The Journey From Past To Present - Philosophy of the Anthropocene - Independent Study Spring 2024

      This semester our goal is to take a philosophical look at the Anthropocene and the environmental issues that it has caused. “The Anthropocene…is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.” (nationalgeographic.org) We will begin our journey by reading two texts that will familiarize us with the history and science that underlie the proposal to term the current geological epoch the Anthropocene. The first text we will explore is The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 (The Great Acceleration), and the next text will be Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction. After familiarizing ourselves with the Anthropocene, we will explore the philosophical implications involved in the environmental issues that the Anthropocene presents. To help us explore these philosophical queries we will engage with two additional texts: The Task of Philosophy in the Anthropocene: Axial Echoes in Global Space and What We Owe the Future by William McCaskill. We hope to gain a better understanding of the various social and ecological issues created by the Anthropocene, and then look to various philosophical ideas to help us understand and address these issues. 

     Let us begin!

     The Great Acceleration, written by J R McNeill and Peter Engelke, focuses on the time frame from 1945, just after World War II, to the present and argues that this time frame is the most consequential in the creation of the Anthropocene. The book examines four areas that experienced extreme change and or growth during this period, and these four areas coincide with the various sections of the book:  “Energy and Population,” “Climate and Biological Diversity,” “Cities and the Economy,” and [the] “Cold War and [the rise of] Environmental Culture.” In the Introduction, the authors explain:

This book takes the view that a new moment in the history of the Earth has begun, that the Holocene is over and something new has begun: the Anthropocene. Beginning in 2000, the idea of the Anthropocene was popularized by the Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen…The changing composition of the atmosphere, especially the well-documented increase in carbon dioxide, seemed to Crutzen so dramatic and so potentially consequential for life on Earth that he concluded that a new stage had begun in Earth's history, one in which humankind had emerged as the most powerful influence on global ecology…Crutzen argued that the Anthropocene began in the late eighteenth century, with the onset of the fossil fuel energy regime. (p.1-2)

     The authors further point out that, since Crutzen first proposed the idea of a new epoch – the Anthropocene – many other scientists, philosophers, and historians have proposed various start dates for this new epoch. The authors of this book are no exception; they prefer sometime around 1945 as a start date. They provide two reasons for their proposal:

Those reasons, in brief, are, first, that since the mid-twentieth century human action (unintentionally) has become the most important factor governing crucial biochemical cycles, to wit, the carbon cycle, the sulfur cycle, and the nitrogen cycle. Those cycles form a large part of what is now called the “Earth system,”  a set of interlocking global-scale processes. The second reason is that since the mid-twentieth century the human impact on the Earth and the biosphere, measured and judged in several different ways…has escalated. The escalation since 1945 has been so fast that it sometimes goes by the name the Great Acceleration. (p.4)

     In section one, “Energy and Population”, the authors address the sharp rise in both energy use and numbers of the global population in the years since 1945 and the connections between these two events. The authors begin by explaining:

The Earth is a wash and energy. Almost all comes from the Sun. For human purposes, the main forms of energy are heat, light, motion, and chemical energy. The Sun's payload comes chiefly in the form of heat and light. A third of this is instantly reflected back into space [unless affected by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere], but most lingers for a while, warming land, sea, and air. A little of the light is absorbed by plants and converted into chemical energy through photosynthesis. (p.7)

Until coal emerged onto the scene in England in the eighteenth century, humans' only access to this chemical energy was through our diet. However, widespread use of fossil fuels gave “...humankind…access to eons of frozen sunshine – maybe 500 million years’ worth of prior photosynthesis.” (p.9) They continue:

The enormous expansion of energy use in recent decades beggars the imagination. By about 1870 we used more fossil fuel energy each year than the annual global production from all photosynthesis. Our species has probably used more energy since 1920 than in all of prior human history…Since 1950[, as of 2015,] we have burned around 50 million to 150 million years worth of…[global energy]. (p.9)

The authors add: “The fact that for about a century after 1850 high energy use was confined to Europe and North America, and to a lesser extent Japan, is the single most important reason behind the political and economic dominance these regions enjoyed in the international system. (p.10)

    Next, the authors address the environmental effects caused by, what they call, “the creation and spread of fossil fuel society.” (p.11) They detail the “direct effects of extraction, transport, and combustion of coal, oil, and (to a much lesser extent) natural gas.” (p.11) Some of these direct effects include subsidence and toxic slag from mining, strip mining and mountaintop removal, oil rig leaks and blowouts, offshore drilling accidents and oil spills, destruction of rain forests for oil drilling and pipelines, destruction of deltas for oil exploration and transport, oil tanker accidents and spills, pipeline leaks and corrosion, air pollution from burning fossil fuels (especially coal), acid rain caused by burning fossil fuels (especially oil and gasoline), and even the use by Soviets of nuclear explosions to look for oil seismically from 1978-85. (p.11-26) In terms of the environment and ecosystems, the most damage has been caused by the extraction processes and accidents that resulted in oil spills or the release of other harmful chemicals into the physical space. However, when addressing the human toll, the authors explain: “Coal mine accidents and oil pipeline explosions took many thousands of lives in the decades after 1945, but nowhere near as many as the routine, peaceable combustion of fossil fuels. Air pollution, mainly from coal and oil burning, killed tens of millions of people [during this time].” (p.21) In addition, one of the most heart-wrenching quotes comes when the authors are describing the pillaging of the Niger Delta region for oil. The authors state: 

Shell and BP began oil operations here in the 1950s, happy to find a low-sulfur crude that is easy to refine into gasoline. Other companies followed, creating someone 160 oil fields and 7,000 kilometers of pipelines. For decades, tankers filled up on crude where centuries before wooden ships had loaded slaves. (p.18) 

     The authors then address nuclear power. Recounting the history of nuclear power, the authors state: 

Unlike other forms of energy use, nuclear power has a birthday: December 2, 1942. On that day the Italian e͐migre͐ physicist Enrico Fermi oversaw the first controlled nuclear reaction…The power of the bonds within atoms dwarfs that of other energy sources available to humankind. A fistful of uranium can generate more energy than a truckload of coal. (p.27) 

However, though this form of energy creates far fewer greenhouse gases, this awesome power does come with some major drawbacks, namely nuclear waste and nuclear meltdown accidents. The production of power through nuclear fission creates what are called “spent fuel rods,” which are radioactive and must be safely stored, usually underground. And, though not mentioned in this text, the disposal sites for this nuclear waste often end up being near areas populated by marginalized peoples – a form of environmental racism. As for nuclear meltdown accidents, most people have heard of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, Chernobyl in Ukraine, or Fukushima in Japan; these disasters were widely publicized and resulted in devastating environmental and human tolls, leading to the public’s disapproval of nuclear power in many cases. 

     The last major form of energy production the authors discuss is hydropower from large dams. The authors explain: “In terms of output, hydroelectric power matched nuclear. In terms of controversy and tragedy, it trailed not far behind.” (p.32) Like nuclear power, hydroelectric power has the allure of producing next to no greenhouse gas emissions once the dam is built. Additionally, “reservoirs [produced by the building of dams] could serve multiple purposes, as sources of irrigation water, sites for recreation, or fisheries.” (p.33) However, another commonality shared with nuclear power is that when accidents occur they are usually devastating to the environment and humans. One of the most devastating accidents that the authors discuss, “[happened] at the Banqiao Dam in China's Henan Province in 1975. During a typhoon the damn broke, unleashing a wave – an inland tsunami – that drowned tens of thousands. Subsequent starvation and waterborne epidemics killed another 145,000.” (p.33) Furthermore, the construction of these massive dams around the world often leads to the displacement of marginalized communities, the flooding of archeological sites that have cultural significance, and environmental degradation both at the sites of the dams and at downstream deltas. These issues have led to massive resistance to large dams, especially in India. However, as the authors discuss, the construction of large dams may be slowing down anyway simply because there are very few large rivers left to dam. (p.5)

     

     (This text does not go into much detail about renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, tidal, etc., most likely because it was originally published in 2014 and many of these sources were still in fledgling phases of development or use, especially during the timeframe the authors are focusing on for the emergence of the Anthropocene. Additionally, these renewable forms of energy could be seen as a possible solution to some of the environmental issues caused by the Anthropocene, and this text focuses on the creation of these issues.)

     The authors next discuss the indirect effects of the abundant energy provided by fossil fuels: 

Cheap energy, and the machines that used it, remade timber cutting and farming, among other industries. By and large, cheap energy expanded the scope of what was economically rewarding, thereby extending the scale or intensity of these energy-guzzling activities…The surge of deforestation around the world since 1960, especially in moist tropical forests, is one of the great environmental transformations of modern history. Cheap oil enabled it…Oil transformed agriculture even more fundamentally. In the 1980s one person with a big tractor and a full tank of fuel in the North American prairies could plow 110 acres in a day, doing the work that 70 years before had required 55 men and 110 horses…The enormous use of nitrogenous fertilizers also depended on cheap energy. About 5% of the world's natural gas is devoted to fertilizer production. [Additionally,] many pesticides use oil as their chemical feedstock. (p.38-39)

All of this acceleration, enabled by the use of fossil fuels, led to a massive alteration of the planet: its atmosphere, its ecosystems, and the number of humans living on it. This caused the authors of this text to conclude: “Although one cannot hope to disentangle all the forces and processes that shaped the Anthropocene, from almost any viewpoint energy seems to be at the heart of the new epoch. The quantities of energy in use after 1945 became so vast, they dwarfed all that went before.” (p.40)

     A major rise in the number of humans on the planet, sometimes termed the ‘population bomb’, began in the 1940s and peaked sometime between 1965 and 1970. This population increase was enabled by the increase in available energy and created its own set of environmental issues stemming from overpopulation and poor resource management. The authors state: 

[A]fter 1945 human demography entered upon the most distinctive period in its two-hundred-thousand-year history. In the span of one human lifetime, 1945 to 2015, global population tripled from about 2.3 billion to 7.2 billion. This bizarre interlude, with sustained population growth of more than 1 percent per annum, is of course what almost everyone on Earth now regards as normal. It is anything but normal. (p.41)

     The authors explain that throughout most of human history the growth rate was well below 0.5 percent per year. One estimate puts the growth rate at 0.05 percent per annum “...for the seven centuries before 1650.” (p.42) Additionally, before increased access to energy after the discovery of fossil fuels, death rates were also much higher due to the lack of modern science, medicine, sanitation, and food production. When describing how this ‘population bomb’ could occur during this time in history, the authors explain: “...that techniques of death control temporarily outstripped techniques of birth control.” (p.44) In other words, due to “...better farming techniques, improved government response to food shortage,...gradual buildup of disease resistance,...revolutionary changes in urban sanitation,...provision of clean drinking water,...[and] vaccinations and antibiotics,” death rates fell dramatically from the 1800s to the late 1900s. (p.44-45) However, modern birth control for women was not invented until the 1950s, and widespread use would take another 30 to 40 years (some women in less industrialized nations still do not have regular access). Therefore, more humans were born and far fewer humans died prematurely. Even so, the birth rates are now declining and the authors state that “...UN demographers project that the growth rate by 2050 will slacken to 0.34 percent, slower than in 1800.” (p.43) And, if the governments of the world plan properly for the decrease in births, this could produce a favorable outcome for both humans and the planet. 

     The authors then address the effects of the increase in population on the environment. They state: “Population growth played its strongest role in the environment through processes connected to food production. The threefold growth in human population (1945-2010)  required a proportionate expansion and food production.” (p.50) The increase in food production meant an expansion in the land used for agriculture and animal husbandry, sometimes encroaching on areas of vital importance to the planet’s overall energy equilibrium, such as rainforests and wetlands. Another issue is the use of freshwater for agricultural irrigation and personal use. This has also led to a lowering of the water table around the globe, and the threat of groundwater depletion in many areas is very real. The authors also discuss the rise in overfishing in the seas during this time. They state: “As a rough estimate, one can say that 60 percent of the expansion of the marine fish catch derived from population growth.” (p.53) Therefore, though not all environmental issues can be tied to population growth, it is clear that a population of this magnitude has taken its toll on the planet, especially through the mismanagement of vital resources.

     Some of this mismanagement of resources resulted from human migration. The authors address this “age of migration” since 1945. They write:

Tens of millions moved from one country to another. Even more moved within their countries, although often to very new environments. Millions of Americans moved from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt”…Cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas grew from almost nothing into major metropolises, sprawling into surrounding deserts and siphoning off all available water for many miles around. Residents air-conditioned their homes and workplaces for most months of the year, leading electricity-intensive lives that encouraged additional fossil fuel use and the building of more hydroelectric dams, especially on the already overdrawn Colorado River. A smaller, Chinese sunbelt migration took place into the even drier regions of Xinjiang and Tibet after 1950…[And,] Migrants altered rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia at least as much as they did arid lands in the United States and China. (p.56-57)

Those who migrated into the rainforests deforested the areas to make way for farming or raising livestock. The authors point out that in all of these cases, in every country, these migrations began by being encouraged and subsidized by the state governments without considering the environmental impacts. In short, it is difficult to tell whether these environmental issues are the direct result of overpopulation because they often seem to be the result of poor resource management and governmental decisions. As the authors state, only time will tell the true environmental effects of the ‘population bomb’.

Next time we will discuss the “Climate and Biological Diversity” section of this text.