to be built and maintained. Gigantic quantities of concrete and other building materials are being produced, transported and deposited in order to create new settlements. Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist at the University of Leicester, describes urbanization as “an alteration in sedimentation processes via the construction of man-made rock strata.” Concrete is a key material in this process: “The global annual production is now approaching five billion cubic meters, that is something over two-thirds of a cubic meter for every man, woman and child on Earth, in total enough to cover all of Germany, Austria and parts of neighboring countries under a centimeter-thick layer of this stuff—each year. It is part of the urban stratum, rising above the ground surface as our homes and factories, and extending below it as foundations, metro systems, sewers, electrical cables, and yet deeper as mines and boreholes.”44
Dams, mines and human-induced erosion also comprehensively alter the geological state of the earth. Tens of thousands of hydroelectric dams stop enormous quantities of sediment from reaching estuaries.45, 46 Erosion caused by industrial agriculture moves ten times the volume of sediment than was the average 500 million years ago.47 Material flows of such essential elements as phosphorous and nitrogen, both of which are used in artificial fertilizers, are caused by human activity. With the production of artificial fertilizers by means of the Haber-Bosch process, humans have already extracted more nitrogen out of the atmosphere than has ever circulated through the land ecosystems.48
But our space requirements extend well beyond the land surface. The Holocene oceans seemed inexhaustible, a boundless global ecosystem, 1.3 billion cubic kilometers in size, many times larger than all land habitats put together.49 In a very short time, humanity’s impact on the oceans has also become far-reaching, stretching thousands of feet down where atomic waste was dumped, new mining projects (such as the one off the coast of Papua, New Guinea) are pursued and new oil wells are drilled. Above all, our fishing fleets are transforming the oceans. There are one million large fishing ships worldwide and three million smaller boats.50 These vessels track down schools of fish with the same sonar technology that American and Soviet nuclear submarines used during the Cold War. The hauling capacity of these ships has increased sixfold since 1970. Many of them use rollers that flatten the ocean floor, crushing every structure in which sea life can hide. Corals are the victim of trawlers with heavy harnesses. Deep-sea fishing damages the unique natural wonder of underwater mountains. This behavior is equivalent to hunters clearing entire forests just to catch a few deer. Yet, since 1970, yield per ship has fallen by two thirds. More and more ships compete for fewer and fewer fish. In the words of one ocean expert: “It’s a race to our own destruction.”51
When the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) began to register catch quantities in the 1950s, they recorded 20 million tons. This was followed by a rapid increase to over 90 million tons of wild seafood caught. Since then, haul sizes have reached a plateau and have even contracted. This is not due to political restrictions but to the depletion of many stocks. In spite of larger, more powerful trawlers, there is nothing left to fish. The FAO classifies eighty per cent of fish stocks as being fully or excessively depleted.52
Even a natural disaster like a tsunami has a human dimension. The monster wave that hit Japan in 2011 was the manifestation of a powerful undersea earthquake. It devastated parts of the east coast of Japan and created a massive wave of man-made debris—houses, garbage, ships and containers—to be swept first inland, then out into the Pacific Ocean. The debris was tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which regarded it as the largest occurrence to date demonstrating how debris disperses away from a single point.53 The resultant islands of debris were not the only anthropogenic phenomenon. The tsunami wave triggered a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, widely dispersing radioactive materials, including isotopes that will continue to emit radiation of various types for thousands of years to come.
Wild nature no longer exists on land or out at sea. According to analyses by US researchers, in cooperation with Google, during the period between 2000 and 2012, 2.3 million square kilometers (about 880,000 square miles) of “natural” forest, disappeared. Only around 800 thousand square kilometers (about 308 thousand square miles) have been replanted while the remaining areas have been turned into agricultural areas, residential areas or into wasteland.54 The FAO alerts us to an alarming development in which cleared woodlands and even replanted forests are often monotonous, with no biological diversity. These monocultures cannot sustain indigenous peoples and render few ecological services.55
What remains of the wild is the result of human decision-making, such as when an area is perceived as being of lasting value and is then protected by the local population or by environmental organizations, or by a corporation that concludes that exploitation would not be profitable. Even in places where people think they are in the wild, they often come across traces of civilization when they take a closer look. This frequently happens in Amazonia where, during the clearing of allegedly pristine rainforest, traces of earlier settlements are found.56
The Anthropocene marks the end of the illusion that “somewhere out there,” there are gigantic, unexplored, untapped, unused regions, areas of untouched nature surrounding what is man-made. Geographers Erle Ellis and Navin Ramankutty from the University of Maryland have got to the heart of this. Using data from satellite photographs, they have determined that only 22 per cent of the earth’s surface is still wilderness and only 11 per cent of photosynthesis activity takes place in these wild areas. The remaining area consists of agricultural, residential and industrial zones and other “anthromes,” that is, areas marked by humans. These have replaced former biomes. “This new model of the biosphere moves us away from an outdated view of the world as ‘natural ecosystems with humans disturbing them’ and towards a vision of ‘human systems with natural ecosystems embedded within them,’” states Ellis.57
Let yourself drift across the digital globe offered by Google Earth and similar services. Don’t zoom in on your own apartment but go instead to areas in the world you do not know. Enjoy the unusual colors, shapes and mysterious structures. This used to be a perspective reserved only for gods. Then, such sights began appearing in expensively produced James Bond movies! Now, you only have to whip a small personal device out of your pocket to zoom down and see for yourself what it means to live on a planet shaped by humans. That green, dense forest—can you see the paths?
That wide, deserted plateau—can you see the open cast mine?
That sparkling blue coral reef—can you see the American military base?
That gray-brown gravel plain … Oops, it’s a city!
Those white dots in the sea off the coast—are they fishing boats?
From high above, these landscapes can look like complicated scriptures, cancerous tumors, works of art, geometric patterns, military parades, bacterial cultures, or even large gardens. It is a sensational sight in which millions of human decisions have been put together and displayed. Irish artist David Thomas
