Week 3: Welcome to The Anthropocene - Post 2

Welcome to The Anthropocene

          Environmental conditions on Earth can vary, but it's important to remember that even the slightest change leads to drastically different climate conditions. The global temperature on Earth has a usual variance of plus or minus four degrees. Four degrees may seem inconsequential, but that is the difference between two kilometers of ice above our heads, and the warm, lush environmental conditions that exist today. Up until the last 30 years humans have thrived in the Holocene. The Holocene is an extraordinarily stable phase for human development. The biomes and ecosystems of the world sustain and support the Holocene state of the world. Systems such as the rain forests that act as huge carbon sinks; the coral reef systems that regulate the resilience of the ocean which regulates heat and takes up carbon dioxide; the large permafrost regions that hold vast amounts of methane, the systems on the savannahs which regulate heat fluxes and rainfall trajectories. Scientists understand the Holocene. The Holocene is the desired state, but the evidence here today indicates that the Earth is in fact entering an entire new epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene denotes the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has become the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Society is in the driving seat. The Earth has moved from the desired state of the Holocene into the unstable and potentially hostile state of the Anthropocene, but there is still time to navigate away from the large risks ahead. Precaution must be operationalized as a guiding principal for human development going forward. Resilience thinking is the next step for humanity in living in the Anthropocene. It has a duel nature of both thinking about sustaining what we want to sustain, and building capacity to adapt or transform into something better. Resilience thinking is split into three main areas of action. The first is developing new understanding to cope with uncertainty, the unknown. Thinking about social, technical, and institutional ways to enable learning about sustainability and the environment. Then society must build resilience to the unexpected. Being prepared for the unexpected, be able to cope with the shocks and take advantage of the potentially positive surprises that come with the Anthropocene. Finally, humanity must develop a capacity to navigate change. Learning and change can be traumatic for everyone, but continuing life as it currently exists is not necessarily an option any more. Society must ensure there is some kind of broad social capacity to enhance the ability of people to navigate change, especially those who are marginalized or having these changes imposed on them. Resilience thinking is about finding fair, just and desirable ways to create this change. Now, in order for this change to be desirable there needs to be transition towards solution thinking. Thinking about the basic definition of sustainable development. In pop-culture often different forms of the future is represented. It is interesting that when looking at different visions of the future, one rarely finds positive outcomes.  In the last ten years there has been a boom of dystopian literature and film. Books like Cormac McCarthy's The Road to films like Mad Max. All these books and films where the biosphere has degraded and humanity is on it's way out. Envisioning the future where each person struggles to survive is not going to encourage society to look at what they are doing and their possible consequences. The Anthropocene challenges us to think about new ways of engineering infrastructure, economy, and society. This change ahead of humanity can be for the better. Imagine in fiction, in film, in all kinds of visual representations: what a world that is probably warmer, has different animals in it, and has different amounts of nutrients flowing through, what kind of world could that be? Not would it be, but could it be. What kind of world can humanity achieve? And what kind of things can people do to work towards it? There is no better blueprint for a positive future then by having a diversity of visions from all over the world. From Asia, Indigenous perspectives, from tropical climates to arid climates, urban perspectives, rural perspectives. As Professor Johan Rockstrom says "In the Anthropocene, the world is shaped by human action, and because human action is based upon people's worldview it is important to articulate what future they expect"
          If society can recognize that they are in the driving seat of changing, and defining the conditions for world development, it profoundly shifts the attention in terms of economic growth, in terms of social well being, in terms of development. Prominent ecologist Daniel Botkin said "Nature in the twenty-first century will be a nature that we make; the question is the degree to which this molding will be intentional or unintentional, desirable or undesirable." The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that humanity today constitutes the overriding force of change on planet Earth superseding the pace and magnitude of the natural changes, which have occurred over the past millions and billions of years, today the change is in pace and magnitude unprecedented. And this is the Anthropocene. Whether society likes it or not, humans have the opportunity to take responsibility in the Anthropocene, and navigate the situation into a positive future. Allowing for sustainable development within a safe operating space.