Philosophy and Climate Change: What is the Anthropocene?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ค. 2024
- In part 1 of this Nature League miniseries on philosophy and climate change, Brit and Gray discuss the Anthropocene and how philosophy can help us think about the words we use to discuss climate change.
Written, hosted, and produced by Brit Garner and Gray O'Reilly
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Nature League is an edutainment channel that explores life on Earth and asks questions that inspire us to marvel at all things wild. Join host Brit Garner to learn about, connect to, and love the amazing living systems on Earth and the mechanics that drive them.
Always an absolute JOY whenever a new Nature League video turns up in my feed. We miss you Brit!
As someone with a degree in philosophy and a current student in ecology, this is right up my alley!
Awesome!
The Anthropocene is definitely real, but I would date it from the discovery of agriculture and not the advent of fossil fuel use. We definitely changed the climate with even Neolithic agriculture.
I think I agree that that’s a good spot to draw the line… though I suppose it’s a bit fuzzy even there. My understanding is that agriculture has been discovered more than once, and treated in multiple ways… there’s a certain flavor of it, though, where… it definitely changed things, both directly and indirectly.
@@DavidLindes th-cam.com/users/uctvsearch?query=William%20Ruddiman The intro is a bit long. It is a lecture by William Ruddiman of the University of Virginia on how humans took control of climate. Recorded on 05/15/2015. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny"
@@qwertyuiopgarth that search link didn’t seem to work for me. I just got the channel. Could you point to a specific video, instead? Also, could you please introduce the link? (Like, is it something that adds clarity to something? Something that affirms or contradicts something I said? What? It’s nice to know why I’m potentially following a link…)
@@DavidLindes th-cam.com/video/UxmvLjWYyiY/w-d-xo.html "William Ruddiman of the University of Virginia on how humans took control of climate. Recorded on 05/15/2015. Series: "CARTA - Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny""
There are several potential starting points, all with reasonable lines of support. I argue with myself all the time about which I like best haha
Such a good explanation. Thank you guys!
Great topic, looking forward to the rest of the series! Can always rely on quality content from NL 💙
For the questions 1) epochs are a human construct, and in the scope of how we categorise these, I'd say the impact we had on the world is so dramatic and global, that it should be viewed as one. 2) here, I guess, the definition depends on whether we consider humanity as part of nature, or a separate entity with a huge influence over it. 3) so far, humanity had to decide what counts as epoch in retrospect, so deciding whether we live in one is new to us. Yet, as mentioned in a1, the scale of humanity's impact is too vast to ignore.
I loved this; more big, important concepts and discussions! This is always such a good channel for clear, effective science communication.
Thank you so so much!!
I knew "nature" wasn't a real thing before the channel existed and I still like the channel name.
YAY!!!! Oh how I’ve missed you! I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when this notif popped up but I’m so so glad it did and it’s real! Ok ok… off to actually watch now 😉
Whether we agree on the pronunciation of "anthropocene" I think we can all agree on two things:
- The joy you two share is amazing to see;
- The Anthropocene Reviewed is an amazing podcast _and_ book.
💙🦈
Your videos are always so interesting and insightful. They're also doubly relevant now as I just started an internship in an outreach team at a natural history museum 😁
And actually one of the interesting things I've run into is how quickly conversations about nature seem to turn philosophical. I got a co-worker talking about their research into plants and blue wavelength light and it didn't take too long before we were talking about the nature of consciousness, and about why are we so set in this view of plants as simple things (when talking about the general population).
Funny how that happens, right?! Congrats on the internship, it sounds awesome!
I am so excited you are doing this! I want to put in a request that you discuss rewilding (as a human philosophical movement rather than an ecological remediation, although they are related) and returning to indigenous knowledge and practices. After all, humans were able to exist as part of "nature" for a long time before we went and rewrote the entire geological record.
An excellent topic! I've many thoughts ;)
PhilosophyTube has a video called "Climate Grief" that really hits the nail on the head for me. Maybe Nature League could talk to her?
While I think it's hard not to name our current epoch, I can't help but think it's something that can only truly be named in a past tense way
Someone else mentioned that, and I think it's a really cool point. Basically, how can we denote the present in a way that will be the past in the future haha
I'm sure this will be a great series....how about a poll to decide the preferred pronunciation of Anthropocene?
Brit is definitely right about the pronunciation.
Shots fired 😂
Anthropocene is definitely true!! The hole of the ozone layer and the extinction from hunting / pollution definitely are the footprint of Anthropocene. Anthropocene is a optimistic term. I would say the period now is a Greater Dying!! I heard that the Permian - Triassic extinction was the largest in the past. But for now, no need to wait that 60 thousand years to make 95% of the animals to be disappeared.
Ok so from a nerd who really knows only the most rudimentary level of science… I will try to answer your questions… only problem is I have follow up questions! So to 1 and 3 I say that I think it’s very hard to “date” something in real time. I mean did the Neanderthals know what epoch they were living in at the time? Did they choose how to define that epoch? All of these questions (which are legit by the way… yes I am this ignorant) to say that I don’t think now is the time to define the current age. I don’t think it is any more or less real than any other epoch at this stage of their existing 🙃
In response to #2 I say simply: how do you define something that is ever changing?
P.S. - Brit I can’t help but add… you look great!
I think the difficult thing about using Anthropocene to define our epoch is that it is unlike any that have come before, in that it is defined by the actions and impact of a single species. There have been other epochs defined by various forms of life, but none so singularly as homo sapiens. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, by defining it that way, it can help us claim ownership of the things we as a species have done that have impacted the planet in such a profound way. On the other, it's another example of humans putting ourselves at the centre of narrative, yet again.
Nature/natural is such a tricky concept. Humans are part of the natural evolution of this planet, ergo we, and the things we make and do, are natural. But colloquially, that's not what we mean. We are constantly waffling over whether we are or aren't within the system. In my mind, calling the towering concrete of an urban metropolis 'natural' is completely inaccurate, and yet, I wouldn't feel the same cognitive dissonance over calling a termite mound natural. Both are the result of a species altering its environment to improve its comfort and survival, but downtown Shanghai is orders of magnitude different from a termite mound in the Serengeti. The basic function is the same, but they feel qualitatively different. I'm not sure how reconcile that in my thinking, because I can't be anything but a human observing a system I'm a part of. My inclination is to say that the rovers we have on Mars could be clearly delineated as 'unnatural' to their environments, but again, that's only a arbitrary division based on scale. If we consider the Solar system as a whole to be our natural environment, then putting something we've made on another planet isn't unnatural. I don't think there are lines to be found.
For the last, I'd say that as an observable period in geologic time, there isn't much room to argue against the existence of the Anthropocene, regardless of what it gets called. The things humans have done and continue to do are having a profound impact on the planet and even if we were all to disappear tomorrow, the evidence of that would remain observable far into the future. What this question does make me wonder is if there are other points in geologic time with events or species that might have had overwhelming, planet wide impacts to life, but didn't have enduring evidence (that we understand as such). The things we have no idea that we don't know are the things that get me excited about history on a geologic scale.
Great to see you back, Brit! I'm looking forward to more of these discussions.
Such fabulous points! Thanks for sharing and for parsing the topics so eloquently 💙
pronouncing Anthropocene an-THROH-puh-sen-ee from now on
I love philosophy and this is a going to be a great series!
Although I did read an entry in the Journal of atmospheric and solar terrestrial physics which concluded that "long term variations of thermospheric parameters are controlled by solar and geomagnetic activity" despite the CO2 increase.
I don't quite know what to believe anymore as I keep reading contradictory journal articles!
That's the beauty of science- we're always learning more about what we don't know! Just gotta stay open-minded with a heavy dose of critical thinking 😉
We're essentially talking about designating what's happened in modern history as so significant that we should consider it the start of an entirely different epoch from the Holocene, correct?
1) From a geological or ecological standpoint I would have to answer: No. Mankind's impact on planet earth is affecting nearly everything and doing so at a catastrophic and extremely rapid rate - let there be no doubt about that - in terms of the absolute magnitude of change however (which is what we primarily consider when defining one period of geologic time from another, right?) our impact on the biodiversity of the planet is still limited to the loss of around 7% of the species the Holocene started with, that hasn't drastically changed on a global level (though, again, just to reiterate: If we keep going like we have it mostly definitely will).
Nuclear detonations aside, I sincerely doubt modern times would even be distinguishable from the rest of the Holocene at the level of the fossil record if you were to look at strata laid down today two million years from now.
In terms of ecological destruction too, modern times would probably be hard to distinguish from the rest of the Holocene... Because of the sheer scale of destruction our species has already caused throughout the Holocene and the preceding couple of millennia: The Mammoth Steppe doesn't have any mammoths or steppe anymore, The Scottish Highlands were once the Caledonian Temperate Rainforest, the scattered stretches of rainforest on mainland Southeast Asia were once a single grand Southeast Asian Rainforest and the Great Plains of North America were... Well... You get the idea.
Climate change is where the best argument for an Anthropocene can be made, I would say, given that the spike in temperature we're causing is so abrupt; But on this front too: An excursion in temperature of 1 to 1.5 C isn't an unprecedented, unique event within the Holocene (see the "8.2-kiloyear event" or the "Holocene climatic optimum", for examples of similar changes)
From a philosophical standpoint: It's complicated. On the one hand, our ability to impact planet Earth is now known to us, whereas we were largely ignorant of it throughout the Holocene - and this ads an element of culpability to the story that we shouldn't allow ourselves to ignore. On the other hand, I personally loathe names like "The Napoleonic Era" for periods of warfare and destruction when it comes to history. I feel it gives more credit and honor than is due to the perpetrators behind such dismal times. I think the name Anthropocene is much too easy to interpret as a compliment to our species rather than an assignment of blame. We don't call the Paleogene the "Chicxulubian" either, do we?
2) Nature is hard to define because so much of it encompasses who we ourselves still are. And conversely, because just 3% of the Earth still remains as true, nearly untouched nature devoid of the scars of our shenanigans, there's not a whole lot of pure nature left to point to.
3) In my opinion, the Anthropocene would be "less real" than the other epochs preceding it, if we set it apart solely for philosophical factors we didn't even consider when we were delineating previous epochs.
Love some of these points you're making, and really appreciate the mention of naming the epoch as having the potential to sound like a celebration instead of culpability and responsibility.
@@natureleague Glad you liked some of them. To be honest I was a little conflicted about the idea of using a naming process like this as an instrument to influence public opinion and behavior to begin with. It's why I mostly tried to stick to what (I suspect) are the general conventions for determining whether or not something is a distinct epoch or not and discount the whole thing based on that alone. If we start (re)defining epochs and picking their names with an agenda in mind (no matter how noble), it sets the precedent that that's okay to do in this field. Politics had such a precedent when Global Warming entered public awareness: The Republican Party used it to suggest the far more mellow, gradual and unavoidable-natural-process-sounding term of "Climate Change". And I... I don't wanna live in no "Petrocene", Brit :P
@@davidschaftenaar6530 You and me both 😂
Hi Adrian!
Damn, you caught me lurking again lmao
@@Battury Unbelievable 😂
Seems a little too soon to call it an epoch. We've only been doing this a few thousand years if you count agriculture [I do], or a few hundred if you only count industrialization. In geological time, that's almost as fast as a meteorite strike. But it is a major geological event, on par with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. Maybe call it an epoch if we last long enough, an event if we don't?
I can imagine far, far, far future geologists looking at the churned-up agricultural layers, the sooty sediments of the Industrial Revolution, slightly radioactive fallout of the Atomic Age, then microplastics followed by -- I don't know, sedimentary rock with traces of defunct nanomachines? -- making note of the extinctions and wondering what we were up to. After that, would there be fossils of transgenic species made to fill vacant ecological niches, or would most new species radiate from their common ancestors, the old fashioned way?
I'll never know, but I'd like to find out.
7:50 - I bet you’d do a great job of writing policies. How can I help?
(Also, re “watch me”… I’d totally watch! Live stream, or what?!? 😉)
Oh, and re your questions… my short answers:
1) yes
2) our anthropocentrism muddies the waters
3) not really more or less real, just different. Is a potato more or less real than a mountain? I wouldn’t say so. Just different.
@@DavidLindes Fair points, friend 😊
@@natureleague 😊
Hmm, Adrian looks different somehow!
Our planet is literally going to be uninhabitable in ten years if we don’t do something. ☹️
Good job, humans. You've managed to make an indelible stain on an entire planet.