Anthropocene

Description

1.

"Is human activity altering the planet on a scale comparable to major geological events of the past? Scientists are now considering whether to officially designate a new geological epoch to reflect the changes that homo sapiens have wrought: the Anthropocene.

The Holocene — or “wholly recent” epoch — is what geologists call the 11,000 years or so since the end of the last ice age. As epochs go, the Holocene is barely out of diapers; its immediate predecessor, the Pleistocene, lasted more than two million years, while many earlier epochs, like the Eocene, went on for more than 20 million years. Still, the Holocene may be done for. People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue a new epoch — informally dubbed the Anthropocene — has begun.

In a recent paper titled “The New World of the Anthropocene,” which appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a group of geologists listed more than a half dozen human-driven processes that are likely to leave a lasting mark on the planet — lasting here understood to mean likely to leave traces that will last tens of millions of years. These include: habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species, which are causing widespread extinctions; ocean acidification, which is changing the chemical makeup of the seas; and urbanization, which is vastly increasing rates of sedimentation and erosion.

Human activity, the group wrote, is altering the planet “on a scale comparable with some of the major events of the ancient past. Some of these changes are now seen as permanent, even on a geological time-scale.” (http://www.nextnature.net/2010/06/the-anthropocene-debate-marking-humanity%e2%80%99s-impact/)

2. Pierre Charbonnier:

"The Anthropocene is, firstly, the name given to a new geological epoch in which the effects of human activity, notably CO2 emissions, define the conditions in which geophysical layers and atmospheric equilibria are formed: it is the human age, in the sense that human beings have become the dominant geological force. Numerous debates have ensued over the proper periodization of this epoch. Beyond these discussions, it is crucial to see how the Anthropocene quickly became a flashpoint for those seeking to diagnose contemporary society from an environmental standpoint, including those who reject the term for epistemological or political reasons. The common denominator of all positions in the debate, whether they hail from the natural or the social sciences, is that climate change is the decisive entry point for understanding the present. To speak of the Anthropocene is to suggest that climate change and its consequences are catalysts of an empirical and normative synthesis of our global present. Whether the topic is species conservation, resource management, international law, defense, or the future of democracy, Anthropocenic rationality presents itself as an extremely broad framework to which all inquiries are likely to lead. Of course, the wide array of social sciences do not all participate in this debate to the same extent, if only for reasons of thematic preference and the division of intellectual labor; many other analytical paradigms exist for understanding the historical present and engaging in its critique. We will argue that the theoretical propositions relating to the Anthropocene may affect social and political knowledge in its entirety, since the social milieu in its broadest sense has been redefined and reshaped by the implications of global climate change."

(https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-annales-2017-2-page-301.htm)

Discussion

The Anthropocene Versus the Noosphere

Boris Shoshitaishvili:

The Anthropocene paradigm interprets the Great Acceleration as a world-historical shift in which humanity becomes a technologically empowered and primarily material planetary force, signaling the start of a new geological epoch. Anthropocene accounts are often cautionary and sometimes predict catastrophe for humanity and the living world. They are centrally concerned with the human impact on the Earth system and its physical subsystems such as global climate.

The Noosphere paradigm also treats the current period as a world-historical transformation but places less emphasis on the process's materiality and environmental disruption. Noosphere accounts present the Great Acceleration as a stage toward an integrated humanity achieving planetary significance in globally interconnected culture, technology, and awareness. In contrast to the Anthropocene, the Noosphere paradigm’s mood is primarily hopeful and occasionally becomes utopian.

In addition to divergences in content and mood, the two paradigms are geographically divergent: the Anthropocene serves as a key concept for understanding anthropogenic global change among scholars and thinkers in Western Europe and the Americas (Hudson, 2014); meanwhile, the Noosphere is central to Eastern European scholars and scientists working on comparable topics (Bernstein, 2019; Ronfeldt & Arquilla, 2020).

* The Anthropocene as Rupture and Physical Impact

The term Anthropocene belongs to the nomenclature of geochronology and chronostratigraphy, the subdisciplines responsible for establishing the official geologic time scale. Descriptively, it is a strictly temporal category. In 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) voted in favor of proposing the Anthropocene as the latest geological epoch to the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), with plans to submit the proposal to ICS for official review by 2021 (Anthropocene Working Group, 2019). The rationale behind distinguishing the Great Acceleration in geological terms as the start time of the Anthropocene was the realization that since the 1950s humanity has left multiple geologic traces of its mass effect on fundamental cycles of the Earth system (Zalasiewicz et al., 2019). While the concept of a new human-caused geological division had predecessors in the 19th century such as Antonio Stoppani's suggestion of an “Anthropozoic Era” or the “Psychozoic Era” named in the work of Joseph LeConte and T. C. Chamberlin, the Anthropocene Epoch is the first such concept to move toward official proposal to the ICS (Hamilton & Grinevald, 2015).

Yet the Anthropocene has also quickly become more than a technical geochronological term. In contrast to earlier geologic epochs such as the Holocene and Pleistocene, the implications of the Anthropocene are being widely and intensely debated in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in nonacademic areas, especially environmental activism (Kress & Stine, 2017; Horn & Bergthaller, 2019).

A comparison of the etymology of the Anthropocene to the names of prior geologic epochs reveals key features that have made the term relevant far beyond geochronology. The word “Anthropocene” is a product of the same naming system used for the seven preceding epochs of the overarching Cenozoic era. All seven epochs end with -cene, echoing the Cenozoic era's Ceno- and deriving from the Greek word for “new” (kainos/καινός). But the -cene of Anthropocene signifies a different kind of “new” from the “-cene” of preceding epochs.

This difference is best recognized by comparing the naming logic shared by the two preceding epochs. The earlier of these, the Pleistocene, means the epoch that is, “mostly (pleistos/πλεĩστος) new (-cene).” Charles Lyell coined this name based on mollusk fossils in strata he was studying in Sicily: a high proportion of these mollusk species (∼70% or “most,” i.e., pleistos) were still extant (“new,” -cene) in his time (Wilmarth, 1925).

The subsequent Holocene is based on the same naming logic as the Pleistocene. Its name means “completely (holos/ὅλος) new (-cene)” because the fossils preserved in the geological formations of this epoch are of species that do not predate Homo sapiens (Gervais, 1847). Therefore, the difference in naming between the Holocene and Pleistocene is quantitative rather than qualitative: “all” of the fossils found in Holocene strata are as “new” as anatomically modern human beings, while “most” of the fossils in Pleistocene strata are as “new” as humans. For both, the -cene part refers to the novelty of nonhuman fossils. In other words, the novelty belongs to other species, while humans are simply the reference point.

Although the Anthropocene reproduces the -cene component of the prior epochs, it represents a radical change in naming logic and a kind of novelty unique in the Cenozoic Era. In the Pleistocene and Holocene, humanity served as the passive metric of novelty; in the Anthropocene, humanity becomes the collective agent of novelty. Rather than fossils of other species being new in relation to human beings, it is humanity as a whole that actively determines a new epoch for the planet. The Earth is made “new” in the Anthropocene through human activity.

This etymological transformation to an unprecedented type of novelty highlights the key quality of the Anthropocene: rupture with the past. As historian Julia Adeney Thomas has expressed, Bigger and more shocking [than “climate change”], the Anthropocene encapsulates the evidence that human pressures became so profound around the middle of the 20th century that we blew a planetary gasket (Adeney Thomas, 2019).

Taken together the Great Acceleration and the Anthropocene treat the emergence of globalized humanity as an alarming disruption in geological and world history (Hamilton, 2017; Haraway, 2016). Anthropocene accounts tend to emphasize this sense of rupture and the widespread instability associated with the course of the Great Acceleration, especially human destabilization of deep time global features such as climate, atmospheric composition, and species distribution and diversity.

But the anthropos/ἄνθρωπος portion of the term points toward another equally important quality. Unlike the pleisto- or holo- of the prior epochs, which conveyed quantity/proportion (“most” or “completely”), anthropo- serves to highlight the new protagonist: the “human being” (anthropos).

It is worthwhile to consider what this word indicates about the nature of the protagonist. Anthropos was a generic term in ancient Greek. Like the English word “human,” anthropos does not register differences in gender, race, or ethnicity. This generic quality means that anthropos can symbolically consolidate the billions of diverse human beings into one abstract but active figure. The term Anthropocene accordingly implies that all human beings have participated in causing geological rupture, an immense generalization which has sparked important debates over responsibility, equity, and climate justice (Hecht, 2018; Malm & Hornborg, 2014). The Anthropocene therefore reconfigures human commonality into a destructive planetary-scale personification (a “who” rather than a “what”): the figure of “humanity” casts the Earth into this new geologic age, like the Titan Atlas throwing the world from his shoulders.

At the same time, the word anthropos tones down the ontological significance of a globalized humankind. From its earliest recorded appearances in Homer the word was frequently used in opposition to the Greek theos/θεός, the word for the divine (Liddell et al., 1996). Unlike the gods, anthropos is metaphysically limited. Thus, the term Anthropocene exhibits a particular tension: it presents humanity as a radically new figure of planetary force, as a world-changing figure without precedent, but it denies this titanic humanity a corresponding metaphysical significance. The collective protagonist of the Anthropocene is equipped with untold material power, is able to use technology to deeply transform the Earth, and is in some sense ethically liable for the changes that occur, but the name of anthropos persists as a reminder that our planetary impact has physical but not metaphysical import.

Similarly, human culture and consciousness lose some of their salience in Anthropocene accounts of the Great Acceleration. Culture and consciousness, qualities which have resisted straightforward description in terms of matter and energy, tend to be assumed as part of the backdrop of humanity in the Anthropocene. The primary focus of the Anthropocene is the human-driven rupture of planetary matter and energy cycles, rather than the emergence of globalized human culture and new modes of thought. The material aspects and effects of anthropos remain at the center of the Anthropocene.

This twin emphasis on rupture and materiality combines to give Anthropocene discourse a predominantly negative evaluative charge. If humanity now drastically disrupts the Earth system in entangled ways, and if its ability to manipulate matter and harness energy is the main defining characteristic of the anthropos, then it is unclear how this collective protagonist can avoid bringing catastrophe on itself and other species. Perhaps human culture and consciousness, or a sense of greater significance, would allow the anthropos to learn to balance or redirect the technologically amplified destabilization of the Earth system, but these are the very features of the collective protagonist that are pushed to the background in the Anthropocene framework. Consequently, the prospect of such balance remains dim and the arrival of the new geological epoch appears ruinous for the living world.

The etymology of the Anthropocene highlights how it became the paradigm home to those narratives sounding the alarm about the sudden anthropogenic environmental, energetic, and material disturbance of the Earth in the 70 years of the Great Acceleration. The Anthropocene framework continues to be critical for mobilizing attention to human-driven rupture but a way through the crisis created by humanity as anthropos is difficult to discern within it."

(https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EF001917)

More Information

• Worlding

Articles

* Article: A Genealogy of the Anthropocene. The End of Risk and Limits. By Pierre Charbonnier. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales Volume 72, Issue 2, 2017, pages 301 to 328 The English edition of this journal is available at [1]

URL = https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-annales-2017-2-page-301.htm

"Our goal here will be to explain the emergence of this intellectual paradigm and assess the conditions for such a theoretical endeavor to succeed."

• Steffen, W. et al. 2011. The Anthropocene: From global change to planetary stewardship. AMBIO 40: 739-761. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-011-0185-x

Bibliography

"Authors like Hamilton, Stengers, Bruno Latour, and Donna Haraway, have made great efforts to conceptualise the radically altered human-nature relationship – to a point even at which we can no longer speak of a human-nature dichotomy at all. Most of these efforts are aimed at ‘worlding’ a new world; drawing up a new narrative framework in which the principal actor of the Anthropocene – the human – is no longer understood as the ruler of the world (and nature no longer as a passive backdrop). The irony in this is that it is our own power that ultimately forced us to awkwardly acknowledge a limitation of power in favour of the natural forces." [2]

Compiled by jasonmk1 [3]

Albert, Rosa M. “Anthropocene and Early Human Behavior.” The Holocene 25, no. 10 (October 1, 2015): 1542–52. doi:10.1177/0959683615588377.

Arias-Maldonado, Manuel. “Rethinking Sustainability in the Anthropocene.” Environmental Politics 22, no. 3 (May 1, 2013): 428–46. doi:10.1080/09644016.2013.765161.

Asouti, Eleni, Ceren Kabukcu, Chantel E. White, Ian Kuijt, Bill Finlayson, and Cheryl Makarewicz. “Early Holocene Woodland Vegetation and Human Impacts in the Arid Zone of the Southern Levant.” The Holocene 25, no. 10 (October 1, 2015): 1565–80. doi:10.1177/0959683615580199.

Barnosky, A. D. “Palaeontological Evidence for Defining the Anthropocene.” Geological Society, London, Special Publications 395, no. 1 (May 14, 2014): 149–65. doi:10.1144/SP395.6.

Bhaduri, Anik, Janos Bogardi, Jan Leentvaar, and Sina Marx. The Global Water System in the Anthropocene: Challenges for Science and Governance. Springer, 2014.

Biermann, Frank. Earth System Governance: World Politics in the Anthropocene. MIT Press, 2014.

Braje, Todd J., and Jon M. Erlandson. “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Humans, Anthropogenic Change, and the Anthropocene.” Anthropocene, When Humans Dominated the Earth: Archeological Perspectives on the Anthropocene, 4 (December 2013): 116–21. doi:10.1016/j.ancene.2014.05.002.

Brewington, Seth, Megan Hicks, Ágústa Edwald, Árni Einarsson, Kesara Anamthawat-Jónsson, Gordon Cook, Philippa Ascough, et al. “Islands of Change vs. Islands of Disaster: Managing Pigs and Birds in the Anthropocene of the North Atlantic.” The Holocene 25, no. 10 (October 1, 2015): 1676–84. doi:10.1177/0959683615591714.

Butzer, Karl. “Anthropocene as an Evolving Paradigm.” The Holocene 25, no. 10 (October 1, 2015): 1539–41. doi:10.1177/0959683615594471.

Castree, Noel. “Geography and the Anthropocene II: Current Contributions.” Geography Compass 8, no. 7 (July 1, 2014): 450–63. doi:10.1111/gec3.12140.

———. “The Anthropocene and Geography III: Future Directions.” Geography Compass 8, no. 7 (July 1, 2014): 464–76. doi:10.1111/gec3.12139.

———. “The Anthropocene and Geography I: The Back Story.” Geography Compass 8, no. 7 (July 1, 2014): 436–49. doi:10.1111/gec3.12141.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35, no. 2 (2009): 197–222.

Crumley, Carole, Sofia Laparidou, Monica Ramsey, and Arlene M. Rosen. “A View from the Past to the Future: Concluding Remarks on the ‘The Anthropocene in the Longue Durée.’” The Holocene 25, no. 10 (October 1, 2015): 1721–23. doi:10.1177/0959683615594473.

Crutzen, P. J. “The ‘Anthropocene.’” In Journal de Physique IV (Proceedings), 12:1–5, 2002.

Crutzen, P. J., and W. Steffen. “How Long Have We Been in the Anthropocene Era?” Climatic Change 61, no. 3 (2003): 251–57.

Dalby, S. “Anthropocene Geopolitics: Globalisation, Empire, Environment and Critique.” Geography Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 103–18.

Davis, Robert. “Inventing the Present: Historical Roots of the Anthropocene.” Earth Sciences History 30, no. 1 (December 2011): 63–84.

Edgeworth, Matt, Jeffrey Benjamin, Bruce Clarke, Zoe Crossland, Ewa Domanska, Alice Claire Gorman, Paul Graves-Brown, et al. “Archaeology of the Anthropocene.” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1, no. 1 (2014): 73–132.

Ellis, Erle C. “Anthropogenic Transformation of the Terrestrial Biosphere.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (March 13, 2011): 1010–35. doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0331.

Ellis, Michael A., and Zev Trachtenberg. “Which Anthropocene Is It to Be? Beyond Geology to a Moral and Public Discourse.” Earth’s Future 2, no. 2 (February 1, 2014): 122–25. doi:10.1002/2013EF000191.

Hamilton, Clive, François Gemenne, and Christophe Bonneuil. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch. Routledge, 2015.

Heringman, Noah. “Deep Time at the Dawn of the Anthropocene.” Representations 129, no. 1 (2015): 56–85. doi:10.1525/rep.2015.129.1.56.

Jonsson, Fredrik Albritton. “The Industrial Revolution in the Anthropocene.” The Journal of Modern History 84, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 679–96. doi:10.1086/666049.

Klingan, Katrin, Ashkan Sepahvand, Christoph Rosol, and Bernd M. Scherer, eds. Textures of the Anthropocene: Grain Vapor Ray. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015.

Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519, no. 7542 (March 12, 2015): 171–80. doi:10.1038/nature14258.

Lorimer, Jamie. “Multinatural Geographies for the Anthropocene.” Progress in Human Geography 36, no. 5 (October 1, 2012): 593–612. doi:10.1177/0309132511435352.

Malm, Andreas, and Alf Hornborg. “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative.” The Anthropocene Review 1, no. 1 (January 7, 2014): 62-69. doi:10.1177/2053019613516291.

Meybeck, Michel. “Riverine Quality at the Anthropocene: Propositions for Global Space and Time Analysis, Illustrated by the Seine River.” Aquatic Sciences-Research Across Boundaries 64, no. 4 (2002): 376–93.

Moore, Jason W. Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. New York: Verso, 2015.* Purdy, Jedediah. After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene. Harvard, 2015.

Robin, L., and W. Steffen. “History for the Anthropocene.” History Compass 5, no. 5 (2007): 1694–1719.

Rockström, Johan, Will Steffen, Kevin Noone, Åsa Persson, F. Stuart Chapin, Eric F. Lambin, Timothy M. Lenton, et al. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature 461, no. 7263 (2009): 472–75.

Ruddiman, William F. “The Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis: Challenges and Responses.” Reviews of Geophysics 45, no. 4 (December 1, 2007): RG4001. doi:10.1029/2006RG000207.

Scranton, Roy. Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2015.

Steffen, W., J. Grinevald, P. Crutzen, and J. McNeill. “The Anthropocene: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 842–67.

Steffen, Will, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney, and Cornelia Ludwig. “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration.” The Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (January 16, 2015), 81-98. doi:10.1177/2053019614564785.

Steffen, Will, J Crutzen, and John R McNeill. “The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?” Ambio 36, no. 8 (December 2007): 614–21.

Steffen, Will, A. Sanderson, P.D. Tyson, J. Jäger, P.A. Matson, F. Oldfield, K. Richardson, H.J. Schellnhuber, B.L. Turner II, and R.J. Wasson. Global Change and the Earth System: A Planet Under Pressure. Berlin: Springer, 2005.

Steffen, Will, A.A. Persson, L. Deutsch, J. Zalasiewicz, M. Williams, K. Richardson, C. Crumley, et al. “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship.” AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment, 2011, 1–23.

Thomas, Julia Adeney. “History and Biology in the Anthropocene: Problems of Scale, Problems of Value.” The American Historical Review 119, no. 5 (December 1, 2014): 1587–1607. doi:10.1093/ahr/119.5.1587.

Tickell, C. “Societal Responses to the Anthropocene.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (2011): 926–32.

Vince, Gaia. Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2014. Williams, Mark, Jan Zalasiewicz, P. K. Haff, Christian Schwägerl, Anthony D. Barnosky, and Erle C. Ellis. “The Anthropocene Biosphere.” 2, no. 3 The Anthropocene Review (June 18, 2015): 196-219. doi:10.1177/2053019615591020.

Zalasiewicz, Jan, Colin N. Waters, Mark Williams, Anthony D. Barnosky, Alejandro Cearreta, Paul Crutzen, Erle Ellis, et al. “When Did the Anthropocene Begin? A Mid-Twentieth Century Boundary Level Is Stratigraphically Optimal.” Quaternary International 383 (October 2015): 196–203. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045.

Zalasiewicz, Jan, Mark Williams, Richard Fortey, Alan Smith, Tiffany L. Barry, Angela L. Coe, Paul R. Bown, et al. “Stratigraphy of the Anthropocene.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (March 13, 2011): 1036–55. doi:10.1098/rsta.2010.0315.

Zalasiewicz, Jan, Mark Williams, Alan Haywood, and Michael Ellis. “The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 369, no. 1938 (March 13, 2011): 835–41.

Zalasiewicz, Jan, Mark Williams, A. Smith, T. L. Barry, A. L. Coe, P. R. Bown, P. Brenchley, et al. “Are We Now Living in the Anthropocene.” GSA Today 18, no. 2 (2008): 4–8.