The old joke is that if you find the pace of modern life too fast, switch to geologic time. The years are counted in the millions. Trends take an epoch to come and go. Take the past ten to twelve thousand years, a post glacial epoch known as the Holocene. This title was suggested by Charles Lyell, British geologist, in 1833. Fifty two years later, the Geological Congress officially agreed. Taking this long view, what are your day to day problems? Against the slow steady pace and massive effect of glaciers, what is any of our human effort but puny and even vain?

But since 2000, Paul Josef Crutzen, a Dutch Nobel Prize winning climatologist, blurted out what many people thought but felt was too dreadful to say. Crutzen said we are in a new epoch. By 2008, the Geological Society of London agreed that the possible existence of this new epoch should be investigated. Are we now in a time when the entire world feels, right to its geologic marrow, the impact of humans? Is this the Anthropocene?

In 2010, Crutzen and three other authors, one of whom is Australia’s Will Steefen, explain this opinion. Although humans have changed the visible landscape over and over again, this alone might be a transient effect. Since Angkor Wat, megacities have come and gone.

Startling examples

But the way of the world is vastly more subtle. Consider three elegant, startling examples. First is the measure of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

This record, now corroborated with findings from ancient Antarctic ice, is one of a trace element making up only 0.03 per cent of air. Equally subtle is the slight change in the acidity of the ocean. A little more change can trigger great consequences. And finally, the rate of extinction of species has increased and the next great extinction wave seems to be already underway. In the planet’s six billion years, only five such decimations are known.

The committees of geologic specialists will eventually decide if the start of the Anthropocene is indeed the 1800s, the era of Charles Lyell. They may use the exponential rise of the human population as one of the benchmarks, similar to the way they use the rise of trilobites 520 million years ago to mark the Cambrian period.

But the term Anthropocene is already in use because time and again specialists find it descriptive. Human impact is found at every level of the planet. Examples range from antibiotic resistant microbes to global pollution spread by weather and currents. We used to think we couldn’t possibly affect everything but we are starting to see the fact is that we do. 

Now a good fact is hard to find. Especially when we consider that every fact is made of two parts: observation and theory. Every theory is held by an observer. Every observer is part of a social group, identified by norms, beliefs and behaviours.

Types of facts

There are different types of facts. There are historical ones. ‘The Nagoya Protocol and Aichi Targets were agreed upon by nearly 200 countries on 29 October 2010 in Japan at the UN Convention on Biodiversity.’

There are cumulative facts. ‘Targets are set for 2020 including international conservation of 17 per cent of lands and 10 per cent of oceans and coastal areas, up from 12.5 per cent land and less than one per cent oceans today.’
Statistical facts are popular but complicated: ‘The Nagoya Protocol calls for the calculation of natural capital and ecosystem services in the account books of businesses and governments. Industrialised use of these natural products and services will be assessed and money returned to both the sources and places of such use.’

People will argue all these facts from the Biodiversity Convention. After all, to truly accept new facts is a big step. This means acknowledging all the observations, theories and people involved. The new understanding will also demand new behaviours.

But remember the other old joke? There are really only three simple facts of life: birth, death and taxes. Although they are facts of the highest quality, we struggle with accepting these. Like it or not, we are now facing a fourth basic fact. We, in the Anthropocene, are intertwined with the forces of nature. We’re surely not by any means the greatest or the most beneficial.

If we let this one fact sink in, our reality alters. All our stories change. Every one we tell must allow for human impact.

So every migrating bird found dead on beaches may have suffered at the ‘hands of nature’. But they are also known to be suffering from human disturbance as well as destruction of habitat and food supply at the start of their journey or along the flyway.

What survives?

Every haul we take of big fish makes survivors of the smaller ones. These breed more fish like themselves who can escape nets. These are adults who simply grow more slowly. Each year, we help make the ‘biggest fish’ a steadily smaller one.

There are many more such stories to retell. Philosopher Thomas Berry calls these the ‘primary scripture’ of the era he calls the Ecozoic. His term describes not what we do but what we learn.

For each of us, there will be that one tale that finally drives home the fourth fact.

As with birth, death and taxes, we will always have strong mixed feelings. We’ll argue without stop. But, as spelled out by this pivotal Biodiversity Convention 2010, we see what we must start to do.