The origins of the Anthropocene

Miocene

-23'030'000to-5'300'000

10 to 8 millions years ago: separation of human and gorilla lineage

7 to 5 millions years ago: separation of human and chimp lineage

Pliocene

-5'300'000to-2'580'000

4 millions years ago: first bipedal hominids

3.3 millions years ago: earliest known tools

Pleistocene

-2'580'000to

2.5 millions years ago: genus Homo

400'000 years ago: domestication of fire

310'000 years ago: Homo sapiens

Anthropisation

Pleistocene

to-11'700

50'000 years ago: megafauna extinctions

Holocene

-11'700to

11'700 years ago: early Neolithic

5'500 years ago: first civilizations

1492 Discovery of the New World

Anthropocene

toPresent

1800 industrial Revolution

1913 synthetic fertilizers

1945 first atomic bomb

1980 ozone depletion

The signature of the Anthropocene

We can represent the human impact on Earth with a model that depends on three parameters: population, standard of living and technical progress. If we transfer these variables onto three axes we can visualise human impact on Earth as a volume that progresses with time (cursor at the bottom). During the C20th it is the global growth in the standard of living that has contributed the most to the rapid increase in the volume.

The signature of the Anthropocene

World population0 billion

Affluence: global GDP0 trillion $

Technology: patents0 million

1900

Demography or way of life?

If we made the standard of living and technology advance at the same rate as the growth in the world’s population, the human impact on the Earth would remain much less than it currently is. Contrary to what we sometimes think, environmental problems are not only a consequence of demography but are also the result of our ways of live.

Demography or way of life?

World population0 billion

Affluence: global GDP0 trillion $

Technology: patents0 million

1900

The Anthropocene questions our ways of life and our relationship to nature

The ways of human life are not universal but are the result of a history and a culture that are constantly evolving. The transition to the Anthropocene in particular is a consequence of a progressive distancing from nature. In the West, this distancing began with the Renaissance when it was said that to understand nature it should be compared to a machine. With this analogy man tends to want to replace God as the world’s timekeeper.
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Separating nature and culture

The distancing from nature, begun during the Renaissance, becomes more pronounced in the C17th. Philosophers defend an increasingly radical separation between nature and humans, considered to be the only free beings. The rest of the natural world bows completely to the laws of nature. Through the exercise of reason, human societies aspire to freeing themselves of all constraints. Concretely, we classify things, beings and phenomena as being either natural or cultural.
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Conquering the world

In a world that is calculated, expressed mathematically and surveyed, that leaves no room for the natural, supernatural or mysterious, modern western civilisation does not fear exploring new spaces. Through its numerous conquests it intends to extend its domination and increase its power over the world.
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From left or right, production is a must

Political and economic ideologies dominate, from both the left and the right, based on productivity practices consisting of consistently drawing on limited environmental resources. In this way the stakes of the Anthropocene go far beyond classic political divisions.
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The human impact on Earth

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Metamorphosis

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The Anthropocene questions our ways of life and our relationship to nature

In the West, the passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance was accompanied by a profound change in the way of looking at the world. By progressively distancing itself from the rest of the living world, the modern West reduced nature to an exterior reality to which it no longer belonged. Henceforth, the natural world is no longer perceived as a living, intelligent totality but as a collection of objects to be observed and analysed from a distance. In a context marked by the affirmation of science, we consider that no distinction exists between the vital processes of living beings and the physical phenomenon observed in machines.

The ways in which an animal lives, reacts and behaves have become known thanks to scientific laws and can be controlled through techniques. Mathematics has become the tool for interpreting the world. Reduced to their material dimensions (weight, mass and volume), non-human living beings are put into the same category as robots. If nature is a vast machine it becomes possible to envisage transforming it, even improving it.

Scientific knowledge, placed at the service of technical development, thus becomes that which allows modern man to dominate the extremely complicated workings of the nature-machine to subjugate it to his desires.
It isn’t just a question of getting to know living beings better, but to live better by becoming “master and possessor of nature”. This expression of Descartes’ reflects western ambition to spread human dominance over life indefinitely in the name of progress. Natural resources simply provide the décor for human adventures.

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Separating nature and culture

From modern times, nature is no longer perceived as a whole to which we all belong, but as a collection of exterior objects, passive, with neither soul nor awareness. Animals and plants are determined by universal mechanical movements and are, therefore, controllable while individuals, capable of reflection are free to lead an existence of their own choice

Western civilisation thus becomes the first and unique civilisation to envisage a separation between nature and culture. Since then this vision of the world has tended to impose itself in other societies. With this way of thinking, it is difficult to understand that what we do to nature, we do to ourselves, to the point of threatening our conditions of existence on Earth

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Conquering the world

The modern age is characterised by the new way in which Westerners look at the world. According to them, nature is regulated by mechanical movements governable through science and technology. This mathematical expression of the world encourages them to pierce the secrets of the unknown. For example, the sea is no longer viewed as an insurmountable obstacle but as a way of accessing exploitable foreign lands, fortunes and slaves for export. Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and English navigators set out to discover new countries and to map the world.

The relationship between western societies with the natural world and with others is characterised by manipulation, domination and ownership. In the C19th, mountaineers lead the first successful expeditions to the highest summits in the Alps, such as the Matterhorn. The temptation to push back limits manifests itself in the C20th through the first steps towards the conquest of outer space. Europe spreads to the rhythm of exploration and the western way of thinking becomes dominant.

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From left or right, production is a must

With the industrial revolution and technical progress, production efforts intensify considerably. Whether in communist countries, or in the west where capitalism dominates, growth in production is presented as the way to happiness.

Progressively, economic growth becomes a conscious objective, promised and promoted by political actors. This choice of development creates a reversal in values which is surprising to say the least: it is no longer the economy that is at the service of our needs, but our needs that must increase according to the necessity of the economy.

In effect, if production increases, consummation must follow the same trajectory. To change the behaviour of individuals and encourage them to consume more, the publicity system is put in place by businesses. This leads us to confuse our desires with our needs. The productivity-consumerist model leads into a society of “always more” that reduces nature to a stock of resources destined to correspond to our permanent desires.