Yadvinder Malhi, professor of Ecosystem Science at Oxford University, walks us through the concept of the Anthropocene – a new geological epoch.
About Yadvinder Malhi
"I am a Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford, and I study the living world, how it works and how it changes.
I am an ecosystem scientist who explores the functioning of the biosphere and its interactions with climate change. I am the Director of the Oxford Centre for Tropical Forests which addresses major issues facing tropical forests, and lead the Ecosystems Programme of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, which does diverse research on ecosystems."
The Holocene is over
One of the most profound insights emerging over the last few decades is the insight that humans live on a planet where humanity is no longer a minor player in a vast planet with vast oceans, a vast atmosphere, and vast forests. Instead, we’ve begun to understand that humanity is a significant agent in transforming that planet's basic nature and changing its atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere. This transformation in thought is occurring in many different ways. It isn't just about climate change. It isn't just about biodiversity loss. It isn't just about plastics and waste in the oceans. All of these things are considered together.
The word "Anthropocene" has emerged over the last few decades to name this way of thinking. This word comes from the geological time scale, where there are aeons and periods and epochs. Moreover, by using this geological time scale, what “Anthropocene” implies is that we've moved into a new geological epoch. We've left the epoch in which all of human history has occurred, the Holocene, which began around 10,000 years ago. Before the Holocene, there was the last major ice age, and the Holocene signalled a period of climate stability for approximately 10,000 years. During that period of climate stability, all of human civilisation occurred.
What the Anthropocene proposes is that the Holocene is over. We've now moved into a new world where the climate is entering a period of instability. Many aspects of the earth are changing so profoundly that it's likely to leave a geological record in the sediments of history. For example, if a future geologist came from another planet to Earth in a hundred million years, they would see clear signals in the geological record marking the Anthropocene's start.
So, in some ways, “Anthropocene” is a geological term, but it's much more profound than that. The term is trying to offer us a mindset that recognises the world is finite, and that we live as a large entity on this finite planet.
Key Points
• We started noticing in the 1950s that carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was climbing year after year, which was linked to fossil fuel combustion and emissions. This was one of the first signals that we had moved into the Anthropocene.
• Humanity is a significant agent in transforming that planet's basic nature and changing its atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere. The word that emerged for a human-dominated planet is the Anthropocene.
• The Anthropocene mindset attempts to underline that limitless growth is impossible. We need to start redesigning society at a fundamental level so that it may sustain itself on a finite planet.
• Climate denialism is a real turning back on 200 years of scientific progress and enlightenment and is a rejection of the scientific process using balanced evidence.
