal systems may be more likely to cause harm than others, humans are a species with certain attributes, and it seems like our default is to struggle with long-term thinking and decision-making as well as avoid taking an expansive view that doesn't just favor the in-group (in-groups meaning both our human in-groups as well as the in-group that excludes other species).
Just as all (or the great majority of) humans have the capacity to cause Anthropocene harms if given the power to do so, all (or the great majority of) humans have the capacity to build more sustainable, just, and humane systems if we learn how to do that. Perhaps we should distinguish between capital "We" and lower case "we" so that we don't create a false dichotomy when it comes to understanding what it means to be human.
Finally, I would say that I believe we should indeed strive for a Good Anthropocene, which to me means educating people to be solutionaries who have cultivated the motivation, skills, and thinking capacities to build healthy and peaceful systems. What else would we want to strive for than this?
Dec 19, 2022·edited Dec 19, 2022Liked by Andy @Revkin
The anthropocene may well be a geologically recognisable signature. However it's duration, as characterised by direct industrial activity impact signatures like radioactive isotopes, may well be fairly limited by resource constraints. I really like the question you pose in the title of this blog!
I'm wondering if you've come across Nate Hagens' "Great Simplification" framing of the meta-crisis that we face? www.thegreatsimplification.com
Also. I read your about section and noted the comments regarding the difference in particulate emissions between wood and propane stoves. Are you aware of the growing evidence that propane is no panacea?
Every period we have named, WE have named. Naming a "geologic" period for ourselves seems to be totally an act of creating a self-portrait, a "selfie," if you will, that only exacerbates our horrific effect on the planet. Naming a period of time in which our activities become sedimentary layers can only happen after it is over. And who names that period of time is unknowable. And will probably be none of us.
I am a professor of geophysics and hydrogeology at the City University of New York and I taught a course called "Climate Change, Torn between Myth and Fact" since 2004. Last year, I published a book with the same title at Cambridge Scholars Publishing in UK. Two chapters from that book deal with Anthropocene: ch. 15 “A significant decision: We do not live in the Anthropocene, but in the Meghalayan!" and ch. 16 “Welcome to the Fabulous Anthropocene Era!”, respectively. (The last chapter was based on the installation of Robyn Woolston).
I would like to point out to an important step taken by the International Union of Geological Sciences in 2021, when they published an authoritative report titled “A practical solution: the Anthropocene is a geological event, not a formal epoch” (https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2021/021029).
“Practical solution” means giving up the idea that Anthropocene might be a “formal [geologic] epoch” and use instead the term “event”:
“The Anthropocene has yet to be defined in a way that is functional both to the international geological community and to the broader fields of environmental and social sciences. Formally defining the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphical series and geochronological epoch with a precise global start date would drastically reduce the Anthropocene’s utility across disciplines. Instead, we propose the Anthropocene be defined as a geological event, thereby facilitating a robust geological definition linked with a scholarly framework more useful to and congruent with the many disciplines engaging with human-environment interactions.”
An example of an event with significant climate and life implications occurred 66 Ma ago, when an asteroid slammed into northern Yucatán Peninsula, triggering the fifth extinction.
If I am allowed to propose a name for the current event discussed in the article, I would call it Alarmocen.
For a while, I was irked by the patriarchy embedded in the term "Anthropocene," and argued for Androgynocene as a better aspirational term, reflecting a world more balanced in its M/F qualities.
Now I lean, again aspirationally, towards Gaiacene--the epoch when humans come to understand, respect and embrace our place and our role as caretaking stewards of the Gaian system.
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” William Shakespeare uses this line in his play Romeo and Juliet to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant.
While history does tell the stories of great minds gathering to ponder great ideas, I say keep this academic discussion going but realize that what may be even more vital than naming an era is operating, as Zoe Weil says, as solutionaries or solutionists. Whatever. We need to respond to what we are witnessing in modern human times in ways to make the future survivable, or not. As I have been sharing of late with locals here in Humboldt County, especially the government officials, is that action must be urgent on the climate reality. A fellow resident of Arcata where I live felt the need to have a ballot measure for the Arcata election in November to "Put the Earth on Top" which was victorious in getting the classic Earth flag put at the top of our flagpole. His reasoning for this action was to show the symbolic importance of our community focusing priorities on Earth because, as he said, if we don't have a healthy Earth, we won't have a healthy nation, or state, or community. The Earth flag is flying on top as of last Friday morning and the grumblings are already starting and may lead to a legal challenge. I am working to combat the dissenting "patriotic" tribe by reminding them of The Overview Effect that many space travelers have experience once they see our Blue Planet from above. Anyway, a rose is a rose is a rose no matter what we call it and we need to keep 'em smelling sweet. Write your song about this, Andy, as music is the message we need. "We" are the World!
The human generated changes in our environment would seem to arise from our "more is better" relationship with knowledge. This was a rational philosophy in the long era of knowledge scarcity, and it has produced many positive miracles for the human race, too many to begin to mention.
What seems missing from the discussion of human impacts upon the Earth is that we no longer live in the old knowledge scarcity era, but in new very different time characterized by knowledge exploding in every direction at an ever accelerating rate.
It seems useful to observe that while the knowledge environment has undergone a radical change in recent centuries, our relationship with knowledge has not budged an inch. We still take it to be an obvious given that more knowledge is always better. So one way to understand the Anthropocene can be to ask...
Are we trying to navigate the 21st century using a 19th century knowledge philosophy? Is that the fundamental source of the threats we face?
A philosophy that more knowledge (and thus power) is always better would presumably be based on an assumption that human beings can successfully manage any number of new powers, of any scale, delivered at any rate. How could this possibly be true?
What seems to lie at the heart of the new Anthropocene era is the unexamined assumption that we are gods, creatures of unlimited ability. Perhaps a scientific panel could be established to poll the experts regarding the question of whether we are gods? The science community seems to be assuming that we are, and we should probably be assuming that they are wrong.
Sorry, but as a Ph.D. geoscientist I find this whole thing to be a political invention that has nothing whatsoever to do with earth history. It was conceived and nurtured by those with political biases that man is the most important thing on the earth, I disagree, he is puny compared to natural forces and we see it every day. This is just more anthropocentric prejudice.
This was a fascinating read Andy, and it was interesting to know that you coined Anthrocene prior to Anthropocene. (This reminds me of the word the Institute for Humane Education coined and has been promulgating – solutionary – which was also coined prior to us by at least two others, along with someone coining "solutionist.") At any rate, you asked about our responses to the different alternatives, and I have come to find Anthropocene works well, while the other options feel too narrow.
Reading your essay, I also found myself resisting the idea that people shouldn't be categorized as "we" in this context. Of course not all people are causing the problems typified by the Anthropocene, and those who are living in poverty and without power within societal structures suffer the gravest consequences. But as you point out, the great decline in poverty across the globe has been a result of the Anthropocene, too. So it's a mixed bag. And as Jared Diamond's (and others') work suggests, many indigenous peoples throughout the ages have contributed to Anthropocene-caused harms to the environment and other species – causing extinctions long before modern times.
While different societal systems may be more likely to cause harm than others, humans are a species with certain attributes, and it seems like our default is to struggle with long-term thinking and decision-making as well as avoid taking an expansive view that doesn't just favor the in-group (in-groups meaning both our human in-groups as well as the in-group that excludes other species).
Just as all (or the great majority of) humans have the capacity to cause Anthropocene harms if given the power to do so, all (or the great majority of) humans have the capacity to build more sustainable, just, and humane systems if we learn how to do that. Perhaps we should distinguish between capital "We" and lower case "we" so that we don't create a false dichotomy when it comes to understanding what it means to be human.
Finally, I would say that I believe we should indeed strive for a Good Anthropocene, which to me means educating people to be solutionaries who have cultivated the motivation, skills, and thinking capacities to build healthy and peaceful systems. What else would we want to strive for than this?
The anthropocene may well be a geologically recognisable signature. However it's duration, as characterised by direct industrial activity impact signatures like radioactive isotopes, may well be fairly limited by resource constraints. I really like the question you pose in the title of this blog!
I'm wondering if you've come across Nate Hagens' "Great Simplification" framing of the meta-crisis that we face? www.thegreatsimplification.com
Also. I read your about section and noted the comments regarding the difference in particulate emissions between wood and propane stoves. Are you aware of the growing evidence that propane is no panacea?
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/5/7/21247602/gas-stove-cooking-indoor-air-pollution-health-risks
Looking forward to reading and engaging with this blog! Cheers.
Every period we have named, WE have named. Naming a "geologic" period for ourselves seems to be totally an act of creating a self-portrait, a "selfie," if you will, that only exacerbates our horrific effect on the planet. Naming a period of time in which our activities become sedimentary layers can only happen after it is over. And who names that period of time is unknowable. And will probably be none of us.
I am a professor of geophysics and hydrogeology at the City University of New York and I taught a course called "Climate Change, Torn between Myth and Fact" since 2004. Last year, I published a book with the same title at Cambridge Scholars Publishing in UK. Two chapters from that book deal with Anthropocene: ch. 15 “A significant decision: We do not live in the Anthropocene, but in the Meghalayan!" and ch. 16 “Welcome to the Fabulous Anthropocene Era!”, respectively. (The last chapter was based on the installation of Robyn Woolston).
I would like to point out to an important step taken by the International Union of Geological Sciences in 2021, when they published an authoritative report titled “A practical solution: the Anthropocene is a geological event, not a formal epoch” (https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2021/021029).
“Practical solution” means giving up the idea that Anthropocene might be a “formal [geologic] epoch” and use instead the term “event”:
“The Anthropocene has yet to be defined in a way that is functional both to the international geological community and to the broader fields of environmental and social sciences. Formally defining the Anthropocene as a chronostratigraphical series and geochronological epoch with a precise global start date would drastically reduce the Anthropocene’s utility across disciplines. Instead, we propose the Anthropocene be defined as a geological event, thereby facilitating a robust geological definition linked with a scholarly framework more useful to and congruent with the many disciplines engaging with human-environment interactions.”
An example of an event with significant climate and life implications occurred 66 Ma ago, when an asteroid slammed into northern Yucatán Peninsula, triggering the fifth extinction.
If I am allowed to propose a name for the current event discussed in the article, I would call it Alarmocen.
Having known Paul Crutzen since the '80's I naturally weighed in early on the quation of Anthropocene stratigraphy.
Here's what I blogged after I last saw him at the Asilomar conference on climate engineering governance;
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2014/11/petrology-for-poets.html
For a while, I was irked by the patriarchy embedded in the term "Anthropocene," and argued for Androgynocene as a better aspirational term, reflecting a world more balanced in its M/F qualities.
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/reader-essay/moving-from-the-anthropocene-to-the-androgynocene-gaian-leadership-for-a-balanced-world/
Now I lean, again aspirationally, towards Gaiacene--the epoch when humans come to understand, respect and embrace our place and our role as caretaking stewards of the Gaian system.
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” William Shakespeare uses this line in his play Romeo and Juliet to convey that the naming of things is irrelevant.
While history does tell the stories of great minds gathering to ponder great ideas, I say keep this academic discussion going but realize that what may be even more vital than naming an era is operating, as Zoe Weil says, as solutionaries or solutionists. Whatever. We need to respond to what we are witnessing in modern human times in ways to make the future survivable, or not. As I have been sharing of late with locals here in Humboldt County, especially the government officials, is that action must be urgent on the climate reality. A fellow resident of Arcata where I live felt the need to have a ballot measure for the Arcata election in November to "Put the Earth on Top" which was victorious in getting the classic Earth flag put at the top of our flagpole. His reasoning for this action was to show the symbolic importance of our community focusing priorities on Earth because, as he said, if we don't have a healthy Earth, we won't have a healthy nation, or state, or community. The Earth flag is flying on top as of last Friday morning and the grumblings are already starting and may lead to a legal challenge. I am working to combat the dissenting "patriotic" tribe by reminding them of The Overview Effect that many space travelers have experience once they see our Blue Planet from above. Anyway, a rose is a rose is a rose no matter what we call it and we need to keep 'em smelling sweet. Write your song about this, Andy, as music is the message we need. "We" are the World!
The human generated changes in our environment would seem to arise from our "more is better" relationship with knowledge. This was a rational philosophy in the long era of knowledge scarcity, and it has produced many positive miracles for the human race, too many to begin to mention.
What seems missing from the discussion of human impacts upon the Earth is that we no longer live in the old knowledge scarcity era, but in new very different time characterized by knowledge exploding in every direction at an ever accelerating rate.
It seems useful to observe that while the knowledge environment has undergone a radical change in recent centuries, our relationship with knowledge has not budged an inch. We still take it to be an obvious given that more knowledge is always better. So one way to understand the Anthropocene can be to ask...
Are we trying to navigate the 21st century using a 19th century knowledge philosophy? Is that the fundamental source of the threats we face?
A philosophy that more knowledge (and thus power) is always better would presumably be based on an assumption that human beings can successfully manage any number of new powers, of any scale, delivered at any rate. How could this possibly be true?
What seems to lie at the heart of the new Anthropocene era is the unexamined assumption that we are gods, creatures of unlimited ability. Perhaps a scientific panel could be established to poll the experts regarding the question of whether we are gods? The science community seems to be assuming that we are, and we should probably be assuming that they are wrong.
Sorry, but as a Ph.D. geoscientist I find this whole thing to be a political invention that has nothing whatsoever to do with earth history. It was conceived and nurtured by those with political biases that man is the most important thing on the earth, I disagree, he is puny compared to natural forces and we see it every day. This is just more anthropocentric prejudice.