Anthropocene Current Events

The post-apocalyptic subject in the film industry is an area that often thrives at the box office. People thoroughly enjoy watching movies that exhibit Earth’s tarnished environment and humans’ last means of survival. At one point of time or another, the scenes in these once fictional movies may come true with the way humans are abusing the planet. Elizabeth Kolbert’s novel, The Sixth Extinction, discusses the five major causes of mass extinction. She alludes human existence as the cause of the next mass extinction. The author cites established chemist, Paul Crutzen, claiming “we are no longer in the Holocene; we are in the Anthropocene” (Kolbert 108). The Anthropocene is human dominated epoch that is disrupting other species’ existence. Of

Humanity is confronted by multiple environmental challenges which threaten to undermine the advances in health achieved over recent decades. The Rockefeller Foundation/Lancet Commission on Planetary Health showed how climate change, loss of biodiversity, land use change, ocean acidification and overfishing, nitrogen and phosphorus loading and environmental pollution more generally all have the potential to adversely affect health through a range of pathways1. A recent joint publication by WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity articulated the myriad connections between biodiversity and health and the threats to both posed by environmental change2. The dramatic changes in the global environment have led many scientists to conclude that we are living in a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – in which the activities of one species – homo sapiens -have become the dominant driving force transforming the Earth’s natural systems3. These natural systems provide food, clean water and air and modulate the global temperature within limits in which humanity has been able to flourish for around 11,500 years during the preceding Holocene epoch.

Anthropocene is a term used to describe earth’s history including when humans dominated a majority of natural processes globally. Anthropocence was a term used throughout the article to discuss the impact humankind had on the environment that caused many changes that had a negative impact over many years. Another term used was anthrones, the human footprint, which describes how much human kind has made lasting impassions on the earth. These terms have made me come to the realization anthropology operates at the crossroads of social and physical sciences, along with humanities to examine the diversity of humankind across many cultures and time.

There have been five major mass extinction on earth triggered by a distinguishable event, but in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert writes of the narrative of the sixth extinction caused directly by human impact. The book identifies the effects of human activity on how, over humans history on earth, the natural world has been affected. Every environmental impact stems into three basic groups of global problems to nature: Pollution, Habitat loss and Invasive Species. Kolbert explains that each impact can be traced back to one source, human industrial development. With each impact various types of life in the natural world are affected. Deforestation, urbanization, and sea level rise contribute to habitat loss worldwide. When humans began to travel they also brought invasive species and disease along with them; as boats only became bigger more and more invasive species travel. This reverse engineering of the planet species, brings new species that don’t have any natural predators, thus having an easier time driving native species out to endangerment or extinction. The different outcomes that come from human pollution is separated throughout the book, but the idea remains constant; with the development of human culture, pollution has drastically impacted a vast extent of species habitats and their environment.

Coexisting with each of its counterparts, Mother Earth and the system in which we live in effortlessly orchestrates the fundamental basis of not only human existence but nevertheless all of the life in which it contains. The climate of our Earth however, has been continuously changing since the beginning of its formation about 4.5 billion years ago although; it wasn’t until around the early 18th century that a widespread concern occurred in American minds regarding the treatment of our environment. This altered perspective made way for understanding that humans have made the biggest impact to our planet, biosphere, and atmosphere etc. drastically more so than any other organism. It is commonly argued in Jared Diamond’s The Worst Mistake in

Some contend that the Anthropocene started with the appearance of agriculture, in light of the fact that specific horticulture related activities, for example, rice paddy water system and deforestation may have prompted sharp ascents in convergences of CO2 and methane as ahead of schedule as 8,000 years prior. Many trust that it was not until the Industrial Revolution that our abuse of fossil fuels and monumental increases of energy utilize and populace began to push us sufficiently far to demonstrate a recognizable human impact.

Majority of the current, official geological time units have been dated and confirmed after the fact. Presently, humans are living in the Anthropocene and “the stratigraphic record is the past” (Finney and Edwards, 8). Finney and Edwards see this discrepancy as an issue because claiming the Anthropocene as part of the records appears as an attempt “to interpret past event’s in Earth’s history” without even having all the evidence (Finney and Edwards, 8). Moreover, the stratigraphic records and its units are studied using “stratigraphic techniques, concepts, and principles,” while the Anthropocene has been largely based on human observations (Finney and Edwards, 8). On the other hand, the Anthropocene has been analyzed using some of the stratigraphic techniques as well as how geological events have been measured through human observation and documentation. The Anthropocene is not portrayed as a geological event, but as a good candidate for a geological time unit. However, Finney and Edwards see the Anthropocene’s candidacy as a misunderstanding in what composes a geological time

Over the years, human existence has led to major environmental changes and global impacts. Recently, human activities have led to an increase in climatic changes threatening human life; such as, global warming, rising sea levels, increase in floods, and melting ice caps among other indicators (Klein, 2015). These environmental changes have been brought by rapid industrialization,

By following the understanding of extinctions up to the present day, Kolbert addresses that extinctions are not strictly catastrophic or uniformitarian. Rather, by citing the major and minor extinctions such as the disappearance of the great auk the End-Cretaceous extinction Kolbert proves that extinctions have a wide variety of causes. Finally, with the grim depiction past and present day extinctions, Kolbert moves on to discuss the title topic: The Sixth Extinction. The term Anthropocene refers to the height of human alteration of the planet earth, which is thought to have begun during the Industrial Revolution. As humans dramatically alter the earth and its ecosystems, it is predicted that humans will eventually cause the sixth extinction if the current environmental trends continue. A combination of accelerated climate change, overhunting, deforestation, and natural ecosystem patterns have begun wiping out entire species at alarming rates. Truly, Kolbert emphasizes that all of humanity’s understanding of extinction is pointing to a devastating mass-extinction which could eventually affect the same beings which catalyzed

Never in the history of the human species have we been in such a rapidly changing environment. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have been making social, economical, scientific, and environmental changes and advancements at an unprecedented rate. Societal advancements, while much appreciated by the average Joe, have been detrimental to our environment. Every days forests are cut, rivers polluted, and once ecologically important areas are cemented over to compensate for our rapidly growing population. As the status of our natural world becomes more critical by the year it is important that we look at the driving factors and reasons for this destruction of the natural world. While pollutants and globalization are the driving

An article “Anthropocene: Humanity has changed the Earth so much that it has entered a new epoch, scientists conclude “by Andrew Griffin on UK Independent news on Friday 8 January 2016, pointed out what happens to the Earth and how humans affect the environment.

(claim of fact) Among the many challenges we face in society, environmental degradation and the exhaustion of resources is one of the challenges that will have the most impact on not only our future generations, but the future of the earth. The human population across the globe is degrading both the terrestrial and marine biomes through means such as deforestation, the emission of greenhouse gases, improper disposal of waste, and other forms of pollution. As the global population continues to rise, the way we use our energy and our resources continues to gain importance. “These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability,” says Professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University to The Guardian.

Gone are the ages where geological events were shaped by animals, climate, and other forces. Today, much of the earth’s activities involve acquiring of energy and utilization of resources used not only to survive but also to thrive in a way that no species has done before in history. Jessica Abramovic’s posting has outlined how several natural resources such as forests, minerals, and water have been utilized as energy sources to the point of near depletion in many parts of the world. The anthropogenic period has been marked by significant human influence, which has for the few thousands of years affected the overall geological make-up of the earth. Natural events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes do not come close to affecting the earth in the way that human activities to today (Steffen et al, 2011; Ellis, 2011). What is more interesting is the fact that humans have lived on earth for only a few hundred thousand years, but have become a geologically dominant species within that time as compared to the estimated 4.5 billion years of earth’s existence.

11,700 years ago the geological epoch the Holocene was thought to of began following the Pleistocene epoch, together these time periods make up the Quaternary period. The Holocene has been described as being relatively warm and with a fairly stable climate. Not only this, but it is thought to coincide with the start of agriculture as human populations rose throughout the Holocene technology became more sophisticated aiding the rise of agriculture (Holden, 2012). The early anthropogenic hypothesis was published in 2003 by Professor W.F. Ruddiman, this was a three part hypothesis in which Ruddiman proposed humans reversed natural decreases in CO2 values within the atmosphere by deforestation. That they reversed natural methane decreases after 5,000 years by irrigating rice, they also caused a warming sufficient to prevent a new glaciation within the last several thousand years and during the Holocene (Ruddiman 2005). This hypothesis has attracted a lot of attention with many people both supporting it and criticising it. Throughout this essay I will be exploring the many arguments for and against the early anthropogenic hypothesis and stating whether or not human kind could have prevented the start of an ice age during the Holocene.

Since before the industrial evolutions humans have been pumping green house gasses—carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons— into the atmosphere however, it wasn’t until recently that the amounts being produced are shoving the Earth into a sixth extinction. While the causes of this upcoming extinction are constantly debated on it has earned itself the name Holocene extinction. This name is derived from the theory that humans are the main contributors to this extinction. To investigate the cause Elizabeth Kolbert, and American journalist and professor at Williams College, took the world on a wild and saddening journey on the human contribution to this looming extinction in her novel, The Sixth Extinction; An Unnatural History. Not only does Kolbert’s book explain how humans have contributed to global warming and its effects on life on land but also ocean acidification and how life under the sea has changed over the years.