anthropocene – Pike & Hurricane

How life will disappear if we continue to overexploit nature

Aimée Niau Lacordaire — Sun, 17 May 2020 14:35:59 +0000

The Amazonia and Australia’s fires, the coronavirus, and the invasion of insects in Africa: those four disasters that hit between 2019 and 2020 have one point in common; they are all due to the impact of humans on nature.

The extent of the damage

During the years 2019 and 2020, 4,700 square kilometers of the Amazonian forest burned, the equivalent of the size of 628 football stadiums. There are at least 1.6 million hectares of the Australian forest which burned and 2000 koalas that died during the fire. And more than 228 000 people have died of coronavirus in the world. Furthermore, East Africa is being invaded and ravaged by locusts. Due to the lack of information on the impact of the locust invasion, we don’t exactly know the extent of the damage, however, this greatly affected the harvests and therefore risks famine. But the worst is yet to come. Because these phenomena are only going to multiply if we continue to overexploit nature.

What are they due to?

In fact, the forest fires in Australia are the results of an exceptional drought and heat waves which are unquestionably linked to global warming. Likewise, the cyclones that hit Africa have favored the insects’ circulation and reproduction. It’s the extreme climatic variations that caused those cyclones, and so ideal conditions for these locusts. In Amazonia, the climate alone does not explain forest fires, but they are also due to humans who want to appropriate the land to cultivate it. In the 90’s, deforestation was principally due to agriculture, but now it’s the expansion of soybean plantations in order to feed livestock, which is the number one cause of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

The coronavirus were been transmitted to humans by a pangolin, and these animals are heavily poached, “researchers estimated in 2017 that between 400,000 and 2.7 million pangolins are now hunted each year in the forests of Central Africa to supply the Asian market”.This animal is on the verge of extinction, not only because of poaching but also because of deforestation, which made them lose their habitat. Moreover, the passage of virus from animals to humans is easy because of intensive breeding which makes it easier for the virus to move between species; as with the H1N1 flu. It has also been proven that the coronavirus causes higher mortality rates in regions with a high rate of air pollution.

What does the future hold for us ?

In Australia, temperatures and droughts peaked in 2019 and researchers have shown that if we do nothing about global warming, these high levels of heat will be the norm in a few decades. The forest allows the absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2). This is why the Amazon constituting the largest forest in the world is called “the lungs of the Earth”. Unfortunately, when the dynamics of tree mortality intensifies, the trees will no longer absorb but reject this CO2, and therefore contribute to global warming. Evidently, this leads to a devastating loop and therefore the death of thousands of plant, animal and human species.

If we continue to poach and eat wild animals more and more diseases will be transmitted to humans. In addition the food chain would collapse if animals were to disappear. And if we continue to consume as much meat as we currently do, and therefore encourage intensive farming, more viruses will be transmitted and cause more and more deadly pandemics.

We saw that nature takes over during confinement, animals have reclaimed the territory of humans, and pollution has slowed down. It is therefore possible to limit our impact on nature. It is therefore more than necessary to take drastic measures if we want to prevent the extinction of species. It is necessary to stop overconsumption, to stop animal exploitation, to fight against overheating. If no action is taken, thousands of plant species will disappear causing the death of the animals, we will face extreme weather, which will slowly destroy the human species, starting with those who already suffer from it, the poorest.

by Aimée Niau Lacordaire

Photo Credits

Koala, Mathias Appel, CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

Fire, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region U.,S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Regio, Public Domain Mark 1.0

Sheep, Bernard Spragg. NZ, CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0)

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Anthropocene: how humans shape life on Earth

Nina Kolarzik — Sun, 17 May 2020 14:30:03 +0000

What is the evolution of life actually? In its essence it is that a species has the best chance in reproducing itself and surviving the longest if it is the best at adapting to its environment. This is the same for all the different life forms, plants, animals… and also for humans (if you want a specific kind of animal) this was for a long time the standard. But is it still?

A group of researchers claim that the earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Since the last ice age around ten thousand years ago, humanity has lived in a very stable epoch, the Holocene. Compared to previous times, when the temperature of the earth has fluctuated much more and made living conditions far more difficult, the average temperature during the Holocene changed by plus-minus one degree celsius only.

As far as we know, this is the only epoch that makes life as we know it possible. But what happens when we move out of it? What happens if we cross the boundaries of our planet? According to the Anthropocene Working Group this is already happening as we enter the Anthropocene.

The human force

As explained by Johan Rockström, the development started around 1750 with the industrial revolution. In the beginning, humans still impacted the earth system little. The human pressure through greenhouse gas emission, extracting resources, overuse biodiversity etc. grew linearly. However, from 1955 onwards, the impact increased exponentially. The Earth today faces a geologic epoch in which humans define it more than any other species or natural process. The name “Anthropocene” says it: Other Earth systems in our geologic time period, the atmosphere, water systems, biospheres, are human-influenced.

The term proposed by the Anthropocene Working Group is not official in science yet, but there is increasing evidence that this is not just a symbolic name and that humans leave behind their geologic mark in stones and ice. If in the future researchers study sediments of our time, as archaeologists and geologists do today, they will find evidence of pollution, fertilizers, human waste, nuclear weapons and other signs of the human conquest. We are the force of change. The sun, any other living forms, seismic activities of the Earth… they all change the planet less than we do. Not only would it be the first time that we are witnessing a new era, but it is also the consequence of our own actions.

Acknowledging this is important to understand that the climate change the planet is currently experiencing is anthropogenic. But human impact on the Earth is not limited to climate change. It includes many more phenomena: urbanization and agriculture, mining and the production of new materials, loss of biodiversity and invasion of species, being some of them. Imagine cycling through Skåne and its agricultural fields. Imagine swimming in the sea and finding rubbish along the shores. Imagine walking through a forest nearby – the trees would not grow the way you see them if they were left alone. And when visiting the area around the Italian town Carrara, you can find that complete mountains disappear because they have been turned into one of the biggest marble quarries in the world. You see: nearly everywhere our environment is shaped according to human will. Can you imagine a place that did not carry any signs of human influence?

The Anthropocene argument has been criticised of its duality of human society and nature as reducing the world to simplistic binaries. It is challenged by the alternative understanding of a Capitalocene, that “signiﬁes capitalism as a way of organizing nature— as a multispecies, situated, capitalist world-ecology”. It describes the way we are attaching a monetary value to everything, we economise our world. The concept “Anthropocene” still needs to be developed and is not uncontested. However, it directs our attention to contemporary environmental concerns and raises an important question: Should we continue that way?

Local tip

The exhibition “Antropocen” in the Teknikens och Sjöfartens hus of Malmö Museer is taking place until the 7th of June. It is telling through photography and film the terrible beauty that science is warning us about.

by Nina Kolarzik

Photo Credits

photo 1, analogicus, no attribution required

photo 2, digital341, no attribution required

photo 3, dexmac, no attribution required

photo 4, MitchellShapiroPhotography, CC by-NC-ND 2.0

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