The End of the Holocene
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE INDUSTRIAL AGE, the side of the earth not facing the sun would have appeared completely dark when seen from space. Light from campfires, candles and oil lamps did not penetrate beyond earth’s atmosphere. But then, people began to systematically draw upon the stored energy of the sun found in underground deposits to light their lamps and to power machines. From that time forward, fossil fuels have enabled the fascinating acquisition of material wealth. Since industrialization, one dot of light after another has shone from earth’s dark side, like a long Promethean chain of lights, gas flames and burning forests: “It is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!” says the protagonist in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, referring to the lights along London’s river Thames. (Significantly, Conrad locates the “heart of darkness” in London, not in the forests of Central Africa’s Congo).
Over decades, these individual lights from houses, streets, offices, factories and burning forests have combined to form broad areas of illumination in intricate patterns that stretch along coastlines. We are sending a collective, moving sequence of lights into space, images of which get beamed back down to earth by satellites or by astronauts on the International Space Station. These images, some of which have been overlaid with cool musical tracks and posted on websites, inspire filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón, the director of the movie Gravity.37 In China, an urban mega-region over a thousand miles long is taking shape, while in West Africa, a coastal conglomeration nearly 600 kilometers (400 miles) in length is growing.38
A succession of technical, social and economic innovations has enabled people to completely change the face of the earth in a mere two hundred years, spreading themselves and their accomplishments across almost the entire planet.
Tapping into fossil fuels has had positive effects on the lives of billions of people today, in the form of hospitals and schools, global mobility and a mind-blowing array of consumer goods. The proportion of people living in abject poverty nowadays has also sharply declined. Educational opportunities, particularly for women, have greatly increased. Since 1990, life expectancy at birth has increased globally by six years, to an average of 70 years of age.39
The benefits of modern life are myriad: the use of a simple plastic cannula can save the lives of both mother and child at birth; driverless cars can take us, as if by magic, anywhere we want to go; research laboratories make it possible for billions of people to give free rein to curiosity. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries represent a time of incredible expansion of the human comfort zone, certainly for those who have the means and have never suffered the acute violence of war or the slow violence of poverty.
Without this new economy, without industrial-based agriculture or pharmaceuticals or fossil fuels, most of us would not be alive. Some people sound as if they would welcome a scenario of fewer people. The “population bomb” has been widely used as a metaphor. But in my opinion, the mere number of people is not the problem in the dawning Anthropocene. Being German, with the backdrop of my country’s National Socialist past, I wouldn’t want to imagine how a certain population number is considered “too many.” Who is the perpetrator and who the victim in such a scenario? I think that every new person enriches earth with his or her potential for consciousness, creativity and community. I am not someone who would prefer only one billion people (instead of seven or eight) to be living on earth, nor am I like Stephen Emmott, who finds a world population of ten billion to be a terrifying vision.40
I believe that the Anthropocene idea can help people see themselves as active, integrated participants in an emerging new nature that will make earth more humanist rather than just humanized. It would be absurd if an idea named the “Anthropocene” were characterized by a negative view of humans!
But even the most positive attitude toward humanity cannot save us from having to face up to the enormous—literally earth-shattering—developments at the end of the Holocene. Our population numbers signal ever growing consumer demand, ever more areas of land claimed by people, ever increasing energy consumption with its consequences for the climate, and new influences on evolution. Attentive readers will already be familiar with some of these factors. But only when looked at as a whole, do they create the broad overview necessary to see how the Holocene is coming to an end and something new, the Anthropocene, is beginning. Our individual actions, multiplied by the number of people who are alive and make decisions, is a new reality that is hurtling towards us with such velocity that its consequences, both positive and negative, surprise us.
If your head starts spinning at the huge numbers being mentioned here, just remember that these figures derive from the totality of many small actions. Millions of tons of eroded soil start with the food harvested from one industrially farmed field. Billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions start with the flick of a switch, whether to turn on a light or a car engine. All the phenomena of the Anthropocene—whether positive or insane, surprising, funny or creative—start with small actions. When you buy a ballpoint pen that has a tiny, man-made crystal on the tip, you are thereby increasing the variety of Earth’s minerals, something future geologists may wish to investigate. When you add another ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, your descendants might swear at you long after you are gone.
There are four major factors determining the end of the Holocene. The first is population growth. If the number of people living today was the same now as at the time of Jesus Christ—a few hundred million—their collective impact would not be sufficient to initiate a new geological epoch.
In the year 1800, there were one billion people; in 1930, two billion and in 1960, three billion. In October 2011, the seventh billionth person was born: Danica May Camacho of the Philippines was chosen by the United Nations to have this starring role.41 If the world population was evenly distributed across the Earth, there would be fifty-three people per square kilometer of land (excluding the Antarctic).
By the middle of this century, according to United Nations forecasts, another two billion people will be added to the world population, which is equivalent to the number of people who were living on earth between World Wars I and II. This also means that by 2050, there will be about 140,000 more births than deaths, per day. By these calculations, a city with the population size of Los Angeles will be added to the world every month.
By the middle of this century, fifty-three people per square kilometer jumps to sixty-six people per square kilometer. All this growth is taking place mainly in developing countries. In other words, humanity is increasing every day by one Indian slum, one high-rise community in Beijing, one outlying district of Jakarta or one medium-sized town in the Congo.42 Just the number of people on earth does not signify much: The greater impact comes from our way of life by which this number must be multiplied. Our consumption habits determine how much land, how many industrial and mining areas and how much urban space is necessary to sustain this number of people, not only their survival but also their happiness.
The second factor that marks the end of the Holocene is the enormous increase in human living space requirements. Only a quarter of the Earth (about 7,000 square kilometers or 12 million square miles) is arable land that is suitable for growing food for human consumption. By 2007, cities and communities had already extended over an area half the size of the Australian continent, and this area is expected to grow considerably in the next decades.43 Cities are really efficient at housing
