Reflections on the Anthropocene

Humans are responsible for the spread of countless food/resource plants and animals, human parasites, and other invasive species across constants (particularly from the 16th century onward). We’re also the cause a sixth mass extinction, a measurable increase deforestation and desertification, the shifting of sedimentation patterns from roads and damns, a significant dent in the availability of fossil fuels, a 100-ppm (and counting) increase in atmospheric carbon, the detonating hundreds of atmospheric nuclear devices (thus ruining carbon-dating methods for anything past 1950), and the production of many new minerals such as ceramic, plastic, concrete, aluminum, titanium, and extremely radioactive substances such as corium (the product of nuclear meltdowns).

Anatomically modern humans have only existed for roughly 200 thousand years, and we’ve only been practicing agriculture for roughly the last 10 thousand. The longest-lived civilization ever to grace the earth only lasted 1.5 thousand years, and that’s being incredibly generous. How long into the next million years will we even last? What force will end the last human civilization, and how long after that will it take for the last human to die off?

The next time the evolutionary engine of Earth produces a species capable of discovering geology – be it the descendants of dolphins, bees, or slime molds – that species will be able to tell some interesting tales of an ancient ape who came down from the trees, developed stone harvesting and hunting tools, spread as far as the megafauna could lead them, plopped down to build civilizations around the domestication of specific plants and animals, and quickly developed technologies that altered the geology of the time.

Upon discovering our fossilized remains and our geologic impact, what will they think of us? Will they idolize us or hold us in contempt? Will there be lessons to be gleamed from our failures? With fossil fuels less available, will they be forced to develop renewable technologies? Will they be able to reverse engineer our ancient methods? Will they eventually be able to reach farther than us? Will they come to physically realize realities we never even dreamed of?

The story of humanity thus far is simultaneously amazing, tragic, and understandable. I hope that by the time the end of our story is written in the rocks, it will show that we learned, for a time, how to live sustainably, peacefully, equitably, and happily.