OCTOBER 16 2016
ANTHROPOCENE
You may have heard the word “Anthropocene.” It’s a relatively new word, coined by a Dutch scientist Paul Crutzen who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds.
Look at that word again. A bit of knowing Greek will tell you that it
comes from the Greek ‘anthropos’ which means ‘human being’, also found in ‘anthropology’, the science dealing with human behavior. The last 4 letters ‘cene’ is also of Greek origin, stemming from ‘kainos’ which means ‘new’. Thus the word stands for ‘the new human’ and we then have to extend it to ‘age’ or ‘period’. Thus freely transposed into ordinary parlor the sort of strange word ANTHROPOCENE really means: “the period or timeframe where we humans call the tune and are fully in charge.”
I associate the term ANTHROPOCENE with Psalm 115: 16. There it says that ‘THE HIGHEST HEAVENS belong to the Lord, but THE EARTH he has given to us humans.’
Oh, that Bible(!): confusing at times, because Psalm 24 says the opposite: “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples.” So what’s going on?
My guess is that the heavenly timetable is different from yours and mine. Often the Bible counts events which have not yet happened as something of the past. In heaven the past is the future and the future is the past. It is as if ‘time’ there is not a straight line, such as from year zero to infinity, or from creation to Christ and the cross to the New Creation. In heaven, time is more like a circle where the beginning is the End and the End is the beginning.
Yes, it is true, as related in Psalm 24 “the earth is the Lord’s”, just as Vincent van Gogh’s paintings always belong to him even though his descendants have long sold them to museums everywhere.
So, what then is true and what is false about the earth’s ownership? My bet is that both are true. God made the earth just as the St. Matthew Passion is forever associated with J. S. Bach but now is a world-treasure, or as the NIGHTWATCH is Rembrandt’s most famous painting but now belongs to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. So it is with the earth: forever the Lord’s but, with possession constituting 99 percent of ownership, we are the current owners.
And that is confirmed by the word ANTHROPOCENE.
Why that word?
Dr. Crutzen justified the term Anthropocene citing the following reasons:
1. Human activity has transformed between a third and a half of the land surface of the planet.
2. Most of the world’s major rivers have been dammed or diverted.
3. Fertilizer plants produce more nitrogen than is fixed naturally by all terrestrial ecosystems.
4. Fisheries remove more than a third of the primary productivity of the oceans’ coastal waters.
5. Humans use more than half of the world’s readily accessible fresh water runoff.
Let me take a closer look at item 1: Human activity has transformed between a third and a half of the land surface of the planet. That is called Primary Productivity which Dr. Crutzen estimated at some 40 percent, and he is not alone.
PRIMARY PRODUCTIVITY
Our efforts to change the make-up of the earth is connected to “Primary Productivity,” a concept indicating the total amount of plant mass created by Earth in a given year, the sum of earth’s plant energy that makes our lives possible. It is in essence “the total budget of life.” All humans and all animals eat either plants or eat animals that eat plants, and solar-powered photosynthesis is the only way to make this fuel. It is this very activity that is now in danger because we appropriating too much of what is.
When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, Primary Productivity was at its peak: 100 percent. People lived long, long lives.
After the Garden of Eden, the number of people rose quickly, starting agriculture and making cities possible of which Cain was the prime mover. As a result Primary Productivity started to decrease.
In our age of rapid population growth this phenomenon has accelerated with earth-breaking speed. Consider the following, as quoted from “The Ingenuity Gap” by Dr. Thomas Homer-Dixon.
“We are moving so much rock and dirt, blocking and diverting so many rivers, converting so many forests to cropland, releasing such huge quantities of heavy metals and organic chemicals into air and water, and generating so much energy, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen compounds that we are perturbing the deepest dynamics of our global ecosystems. Between one-third and one-half of the planet’s land area has been fundamentally transformed by our actions: row-crop agriculture, cities, and industrial areas occupy 10 to 15 percent of Earth’s land surface; 6 to 8 percent has been converted to pasture; and an area the size of France is now submerged under artificial reservoirs. We have driven to extinction a quarter of all bird species. We have used more than half of all accessible fresh water. In regions of major human activity, large rivers carry three times as much sediment as they did in pre-human times, while small rivers carry as much as eight times the sediment. Along the world’s tropical and subtropical coastlines, our activities – especially the construction of cities, industries and aquaculture pens – have changed or destroyed 50 percent of mangrove ecosystems, which are vital to the health of coastal fisheries. And about two-thirds of the world’s marine fisheries are either overexploited, depleted, or at their limit of exploitation.”
There have been two efforts to figure out how Primary Productivity is spent, one by a group at Stanford University, the other by biologist Stuart L. Pimm, Professor of biology at Duke University in Durham N.C. They both concluded that we humans consume about 40 percent of Earth Primary Productivity, 40 percent of all there is. That percentage may explain why the current extinction rate is 1,000 times that which existed before human domination of the planet.
An update.
These estimates were made some 10 years ago. Since then we have had China’s and India’s growth rapidly accelerating, FRACKING also has been on a fast track, coral reefs have deteriorated big time, while the earth’s temperature has risen by more than One Degree Celsius.
Primary Productivity, now approaching 50 percent simply means that we, the 7 billion plus, have simply stolen the food of all other creatures, the birds, the whales, the tunas, the frogs, the elephants. The list goes on and on. Anthropocene really means that, with humanity in charge, there is no place for all other creatures. Trump and his followers embody that phenomenon, horrible as it is. The very fact that this is the case actually means that in reality there also is no longer place for us, either, mainly thanks to the dehumanizing of technology.
Can we still function as people?
Last week the New York Times reported a conversation with a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who said with a kind of deadpan resignation: “You know we are designing a world that is not fit for people.” George Monbiot in an article in the GUARDIAN dealing with the loneliness caused by modern technology, concluded:
“It’s unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It’s more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.”
That’s why being an active member of a church group- any group actually- is so important, not so much the service, that too, but the coffee hour, the choir, the bible study, the prayer groups: the more activities, the better for health.
I also believe that loneliness comes from lack of genuine relationship with the rest of creation. We fail to see the trees as our neighbors; we no longer hear the birds sing or are able to see the twinkling stars while constantly exposed to pesticide-laden food and drink causing ill health.
Planetary stress too affects us. Last week The Arctic News reported that the ICE BUFFER around the North Pole is gone.
Why is that important?
This ice buffer used to bounce back massive amounts of ocean heat carried along sea currents into the Arctic Ocean. Now the sea ice is disappearing and this same heat, earlier absorbed by the massive ice buffer, now warms the Arctic Ocean, which in many places is less than 50 m deep.
What is so terribly frightening is that on that so shallow Arctic floor there are momentous methane masses, called Hydrates, billions of tons. It so happens that methane is some 20 times more lethal than our CO2 which we produce in billions of tons each year and is mainly responsible for Climate Change: ice out, heat in, weather haywire. Once these hydrates explode, we are done-for.
According to a Waterloo professor, Thomas Homer-Dixon, the future looks bleak, when what “ we have experienced , (are) so far only the earliest stages, just the leading edge, of the planet’s environmental crisis. Far, far greater environmental challenges are still to come.”
True, we have made great strides in alternative energy sources, both wind and solar. But the harsh truth is that for the foreseeable future there is no true substitute for oil. The sun shines only a certain numbers of hours in a year and we can’t command the wind to blow when power is needed. I know. I have both power sources and still need the ‘grid.’
A brief ‘energy’ history.
When wood ran out, some 400 years ago, coal came on line. When coal proved to be too polluting, oil and natural gas were available. Now, what do we do? Rely mainly on Natural gas of which the world still has plenty, but all in very remote locations, such as Siberia or Australia? It will take trillions of dollars to feed the North American market with adequate supply, assuming there is plenty of it left. Remember: natural gas too is polluting.
Thanks to oil, in my lifetime, the world’s population more than tripled from 2 billion to 7.2 billion. As late as 1945 my maternal grandfather had no electricity on his small farm. He managed with one horse and one help. Then people were mentally and physically equipped in coping with little or no carbon energy. These skills we have lost. Also much of the earth has been spoiled, unfit for intensive, organic, agriculture. We still have a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure powered almost exclusively by fossil-fuels. Cars, trucks, roads, boats, docks, airplanes, airports, hospitals, schools, farms, manufacturing plants, food processing centers, water-treatment plants – all run on fossil fuels. At home we have heat at the touch of a switch, and cooling is just as easy. All plastics, pesticides, and fertilizers are derived from that oil or gas as well. It is simply impossible for friendly energy to take over much of our modern systems. Do you drive a Prius? Are you off the grid? Talk is easy.
Primary Productivity now stands between 45 and 50, meaning that almost half of the world’s basic energy, vested in plants, trees, animals, has been used for the benefit of the human race, but in such a way that once it is used, it cannot be restored. Depleted oceans, soil degradation, disappeared species, cannot be re-created by human technology.
Yes, ANTHROPOCENE is upon us. God has given us, humans, ownership of the earth with God’s sole purpose – quoting Deuteronomy 32: 20 – ‘to see how we manage on our own without God’. So far the results have not been encouraging. Will we manage to right the wrongs? Will we manage to reverse Climate Change? Will we manage to re-stock the oceans? Will we manage to build a sustainable future?
No wonder people are uptight and cling to some false prophets such as Donald Trump. Believe me, there are no simple solutions anymore. I sincerely believe that we have gone too far to remedy the situation.