“Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language.”
April 2, 2016 12:55 PM   Subscribe

Generation Anthropocene: How Humans Have Altered the Planet for Ever. by Robert Macfarlane [The Guardian] We are living in the Anthropocene age, in which human influence on the planet is so profound – and terrifying – it will leave its legacy for millennia. Politicians and scientists have had their say, but how are writers and artists responding to this crisis?
posted by Fizz (33 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 


Albrecht’s solastalgia is one of the bureau’s terms, along with “stieg”, “apex-guilt” and “shadowtime”, the latter meaning “the sense of living in two or more orders of temporal scale simultaneously” – an acknowledgment of the out-of-jointness provoked by Anthropocene awareness.

Predating all of these, and more important: OVERSHOOT
posted by crazylegs at 1:10 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


"Aeons" might be a more appropriate word than "millennia." The great eras of life on Earth are the Precambrian, Paleozoic (early), Mesozoic (middle), and Cenozoic (new). For a story my wife once coined Telozoic (future) for the era that we are creating. It will likely be as different from the Cenozoic as the Cenozic was from the Mesozoic, which was of course ruled by dinosaurs.
posted by Bringer Tom at 1:21 PM on April 2, 2016


which was of course ruled by dinosaurs.

...who, of course, never gave a second thought that they would always be around. We are different in our ability to give a second thought, but it's still doubtful whether we have evolutionarily progressed enough to do something about it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:47 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


...who, of course, never gave a second thought that they would always be around.

Are you really sure of that? Humans developed technology in the temperate climate of Europe, where it was warm enough for agriculture but cold enough to require technological assistance to live. 65 Mya most of the Earth's land was tropical, and infested with three story tall carnivorous monsters. Only one continent at the time had the kind of climate that might have encouraged the development of technology. And that continent was the one we now call Antarctica.

I have a pet theory that there were intelligent dinosaurs, confined to the one continent not infested with building-sized killing machines, and they were spacefaring. Since accessing resources on Earth was a bit of a problem they decided to move an asteroid into orbit to provide a platform and raw materials, but something went wrong, and today the fossils of their enterprise are buried under two miles of ice.
posted by Bringer Tom at 2:04 PM on April 2, 2016 [22 favorites]


Well let's just not go digging for them, because that always seems to go wrong.
posted by pipeski at 2:32 PM on April 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


I feel like someone must have written that novel, Bringer Tom.
posted by tavella at 2:39 PM on April 2, 2016


Recent publications indicate that they will recommend the designation of the Anthropocene, and that the “stratigraphically optimal” temporal limit will be located somewhere in the mid-20th century.

All of modern history counts as the anthropocene: the first indelible evidence of humans on earth came in 1610.

I think that makes these kind of reflections both more and less awe-inspiring. It's even more awe-inspiring because the first time we made our mark was by dying en masse: 50 million people died, their farms were reclaimed by forests and jungles, and the planet took note. But on the other hand it indicates that we've almost always been making an impact: the rise of agriculture was impactful enough that its sudden cessation in the Americas is recorded in the geological record.

The epoch that starts in the mid-twentieth century really makes more sense as the plasticene or a nuclear age. The contemporary stuff that the stratigraphers argue marks this new age are actually still demonstrating bit too much of a presentist bias: they're not thinking in "deep time" if they're just focusing on carbon emissions, which after all are very important but could easily have been outweighed (and briefly were outweighed) by other anthropogenic climate changes like CFCs destroying the ozone layer.
posted by anotherpanacea at 2:48 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I have a pet theory that there were intelligent dinosaurs, confined to the one continent not infested with building-sized killing machines, and they were spacefaring. Since accessing resources on Earth was a bit of a problem they decided to move an asteroid into orbit to provide a platform and raw materials, but something went wrong, and today the fossils of their enterprise are buried under two miles of ice.

Space-faring Antarctic dinosaurs, eh?
posted by clockzero at 2:55 PM on April 2, 2016


That's what Hitler was looking for down there.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:05 PM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I feel like someone must have written that novel, Bringer Tom.

Thirty years ago I did write an outline for a novel that would be called Artifacts. It would have been in five sections, each about a sentient species discovering the remains of one that came before them in geological time. Chapter three was the dinosaurs, who discovered the cause of the Cambrian Explosion before their own asteroid mishap, and chapter four would have been us discovering the ruined dinosaur civilization under the Antarctic ice sheet. The last chapter would have been the race, evolved from our domestic animals that survived the final human war, which went on to explore the stars.

It turned out to be a terribly ambitious project and I ended up writing The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect instead.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:05 PM on April 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


Humans developed technology in the temperate climate of Europe

Someone on the internet is wrong.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 3:30 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Someone on the internet is wrong.

Agriculture was invented several times, but scaleable engines with precision moving parts were only invented once, in Europe, and the climate had a great deal to do with that. If you have an alternate theory I'm sure we would all love to hear it.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:36 PM on April 2, 2016


I have a pet theory that there were intelligent dinosaurs, confined to the one continent not infested with building-sized killing machines, and they were spacefaring. Since accessing resources on Earth was a bit of a problem they decided to move an asteroid into orbit to provide a platform and raw materials, but something went wrong, and today the fossils of their enterprise are buried under two miles of ice.

How fortuitous that we are melting that icecap and will be able to recover all of that ancient technology in just a few years.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:49 PM on April 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


They were only invented once because news of this invention traveled globally.

Oh please. The Romans invented indoor plumbing, and they had the chance (and actually took it) to spread it far and wide, and the whole idea was forgotten with the collapse of their empire. Numerous civilizations figured out complex irrigation schemes for agriculture, many of them overrun and forgotten after climate shifts. The particular technology which begat our modern world began in the 17th century with the Newcomen steam engine, and it was a very particular product of that climate and skill set.

Of course the tech necessary to make the Newcomen engine had been developed several times, because it was the tech of war, of sword and knife and weapon-making. But it was in Europe where that tech was also able to burn trees to draw water, and that being such a successful endeavour lead to James Watt and *cough* the rest of it.

The Roman empire lasted longer than our civilization has so far and had all of the essential seed ingredients, but it did not develop the path to motorcars, space travel, and iPhones. The climate in Italy is just a bit too congenial.

As for the rest of the world, they either had no resources, no spare energy after survival imperatives, or no reason to bother.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:11 PM on April 2, 2016




E O Wilson brings up the idea of social, intelligent dinosaurs and how they wouldn't have left any more of a fossil imprint than the dinosaurs we know did exist in The Social Conquest of Earth.
posted by 3urypteris at 10:33 PM on April 2, 2016


Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilisation

But even besides that, I would be surprised if piping water into and out of buildings wasn't invented in the mists of pre-history in a place where bamboo grows, but simply didn't leave any archaeological evidence.
posted by XMLicious at 4:26 AM on April 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


> "As for the rest of the world, they either had no resources, no spare energy after survival imperatives, or no reason to bother."

This is completely silly.

Sure, countries outside of Europe developed firearms, the navigational compass, paper, printing, the umbrella, porcelain, the wheelbarrow, iron casting, hot air balloons, seismographs, kites, matches, stirrups, the chain drive, rocket bombs with aerodynamic wings and explosive payloads, rocket driven torpedoes, the vertical-axle windmill, mercuric chloride as a disinfectant, the guitar, I could go on for a really really long time here ...

But a STEAM ENGINE? My goodness, they were just too tired.
posted by kyrademon at 5:07 AM on April 3, 2016 [12 favorites]


You can ask why it took 5000 years (or insert your favourite number here if you disagree) to come up with the hot air balloon, when the components and the utility existed. And, once you've got the ability to draw wire (which was, I think, a Neolithic thing; the ancient Egyptians certainly had it for jewelry) you can communicate over long distances instantaneously. Which is really useful if you have to send your bods around the place biffing other bods, a major pastime back then.

What happened in the English Industrial Revolution was a complicated intersection of lots of factors, and I don't pretend to have the canonical explanation of exactly why it kicked off. But it started various feedback systems that encouraged the exponential development of new technologies, where you didn't stop once you'd 'solved' a particular problem but were motivated to find better solutions, or a way of bypassing old approaches altogether. I think thats the first time this has happened - perhaps you could point to medieval warfare or naval tech - in general civilian life. The thing about exponentials is they don't stop until something is exhausted - and the key something for this, so far, has been human ingenuity. (Which is why I think the Singularity wonks, although wrong, are better than 'not even wrong'.)

How well that will work as the climate and environment changes is a good question, and one I guess we in general will find out as we go along. It's possible to feel different ways about this, from full-on planetary crisis to it being the sort of thing that happens anyway, but yeah - we can't go back and we can't stand still.
posted by Devonian at 7:25 AM on April 3, 2016


What optimism, to declare that there is to be a whole new epoch dominated by human beings...
posted by Segundus at 8:23 AM on April 3, 2016


I've been running into this concept for the last several years in various forms, but this article does a good job of synthesizing all these different takes on the theme.

three main objections recur: that the idea of the Anthropocene is arrogant, universalist and capitalist-technocratic.

That's a pretty good description of one of the ways technology is being discussed in this thread, and the environmental determinism/Jared Diamond component of this needs to be challenged.

For one thing, in its enlightenment origins this concept often was used as coded racism that justified colonialism. For another, defining the steam engine as the beginning of technology is . . . not without controversy, as kyrademon ably demonstrates. This definition is quite arbitrary in a discussion of the Anthropocene. As pointed out above, much older agricultural technologies related to irrigation probably led to the first geological impacts of the human era.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:49 AM on April 3, 2016


Humans developed technology in the temperate climate of Europe...

I have also read books by Jared Diamond.
posted by jnnla at 8:58 AM on April 3, 2016


Oh please. The Romans invented indoor plumbing, and they had the chance (and actually took it) to spread it far and wide, and the whole idea was forgotten with the collapse of their empire.

This took me 2 seconds to find via Google. In terms of the technology being forgotten, I assume you are discounting the various Islamic, Indian and Chinese empires that existed between 400-1600AD and had indoor plumbing, or does it not count for some reason if they aren't european?
posted by tinkletown at 1:17 PM on April 3, 2016


What is silly is pretending that there is not, in fact, something unique about what happened in Europe in the late Middle Ages which created a never before seen technological explosion. Other societies had bits and pieces but none ever ran with it the way those people did.

The Chinese had gunpowder and rockets but never turned them into practical firearms or battlefield weapons. Many civilizations had irrigation and even (as tinkletown notes) various degrees of personal plumbing, but none ever driven by pumps or with the extent or reliability of what even the Romans did.

The Greeks had toy steam engines but never drove a vehicle with such a power source. Everyone made thread and cloth but nobody automated either process. The Aztecs had one of the most advanced civilizations on Earth but they didn't even bother to make practical vehicles with wheels.

Ray Bradbury notwithstanding flight was invented twice in Europe and never anywhere else. Balloons were put to practical use as observation platforms in the American Civil War. As with firearms, which did not convincingly obsolete the sword and trebuchet until several rounds of trial and improvement, both lighter and heavier than air flight went from toys to demonstrations to practical use within a generation or two in Europe. Other societies had all the clues -- the Chinese were very big on kites of course -- but nobody connected the dots.

Why?

It's very interesting to ask what kept the Greeks and Romans from doing what the English would do 1,500 years later. The big card there seems to have been slavery. The Greek and Roman societies were hugely and intimately dependent on slavery, and they were able to be so dependent because they had both a plentiful food supply to feed the slaves and easy supply lines for people to capture to make them slaves. When you have slaves and consider a slave a valuable possession rather than a liability, the idea of developing expensive and finicky automation to replace the slave's labor would seem rather silly.

While all the elemets for modern technology appeared numerous times, the thread that created this technology required a convergence of several very unrelated things. You can't make practical firearms or piston heat engines without precision fabrication. While you can make a piston fit a bore with jigs and shortcuts you can't do it reliably or make the parts replaceable without precision measurement. (The latter trick is literally called the "American system of manufacture" and dates to the early 19th century.)

Wire, mentioned above, was never made in great lengths until wire drawing machines were perfected in the middle ages. Using that wire for communication required a knowledge of electricity, which was not achieved until relatively subtle forces were investigated and extended in the 18th and 19th centuries. Again, it all comes down to Europe and later the US. All of this required an obsession and particular type of curiosity about the mechanisms of the natural world which doesn't seem to have existed in any previous culture.

What seems particular about the civilizations that did these things is that they could farm a large amount of food to support a generous population, but doing so required a lot of effort and it wasn't such a large surplus that slaves were essentially free labor. It also left nearly everybody with nonproductive winter time to pursue what-if fancies. And from the 14th century or so a lot of those what-ifs seem to have involved automation both for war and manufacturing.

You can trace the explosion of technology through a number of paths and credit it seriously to several origins; I like the steam engine but you could also make a strong case from firearms or even looms. At any rate by the 18th century things were rolling in a way they never had been in all of human history, and they were rolling that way in only one place. We could also argue all day long about why that one place created what amounts to the whole modern world but that would also be silly. The fact is we find ourselves where we are. We have remade the world in ways our ancestors could hardly imagine, and in some ways that remaking is getting ready to bite us in the ass.

I like my wife's neologism of the "Telozoic" era a lot better than "Anthropecine." After all, we don't call the Cenozoic the Asteroidozoic because an asteroid impact made it. Humans are undoubtably the engine of the largest extinction since the K-T event. That is simply a fact. This does not mean, however, that we will rule the new era we have created. It could just mean that we will vaporize ourselves in the process.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:09 PM on April 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


No one is arguing that the European Renaissance and Industrial Revolution did not take place.

But your argument that:

(1) it only could possibly have happened where it did happen, in spite of previous and subsequent periods of massive and rapid technological advancement which happened elsewhere in the world, combined with your argument that:

(2) it occurred as a result of a particular combination of climate and available resources, in spite of the fact that this combination was and is not unique to that particular place and time in any way but can also be found in vast areas of other continents, and in spite of the fact that some of the aforementioned other periods of rapid development occurred in such a situation and some did not, combined with the fact that based on your most recent post:

(3) many of your reasons for believing this appear to be based on half-truths or outright falsehoods (E.g.: rather than the Chinese never turning gunpowder into practical battlefield weapons, "The Chinese wasted little time in applying gunpowder to the development of weapons, and ... produced a variety of gunpowder weapons, including flamethrowers, rockets, bombs, and land mines, before inventing guns as a projectile weapon"), which taken all together says to me that:

yes, your theory is in fact kind of silly and really nothing more than a just-so story.
posted by kyrademon at 3:53 PM on April 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Kyrademon, all I have to say is, if the Chinese developed gunpowder into practical weapons, where were those weaons when they met the West? The Chinese made toys. Sometimes they may have pointed those toys at their enemies but they were never real weapons. Making gunpowder power a real weapon requires precision manufacture, as several generations of would-be gunsmiths in the West found out before they actually managed to make swords and trebuchets obsolete.

As far as the influences being important, the fact remains that it only happened once in one place, despite the pieces being available to many other previous cultures. Unless you can point to the ancient civilizations that managed to do space travel and iPhones, it's all unique to this wave.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:14 PM on April 3, 2016


So what you're saying is that instead of calling it the Anthropocene we should be calling it the Anglopocene?
posted by dng at 5:19 PM on April 3, 2016


the Anglopocene

You miss my entire point. Of course not. We will not rule this new era any more than the asteroid did that created the K-T mishap. We simply caused it. Modern technology may not be the primal cause; there is good reason to think that our ancestors created what future arechaeologists will ceratinly see as the extinction that ended the Cenozoic era. But we are in an interval of what will be at most a few centuries of easy technological achievement and we are using our skills to mostly make the situation worse instead of better.
posted by Bringer Tom at 5:28 PM on April 3, 2016


I was just making a crap joke. Sorry.
posted by dng at 5:28 PM on April 3, 2016


The Gunpowder Empires were built with the things you're calling toys, before the technology had received the blessing of the supposedly unique obsession and curiosity the gunsmiths of the West have in your narrative.

This reminds me of the reaction to the Benin Bronzes:
One of the first people to encounter the plaques, and to recognise their quality and their significance, was the British Museum curator Charles Hercules Read:

"It need scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find, and puzzled to account for so highly developed an art among a race so entirely barbarous."

Many wild theories were put forward. The plaques must have come from Ancient Egypt, or perhaps the people of Benin were one of the lost tribes of Israel. The sculptures must have derived from European influence - after all, these were the contemporaries of Michelangelo, Donatello and Cellini. But in fact, research quickly established that the Benin plaques were entirely West African creations, made without European influence.
posted by XMLicious at 6:51 PM on April 3, 2016






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