Geology is the science of the changing Earth.
Its first principle, uniformitarianism, is that the geologic processes of change on Earth acted the same way in the past as they do in the present and will in the future.
Planetary exploration teaches that uniformitarianism is universal.
In each unit of the four and a half billion years of Earth’s geological time – eons, eras, periods, epochs and ages – the Earth’s climate has changed in a steady cycle – warmer, colder, warmer, back and forth.
The progression of climate change, the acceleration of population growth and species extinction since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution fuels debate as to whether or not the human impact is so profound that it is a new geological time period.
There are no changes in the rocks that geologists use as markers between geological time periods and many geologists think that the proclamation of the Anthropocene is pop culture, not science.
It is called the Anthropocene to indicate the dominant influence of humans as the most numerous large mammal, the super predator and super emitter.
The influence of our species extends to the acceleration of scientifically measurable processes like population grow, evolution (species extinction), and climate change.
There is a debate about when the Anthropocene started. Proponents have marked the boundary with the testing and use of atomic bombs in the final years of the Second World War.
The beginning of the Industrial Revolution between 1770 and 1800 is more encompassing.
These three decades marked the beginning of modern industrial processes and transportation, rapid population growth and cultural changes that were hallmarks of human domination of the planet.
The Industrial Revolution also marked the beginning of fossil fuel dependency.
In 1798, philosopher Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society. Malthus argued that population would outrun food production and war, famine and disease would cull the population to a livable size.
This fear that human population growth would threaten the sustainability of human life is a recurrent theme in Anthropocene literature.
In 1948, American ecologist and ornithologist William Vogt wrote Aid to Survival, the first postwar classic about overpopulation and the population carrying capacity of the Earth. A co-founder of Planned Parenthood and pioneer of Ducks Unlimited, Vogt’s ideas foresaw the issues of the Anthropocene debate 70 years later.
In 1962, an American biologist named Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring that argued the overuse of insecticides would destroy the balance of nature of soil, water and organisms.
No birds surviving to sing in spring was the central metaphor of Carson’s book, all the more chilling because it was published less than 20 years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
In 1968, Paul Ehrlich, a University of Stanford entomologist, published the Population Bomb which said in its first chapter, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. And humanity has lost.” Ehrlich warned that, “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death. . . Nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
The prophecy of humankind’s self-destruction is a shelf of the Anthropocene library. But it is never fulfilled.
– Frank Dabbs is a veteran business and political journalist and author.
