In an era defined by rapid technological advances, growing concerns about humanity’s impact on the planet are penetrating even normally quiet disciplines of natural history. Take the proposed new geological epoch, the “Anthropocene.” Introducing a new (and still unfolding) epoch into the geological record—marked by our recent chemical “footprints” and traces of nuclear explosions—has serious implications and any such process should stick to the rigorous standards of geological science.
This doesn’t appear to be top of mind to the Anthropocene’s proponents, whose concept withers under the harsh light of serious scrutiny. This new idea of an “Anthropocene” is wafting in the sooty wake of the Industrial Revolution, the belief that humanity has significantly shifted the course of Earth’s physical history. In short, that the activities of an industrializing planet over the last 80–250 years are so impactful that they will leave traces not only in the atmosphere of today, but in the geological rock record thousands, millions, or even billions of years from now.
Yet when we examine the geological record—the vast archive of Earth’s history, all the way back through “deep time,” spanning 4.54 billion years—the Anthropocene seems less like a scientific demarcation than a reflection of our own current environmental and existential anxieties. The excruciating challenges geologists experience in piecing together the distant past from the rock record suggest that our current civilization is less likely to be geologically epoch-making than to show up, if at all—to take a quip from the Coen Brothers’ 2000 movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”—as a “grease spot on the L&N.”
But this research reveals an eagerness to document our impact driven as much by ideology as by the spirit of scientific inquiry. It’s worth noting that Crutzen, for example, was one of the central figures in the “ozone hole” scare, and also promoted the later-discredited notion of a humanity-annihilating “nuclear winter” triggered by nuclear war, and that the Kuwaiti oil fires of 1991 might throw the world’s climate into chaos.
The issue is not that humanity may be leaving subtle traces in current sediments settling as minute layers (known as “varves”) in an Ontario lake. Rather, it’s the hubris Anthropocene advocates reveal in claiming that significant chemical traces of humanity will be recorded in rock layers and still be discernible thousands or millions of years from now. There is powerful evidence—from different sources and standpoints—that such chances are vanishingly small.
Such facts suggest that even the most significant human endeavours won’t have world-altering importance, but be more like a geological “grease spot.” All our contributions, from Lego to magnificent architecture, will one day lie buried, flattened, and pulverized in layers of sediment or chewed up by plate tectonics. Evidence of our existence will be as inscrutable to future earth scientists (if such even exist) as the runes of a forgotten language.
Embracing the Anthropocene speaks less to our dominion or impact in harnessing the Earth than to the aforementioned hubris and a yearning many present-day scientists have: that their work be societally significant. Not to mention that “societally significant” research which fits into governments’ policy priorities gets funded.
In his famous 1961 “Military-Industrial Complex” address, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower issued a separate warning, now often forgotten: that scientific research was shifting from individual inventors to team-based research and lab work directed or under the influence of government funding. Eisenhower also worried that intellectual curiosity was being overshadowed by the pursuit of government contracts and, even worse, that a scientific-technological elite might soon begin shaping public policies that should be decided by voters.
Add to this the reality of science as a very human endeavour, more often than not—in my own experience—prone to petty rivalries, egotism, careerism, group-think, and faddism. This is where the bygone image of the noble scientist garbed in dazzling white goes to die. Politicized science is debased science, its trustworthiness undermined. It certainly should not be taken on faith.
The challenges of environmental stewardship must be approached with humility and a deep appreciation of both the known resilience of our natural world and the limits of human impact. The debate over the Anthropocene serves as a cautionary tale against science confirming pre-existing narratives of despair and research being driven by political priorities or ideology.
