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© Copyright 2014 by Riemann Verlag. All rights reserved.
English translation © copyright 2014 by Synergetic Press.
Foreword © copyright by Paul Crutzen, 2011, 2014.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.
Published by Synergetic Press
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24 Old Gloucester St., London WC1N 3AL
Original title: Menschenzeit. Zerstören oder gestalten? Die entscheidende Epoche unseres Planeten, by Christian Schwägerl, © 2011 by Riemann Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich, Germany
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schwägerl, Christian.
[Menschenzeit. English]
The anthropocene : the human era and how it shapes our planet / Christian Schwägerl.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-907791-54-6 (hardcover) -- ISBN 0-907791-54-9 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-0-907791-55-3 (pbk.) -- ISBN 0-907791-55-7 (pbk.) 1. Environmental responsibility. 2. Environmental ethics. 3. Nature--Effect of human beings on. I. Title.
GE195.7.S3413 2014
304.2--dc23
2014034709
Book and cover design by Barbara Haines
Editors of the English language edition, Linda Sperling with Hugh Elliot
Translated from German by Lucy Renner Jones
Printed by Global PSD, USA on 55# Glatfelter White D-37 stock
Typefaces: Minion with Scala Sans display
FOREWORD
THIS BOOK IS A STRIKING MANIFESTATION of the power and potential in the idea of the Anthropocene. A skillful narrator with many years of journalistic experience, author Christian Schwägerl describes how a single species, our own, is irreversibly transforming the Earth’s biological, geological and chemical processes, and thus affecting our very existence. Two hundred years of industrialization bear testimony to humanity’s power of innovation and creativity but also prove our more perilous powers of degradation and destruction. For the first time in Earth’s history, its future is being determined by both the conscious and unconscious actions of Homo sapiens. Schwägerl’s book is a rallying cry for us to recognize our opportunity to build a long-lasting, viable, creative and freedom-loving human civilization. This book is like a navigation system for the new world of the Anthropocene that lies before us.
Paul J. Crutzen, PhD
Dr. Paul J. Crutzen, born 1933, is an atmospheric chemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (with Mario J. Molina and Frank Sherwood) in 1995, for his pioneering research into ozone layer depletion caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). From 1977 to 1980, Dr. Crutzen was the director of research at the National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado and from 1980 to 2000, director of Atmospheric Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. He has undertaken research at numerous other institutions, such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Crutzen is a longstanding member of various scientific academies, including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
PREFACE
ITHINK I CAME ACROSS THE WORD Anthropocene a few times without it making an impression. Then, one day, it really struck me. I was at a lunch with my friend Matthias Landwehr, in 2008, and he told me that this subject was something I should investigate. I agreed to do so. When I got back to my desk, I had an epiphany and my twenty-five years of reporting on environmental and science issues and forty years of love for everything natural suddenly appeared in a new light, as if I had been touched by a magician’s wand.
One man, Paul J. Crutzen, had defined the relationship between humans and planet Earth, in such a powerful way, that it was hugely inspiring. Crutzen had melded humans and nature (two entities that I had previously thought of as separate, opposing forces), into a whole new science-driven idea. It described a connection that reaches back into the past and far into the future. After seeing, at first hand rainforests burning, land made toxic from mining, and species on the brink of extinction, this idea gave me hope that our ever evolving human consciousness might be about to enter a new phase.
So, this is how I came to write Menschenzeit (The Age of Humans), the German language precursor of what you hold in your hands. Menschenzeit was launched at the Berlin Museum for Natural History, in September 2010. Achim Steiner, the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, came to Berlin for the occasion and gave a wonderful speech about freedom and responsibility. The book launch also resulted in the beginning of a productive friendship with Reinhold Leinfelder, then director general of the Berlin Natural History Museum. Together, we approached the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, (House of World Cultures, abbreviated as HKW), a state-funded cultural center situated right next to the Federal Chancellery, Max Planck Research Society, and the Deutsches Museum in Munich, one of the world’s leading technology museums, and proposed the idea of Anthropocene. We suggested this was a subject both institutions might want to pursue. What followed then was three years of productive collaboration and inspirational events at the HKW. “The Anthropocene Project” was funded directly by the German parliament. The first large-scale exhibition, “Welcome to the Anthropocene—The Earth in our Hands” is scheduled to be held at the Deutsches Museum, from December 2014 through January 2016.
I was able to convince Paul Crutzen to serve as an honorary patron of both projects and I’m very grateful that I have been able to discuss the Anthropocene idea with him so often in recent years.
When I was researching and writing the German edition of this book, the idea of the Anthropocene was rarely mentioned in the media. It might well have become an intellectual cul-de-sac. But, because of its inspirational quality and the efforts of many luminaries, including Jan Zalasiewicz, Reinhold Leinfelder, Andrew Revkin, Will Steffen, Libby Robins, Jürgen Renn, Klaus Töpfer, Bernd Scherer and Helmuth Trischler, the idea has now gained traction. It is now being discussed around the world as a new perspective on how humans and animals, plants and stones, the oceans and all other components of the earth interact. As an author, it is a gratifying experience to see that Menschenzeit really did focus attention on the Anthropocene idea.
My work on “The Anthropocene Project” and preparations for the “Welcome to the Anthropocene” exhibition have allowed me to keep thinking about the idea of a man-made geological epoch and to join in many debates, see artists working with the idea, and to meet very interesting people. This has helped me to further refine my personal perspectives on the many questions stimulated by the Anthropocene idea. The result of all this is an updated English language edition of Menschenzeit, published by Deborah Parrish Snyder and her wonderful team at Synergetic Press.
There are three changes in my own perspective that have occurred since the German edition was published that I would like to highlight.
Initially, I considered it strange that the Anthropocene idea was associated with geology as opposed to biology. I thought that in order for it to be meaningful, it had to have a connection with the living world. What I have come to understand is that geology offers that connection, on a grander scale. By being geological, the Anthropocene opens a doorway between supposedly dead matter and living matter. It tells us that humanity and the technosphere it has produced are now participating in the largest and most long-term of planetary cycles, with conscious thought thrown in! In the words of political scientist