Hello Anthropocene

I was taken by this weeks Economist cover story: Welcome to the Anthropocene. It's a new term that is being banded around by scientists to refer to the current epoch in the Earth's history which is primarily shaped by the heavy hand of humans, contrasting against the relatively stable Holocene epoch – in which we officially live - which only began 10, 000 years ago. What particularly struck me was an example that they opened with, 'a single engineering project, the Syncrude mine in the Athabasca tar sands, involves moving 30 billion tonnes of earth – twice the amount of sediment that flows down all the rivers in the world in a year'. BOOM! Environmental scientists tend to refer to minute percentage increases and distant timescales, not a whopping 30 billion tonnes of rock! I suppose it's the tangibility of the Anthropocene concept that really gets me, it emphasises the digging, scraping, damming, stripping, polluting reality of the situation. Just imagine the architect that digs up our the remnants of civilisation in 100,000 years: characterising us by a strange fondness of concrete, tarmac and obscure fridge mountains; the modern day Stonehenge perhaps?!

Some excitable geologists are already heralding the Antropocene as a paradigm shift in modern scientific thought, on par with the likes of Copernicus, Hutton and Darwin. Whilst I think this is a tad OTT, embracing the idea would undoubtedly require us to reconceptualise how humans are viewed in natural sciences, not as inconsequential observers, but as geological architects.

This is all very well, but the big question remains: will a so-called paradigm shift steer our relationship with the Earth towards a more sustainable, harmonious coexistence? A concept alone will do nothing unless it is widely accepted, adopted and integrated into scientific thought, literature and communication. I'm under no illusion that doing this will revolutionise the situation overnight, however, sometimes the simple action of thinking about an issue differently can click with people. For instance, the change in thought about drink driving not as a personal challenge – I can handle it, don't worry – but as increasing the chance of accidently killing someone else's child, puts it in a different light. In some respects the same goes for smoking. Just think how our modern way of thought has gradually grown to condemn these previously tolerable issues. So what am I getting at? Well, if we start to rethink our relationship with Earth not as an all-providing, tolerant Mother; but as a partner, then maybe, just maybe it might put us in the right frame of mind to move towards a more sustainable future.