IDEA WATCH
The Anthropocene already exists in our heads
Even if it’s now officially not a geological epoch
By Kevin Collins
Let the best of Anthropocene come to you.
An international subcommitte of geologists recently voted to reject a proposal to make the Anthropocene an official new geological epoch, defined by humanity’s enormous impact on the planet. Assuming protests do not swiftly overturn the ruling, it will now take another decade for the decision to be reviewed.
Geology by definition is a long-term endeavor. Human affairs, on the other hand, are short-term, impatient, lurching forward in fits and starts. The Earth can wait, but we cannot. An idea like the Anthropocene is bigger, and moves much faster, than the rocks beneath our feet.
Nine years ago, I was in Munich, Germany, visiting friends. We went on a family outing to the Deutsches Museum, a world class celebration of technology and engineering in a vast building on an islet of the River Isar. The entrance was framed on either side by tall vertical banners, fluttering in the breeze.
Each blue-green banner had an image of the Earth with a thumbprint overlaid upon it. And in bold white lettering, variously: “Welcome to the Anthropocene/ Willkommen in Anthropozän.” The subtitle read: “The Earth in Our Hands.”
I had to forgo the exhibition because my family wanted to see just about anything else. But even as I stood on the steps at the entrance, with my young son clutching my hand, it struck me as a curious title.
Why would anyone welcome anyone to the Anthropocene? Who would really want to go to that smoky, overheated party? The invitation was, well, distinctly uninviting.
In moving away from geology, perhaps we should shift the terminology from “golden spike” to “golden thread”
I have thought about this troubling invitation on and off in the intervening years. Was “welcome” being ironic or even cynical perhaps—an invitation of despair and inevitability? But that contradicted the ethos of the museum and the non-profit Rachel Carson Center cohosting the exhibition, where insight, learning and practical science are celebrated. So my question has remained: why “welcome”?
I finally realized an answer during a recent conversation with my PhD student Houda Khayame, who is building on work between myself and colleague Ray Ison to explore how systems thinking and acting in the Anthropocene might improve governance of our environment. We were talking about how geologists have been searching for a “golden spike” in Earth’s geological record to mark the beginning of the Anthropocene, ever since the term was popularized in 2000.
Technically known as Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Points (GSSP), ‘golden spikes’ are agreed reference points which define the lower boundaries of geological eras. There are just over 100 of them around the world, in some cases marked with a physical spike driven into the strata. (The term golden spike derives from a ceremonial spike used to join the two halves of the USA transcontinental railway network in 1869.)
I found myself advising Houda that the only thing that really matters about the Anthropocene is that it reframes us as a part of the human-Earth dynamic. The evidence for the Anthropocene is not in the soil or mud or even in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The golden spike is to be found in our heads. It is in the way we think about our human relationship to Earth.
As soon as I said it, I realized I had the answer to the invitation that had been patiently waiting for a reply many years before in Munich. The invitation was to welcome the Anthropocene in a positive sense because until we do, we will not be in a position to alter our thinking to address global challenges as we change the planet.
To welcome the Anthropocene as an idea is to reframe our relationship with the planet and move away from being recipients of nature to being active creators of the world we live in.
In moving away from geology, I would also shift terminology from “golden spike” to “golden thread,” since this is both a more pleasing image if we are talking about heads and ideas and also less dependent on the measurement and graphics of science. Importantly, a thread connects the different parts of our lives, extending into a network that connects with others and the wider world.
This network can be very localized—a small group or family acting with awareness that their actions affect their collective environmental future. And it can spool out farther—to businesses recognizing their reliance on natural resources, or communities working together to improve their environmental conditions.
Regardless of scale, and even if ignored, hidden or denied, the comfortable or uncomfortable truth of the Anthropocene is that this unbreakable golden thread runs through ourselves, each other and all other life and processes on Earth.
And as we continue to degrade our environment, the effects ripple back through the network and deliver new, less appealing outcomes for humans and nature alike.
The subcommittee’s rejection of the Anthropocene is understandable in their need for clear scientific evidence. It may seem to be a missed opportunity, but all is not lost. How we live in and experience the world does not depend on a signal in the geological record.
Indeed, even in their official rejection, the International Union of Geological Scientists noted the Anthropocene as a concept is already part of popular culture, as evidenced by the museum exhibition and also by various artworks and books, not to mention this magazine you’re reading.
The extent to which the Anthropocene really exists depends on our recognition and acceptance of that golden thread that connects us in an active back-and-forth relationship with the Earth. Acceptance gives rise to a sense of responsibility that what we do matters. While we may now be in the driving seat, we are only slowly realizing the rules of the Anthropocene: the route we choose today determines our destination tomorrow.
The more we overexploit our environment, the narrower our options become for agriculture, commercial, and domestic use with far reaching implications for us and the environment. A holistic view suggests that we need to act to maximize rather than narrow our choice of possible futures. This means accepting and visualizing the threads of our networks so that we reshape and create more and more positive future
options through our everyday actions.
Although I regretted missing the exhibition, I realize now that I did not need to see it. The banner at the entrance was enough to spark the inquiry. Accepting its welcome offers us the potential to make golden strides in how we think about ourselves and our environment, and how we might all live more sustainably.
Welcome, at last, to the Anthropocene.
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Kevin Collins is a Senior Lecturer in Environment & Systems at The Open University, UK.
A version of this essay originally ran in The Conversation.
Top photo: dpa picture alliance/Alamy. Street art by JR.
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