Enter ‘The Anthropocene’ or ‘The End’.

Jules Renard once remarked, “I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.” God’s conspicuous absence from the natural world needn’t deter us from asking what an omniscient, omnipotent, all-merciful deity would want humans to do with our imminent God-like powers. For we’re on the brink of a momentous evolutionary transition in the history of life on Earth.

‘The Manhattan Project’ – 1942, the first atomic bomb built during World War II. Destroyed whole cities, killed millions, and jeopardised the natural world and lives of future generations through its devastating effects. Many anthropologists believe that plutonium (from these weapons, and industrial activities through the decades), has left such a mark on the planet, that it might have changed the course of the Earth’s climate altogether.

Enter, ‘The Anthropocene’ – a new geological epoch proposed and characterised by significant human impact on Earth’s systems, said to have begun in 1950.

From industrialization and hydrogen bombs, to species extinction and biodiversity loss – How does one describe the Anthropocene? Or simply put, the beginning of the human era on Planet Earth. Well, the previous epoch or the ‘Holocene’, goes back about 11,700 years to when the last Ice Age ended. Think of it… the entire human civilization – as we know it today – has evolved in that period of time. During the Holocene and until recently, the earth’s climate has been relatively stable… but then came the Anthropocene.

Of recent years, many anthropologists and geologists have been searching for a specific site to define the start of this new epoch. After many months of research and expeditions, they might have just found their strongest contender. Lake Crawford in Ontario, Canada. A unique geological setting with annual layering of sediments, Lake Crawford presented very clear indications of vast changes in the Earth caused by human activity. There is no other lake like it on the planet… But what is it about this lake, that holds the key to so many mysteries about this period of history?

Well, the Great Acceleration is sort of the turn that described extraordinary changes after World War II – due to manufacturing, plastic production, and population rise. Consequently, there was a rise in nitrate levels in the ocean, and it was a period of time when humans became a geological superpower. We impacted land, air, water, and were the dominant force on the planet. All of this is recorded in the sediments of this lake… incontrovertible evidence of human impact on planet earth. No escaping it now!

Humans believe themselves to be the only sentient beings on the planet. But all that intelligence and intellect comes with its fair share of ego, don’t you think? And it makes me believe we should understand what makes us so superior that we get an entire epoch named after… us.

The word Anthropocene comes from the Greek terms for human (‘anthropo’) and new (‘cene’). Coined in the 1980s, it was then popularised in 2000 by atmospheric chemist Paul J Crutzen and diatom researcher Eugene F Stoermer.

But the real question is – what have we humans achieved to claim this new epoch ours? What changes have we made that have propelled us headfirst into a new stage of evolution?

Human Achievements contributing to the Anthropocene:

As of 2022, experts believe that the Earth is in the midst of its 6th Mass Extinction, the previous having taken place 6.5 million years ago – and wiping the dinosaurs off the face of Planet Earth. Earth is a place where every existence has a reason, is rational, and interdependent. This intertwines species to hold the existing system together collectively. If we continue to lose species at a rate this rapid, we risk throwing ourselves into the turmoil and imbalance of a world without these creatures. With biodiversity declines greatly exceeding the levels of increase, nearly 50 per cent of the animal population across all strata is being driven towards extinction — and eventually towards mass extinction.

Burning fossil fuels, Deforestation, and Land use changes have all increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Agriculture, Urbanization, Industrial pollution, Overfishing, Ocean Acidification, Overconsumption, Overexploitation and the list goes on. While the guiding principles of human progress seem to be Technological progress, Population growth, Increased production and Consumption – does it have to come at this cost to our planet?

In my quest to understand this, I discovered a new word today – speciesism. The belief in the intrinsic superiority of the human species over all others, often accompanied by an assumption that human beings are therefore justified in exploiting non-human animals for their own advantage. Compare ableism, ageism, ethnocentrism , racism, sexism and all the other ‘isms’ that my school evangelizes these days. Some how all of these ‘isms’ don’t seem to account for the innumerable creatures we are destroying even before I knew they existed.

If we reject speciesism-the belief in human superiority-and accept that we are animals too, irrevocably interconnected to other species, from the largest elephant to the smallest bee, and a part of, rather than holding dominance over, nature, we can take the necessary steps towards the betterment of all the planet’s inhabitants.

#savetheEarth #crawfordlake #geology #ClimateAction #anthropocene #nowornever #onechance #environment #climatechange #myonepercent #shalmalisirsi