One hopes that this is another ‘untimely’ book that adds to the many voices of artists, poets, academics, politicians, and leaders around the world who have embraced the necessity of addressing the precarity of the Earth and the crisis of our species in what is has been arguably termed the Anthropocene ; its euphemism, ‘climate change ’ is certainly the more common term, but no better understood. There is no part of the Earth that has not been touched by anthropogenic activity. Strontium-90 did not exist before 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945; nor did the manufacture of long-lived quantities of halogenated gases; plastic has penetrated the deepest of ocean trenches (Galloway et al. 2017); plastic-eating bacteria have now been discovered (Yoshida et al. 2016), and even a new rock, the plastiglomerate , a stone containing a mixture of sedimentary grains of melted plastic, beach sediment, basaltic lava, and organic debris has been proposed as marking our species presence in the geological record and, therefore become recognizable in the stratigraphic record at some future date as a global boundary marker of a formal geologic unit of time (Corcorn et al. 2014). The depths of the ocean floor do not escape human intervention of one kind or other, a concern deeply explored by Stacy Alaimo (2017) who alerts us to the fragility of underwater creatures, whilst Heather Davis (2015) articulates how plastic micro-polymer particles are killing river, sea, and ocean life . The Anthropocene now becomes the Plasticene. As Camilio Mora et al. (2011) point out, 86% of the species on Earth have been catalogued, whilst it is estimated that 91% of those in the oceans still await description.
The central problem, as many scholars have astutely pointed out (e.g., Chernilio 2017a, b) is the generic term anthropos (Greek for man, human being) that is embedded within its nomenclature (see Chakrabarty 2015). Whilst it is the anthropogenic impact of our species on the Earth—on its resources and on its biosphere—that marks the transition into this new era that leaves the Holocene behind, the Anthropocene ’s description and resemblance to the hegemonic model of the ‘human ’ both exemplifies and, at the same time, problematizes the collapse and enfoldment of humanity within the term Man. At the same time, it displaces the overemphasis on its narrative strictly in terms dominated by the natural sciences , primarily geology and climatology, which offer conclusive evidence of our species impact on the planet, and yet remain weak regarding the shaping of its sociopolitical narrative as contested by various ideological interests. The Anthropocene directly equates the agent of incumbent responsibility for this global crisis to the ‘white Man’ of European Enlightenment, and to the emergence of scientism and the largely instrumentalist legacy of progressive modernity that is as much entangled with hierarchy and enslavement, which pervaded the colonialist mentality of conquest in the name of Man, bringing with it the spread of infectious diseases of one sort or another (e.g., smallpox, measles, influenza, flu), and the death of approximately 50 million people. Such colonization eventually led to the entitlement of appropriating the material world in the name of progressive global Capitalism ; Earth became simply matter, our ‘standing reserve’ as currently still supported through a neoliberalist philosophical and political agenda that ensures the continuation of profit at the expense of a sustainable planet, forwarding an ideal of a sovereign subject with certain ‘rights and freedoms,’ a subject that is already predefined by the symbolic order that is in place.
The ‘Great Acceleration ’ is taken by many social scientists as one of the possible arguments for the rise of the Anthropocene era as the statistical documentation of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP 2015) shows. Roughly, beginning in 1950, shortly after WW2, it is marked by a major expansion in human population, changes in natural processes, and the development of novel materials from minerals to plastics that led to persistent organic pollutants as well as inorganic compounds. Rachel Carson ’s Silent Spring remains a standing testament, documenting the environmental detriment. This increased industrialization is attributed and confined to the world dominated by the post-industrial OECD countries in relation to consumption and economic production, whilst most of the population growth is attributed to the non-OECD world (Steffen et al. 2015). The injustice and inequality of climate change responsibility has been well established. It is not ‘humanity’s fault,’ but a question of the prevalence of global injustices that continue to maintain the current status quo. In the early twenty-first century, the poorest 45% of the human population accounted for 7% of emission, contrasted to the richest 7% who produced 50% of emission; studies conducted between 1990 and 1998 by the World Bank found that 94% of the world’s disaster deaths occurred in developing countries, a major North–South divide (Parks and Timmons 2007). Disasters like Hurricane Katrina that hit the Gulf Coast of the United States in August of 2005 show the differences of economic support and possibilities of renewal between black and white neighbourhoods (Tauna 2008). The economic and social devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy to Manhattan is pale in comparison to what happened in Haiti. With the continual rising of the coastal sea levels due to the melting Polar Ice caps and thermal expansion of the oceans, the devastation will not have the same impact on the Netherlands, as it will along India’s Bay of Bengal or on the Nile Delta coastline (Malm 2013). The bottom line is that it is the wealthiest ‘few’ relative to the 7.5 billion-population who are responsible for the impending anthropogenic made disaster; they will also have the resources to survive the longest (Satterthwaite 2009; Hornborg 2017).
There are other claims that squarely challenge this view of the Great Acceleration . Lewis and Maslin (2015) in a highly researched article in Nature present a convincing alternative if the criteria set out by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) are met. Such criteria, known as Global Standard Stratigraphic Age (GSSA) enable an assessment of various global markers known as ‘global spikes’ or Global Stratotype Section and Points (GSSPs) . Given this standard, a different picture emerges with other consequences to ponder. Lewis and Maslin, after reviewing the range of other proposed dates (agricultural farming, rice production, industrial revolution, and so on) identify two contending dates: 1610 and 1964 that have identifiable golden spikes (GSSP markers). (For an artistic response on golden spikes , see Hannah and Krajewski 2015.) The first, 1610, is what they call their ‘Orbis Hypothesis .’ This is when there is a meeting of Old and New World human populations through discovery and colonialization, registering a dip in CO2 levels due to the growing of new crops, the homogenization of the Earth’s biota in terms of the transoceanic spreading of species, and the breakout of extreme diseases, famine, war, and enslavement: an estimated 50 million people died in the Americas (Mann 2006, 2011). This ‘Orbis spike’ meant that the two hemispheres were connected, furthering global trade and the beginning of the modern ‘world-system’ (Wallerstein 1976). The second date—1964, refers to the peak registration of Carbon-14 from the nuclear explosions dating from 1945 until late 1950s when there was a decline thanks to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Selecting 1964 is more consonant with the Great Acceleration where there is unambiguous anthropogenic activity. Lewis and Maslin argue that the radionuclide spike is a good GSSP boundary marker, however, the disadvantage is that this was not an Earth-changing event , which holds as an argument only within the criteria as formulated by the ICS. The nuclear bomb changed the fundamental ontology of our species as self-extinction was now on the table. For Lewis and Maslin, the ‘Great Acceleration ’ is diachronous and open to challenge as being too much of an arbitrary marker: the GSSA suggested date could be 1950, 1954, or 1955. Hence, they settle the argument for the Orbis spike that includes colonializaton, species exchanges, global trade, and coal as the transformative changes that had brought about the Anthropocene . Choosing 1964 instead, marks the advancement of technological weaponry—from hand axes to spears to nuclear weapons. At the same time, this history of aggression and violence underscores the fundamental question as to how this ‘stain’ on our species psyche can be managed, if never eradicated. The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) provided once such marker, but has never assured a solution as nuclear warheads spread (e.g., Israel, India, Pakistan), averted perhaps in Iran and waiting to cross the threshold by North Korea as ICBM’s are being readied.
Be as it may, it shows that ‘some’ global cooperation is possible because of this danger, yet the Doomsday Clock has recently been moved to two and a half minutes to midnight. The physicist Michio Kaku is inte...