ADVENTURES IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
© 2014, Text by Gaia Vince
© 2014, Cover photograph by Nick Pattinson
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415. (800) 520-6455
Published 2014 by Milkweed Editions
Printed in the United States of America
All photographs by Nick Tucker
Map by Jane Randfield
Geological timescale by Francisco Izzo / Nautilus
14 15 16 17 18 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit publisher, gratefully acknowledges sustaining support from the Bush Foundation; the Patrick and Aimee Butler Foundation; the Driscoll Foundation; the Jerome Foundation; the Lindquist & Vennum Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Target Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. Also, this activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. For a full listing of Milkweed Editions supporters, please visit www.milkweed.org.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vince, Gaia.
Adventures in the anthropocene : a journey to the heart of the planet we made / Gaia Vince. pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-57131-357-7 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-57131-928-9 (ebook)
1. Global environmental change. 2. Global environmental change—Social aspects. I. Title.
GE149.V56 2014
577.27—dc23
Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources.
For Nick
CONTENTS
4 Farmlands
5 Oceans
6 Deserts
7 Savannahs
8 Forests
9 Rocks
10 Cities
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Notes
Index
ADVENTURES IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
INTRODUCTION: THE HUMAN PLANET
Four and a half billion years ago, out of the dirty halo of cosmic dust left over from the creation of our sun, a spinning clump of minerals coalesced. Earth was born, the third rock from the sun. Soon after, a big rock crashed into our planet, shaving a huge chunk off, forming the moon and knocking our world on to a tilted axis. The tilt gave us seasons and currents and the moon brought ocean tides. These helped provide the conditions for life, which first emerged some 4 billion years ago. Over the next 3.5 billion years, the planet swung in and out of extreme glaciations. When the last of these ended, there was an explosion of complex multicellular life forms.
The rest is history, tattooed into the planet’s skin in three-dimensional fossil portraits of fantastical creatures, such as long-necked dinosaurs and lizard birds, huge insects and alien fish. The emergence of life on Earth fundamentally changed the physics of the planet.1 Plants sped up the slow breakdown of rocks with their roots, helping erode channels down which rainfall coursed, creating rivers. Photosynthesis transformed the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, imbued the Earth system with chemical energy, and altered the global climate. Animals ate the plants, modifying again the Earth’s chemistry.
In return, the physical planet dictated the biology of Earth. Life evolves in response to geological, physical and chemical conditions. In the past 500 million years, there have been five mass extinctions triggered by supervolcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts and other enormous planetary events that dramatically altered the climate.2 After each of these, the survivors regrouped, proliferated and evolved. The diversity of plants, animals, fungi, bacteria and other life on Earth is richer now than at any point in time.3
And us? Anatomically modern humans didn’t arrive until nearly 200,000 years ago and it was touch and go whether we would survive. But something pulled us through, the something that differentiated us from the other species in this shared biosphere and made us so successful that we now rule our world: the human brain. We’re more intelligent and use tools better than the other animals. And humans can make and control fire. Ever since the first human lit the first spark, our destiny as the most powerful species was assured. Having this external source of energy, which we could move wherever we chose, gave us power over the landscape, protection from other animals, allowed us to cook our food, keep warm and, ultimately, take over the world.
For thousands of years, humans shared the planet with Neanderthals and our other cousin species. A supervolcanic eruption at Toba in Indonesia 74,000 years ago nearly wiped us all out – the human population shrank