Contents Preface Acknowledgements List of illustrations 1 Origins 2 Earth system 3 Geologic time 4 The Great Acceleration 5 Anthropos 6 Oikos 7 Politikos 8 Prometheus
Chapter 1 Origins
‘We are in the Anthropocene!’ exclaimed Nobel-prize winning atmospheric
chemist Paul Crutzen in frustration at a conference in 2000. Why were his
colleagues still calling our time the Holocene? Humans had so clearly
reshaped Earth since the last ice age ended, the beginning of the Holocene
Epoch. From this moment on, the proposal to rename Earth’s current
interval of geological time after us, the Anthropos, has been gaining
extraordinary traction—and critics—both inside and outside the academy.
Why did such an esoteric geologic term rise so quickly to become a
flashpoint of scholarly discussion and a popular phenomenon around the
world? To understand this, it will help to look deeper, beyond the science,
into the origin stories told across human societies since time began.
From prehistory to present, the human role in nature—as progeny, partner,
steward, gardener, or destroyer—has been defined and redefined by
narratives explaining human emergence on Earth. Origin stories gave
humans a privileged place at the centre of divine creation in the Abrahamic
religions. Copernicus and Darwin built new narratives from scientific
evidence and humans became just another animal on just another planet
orbiting just another ordinary star.
The Anthropocene demands an even greater adjustment of our perspectives.
As geologists and others struggle for and against various proposals to
formalize the Anthropocene, it should come as no surprise that their efforts
have become entangled with both age-old worldviews and contemporary
debates on the role of humans in nature and even what it means to be
human.
|
