Raphael ThysThe Anthropocene is a lie
Collage by the author. Illustrations of the “dirty dozen” were pulled from The Guardian.
What baffles me the most about the debate around climate change is how science and hard facts got politicized from the get-go. The climate emergency is not up to debate. It is not a matter of what anyone believes.
I get it. Some of our climate models and predictions can seem complicated. After all, we are working with complex systems and many variables.
The hundreds of scientists and leading experts who worked on this year’s IPCC report did a pretty good job. The report walks us through different scenarios depending on the level of action we take today.
Currently, we are well on our way to the worst-case scenario.
And while climate scientists- or anyone with basic scientific knowledge, really- worldwide are on the verge of terminal exhaustion and live in exasperation beyond measure, the ultra-rich and the most dangerous fossil fuel companies keep profiteering and laughing at us.
It must be such a vibe, pulling the strings like that.
Some of the mega-rich were quick to politicize the climate emergency. Charles Koch, “the kingpin of climate denial,” founded the Cato Institute, which became the first organization to orchestrate the ideological divide on climate change.
According to The Guardian, Koch Industries went on to spend nearly $150m financing climate denial groups between 1997 and 2018 alone.
Imagine pushing that amount of money into essentially spreading lies and endangering the lives of half the humans alive on the planet today.
And among all the greenwashing, misinformation, and corporate bullshit, the most pervasive myth is the myth of the Anthropocene, the belief that humanity as a whole is responsible for the climate catastrophe that’s well on track to wipe out half of the human population by 2050. Yes, you have read that right.
The myth of personal responsibility is nothing but a distraction, so while we fight over paper straws, the fossil fuel industry keeps on going, and corporate America blames you for climate change.
So what does Anthropocene mean?
Anthropocene is a suggested geological age following the Holocene. The Holocene is our current official geological age, and it started 11700 years ago, after the last significant ice age.
Humanity started modifying Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems so that future intelligent species will be able to read the residues of our brief presence on this planet from the Earth’s strata eons from now.
Some of the geologic markers in Earth’s strata to help future archeologists distinguish the Anthropocene from the Holocene would be mass extinction, fossil fuels, nuclear weapons, traces of industrial agriculture,- like an unexplainable amount of chicken, cow, and pig bones,- fertilizers, changed geology and global warming.
Mass extinction will be pretty easy to read from the strata by human or alien paleontologists of the future. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction our planet has witnessed, with three-quarters of species set to be wiped out in the coming few centuries.
Fossil fuels will also be an easy giveaway, as current rates of carbon emissions are higher than at any time in the past 65 million years. Since 1850 CO2 emissions have risen sharply, so there will be records of it in the Arctic ice and carbon-12 and carbon-13 isotopes in tree rings, fossilized shells, bones, and limestone.
Some suggest the start of the Anthropocene should be the industrial revolution, some the dropping of the first nuclear bomb.
But pinpointing such a minute difference seems relatively insignificant, knowing that the entirety of human existence is but the last minute before midnight if Earth’s history were 24 hours.
All the art we made, wars we waged, miraculous architecture and engineering, heroes, great loves and great scientific discoveries, and our brief visits to space all happened at the last minute before midnight.
And in that single minute, we became a geological force, driving mass extinction and climate change. But looking at the clock, we can see that the most significant challenge life on Earth had was going from the origin of life to the single-celled algae.
The appearance of the first single-celled algae took time from 4 AM to 2.08 PM. Then another 4 hours to get to sexual reproduction. After that, things speed up exponentially.
Looking at the history of life on Earth on a 24-hours scale fills me with hope and sadness. Hope, because life will prevail in the end. Once Earth could host multi-celled organisms, then life became abundant at an exponential rate. Sadness because some species, including humans, will be gone forever. Some birds will never sing again.
All because of what? The most stupid reasons of all reasons. We are not ruining the world because we have no other choice. It isn’t even “us” who are doing it. “them,” fossil fuel companies, the 100 biggest polluter entities, and the mega-rich.
Generations to come are losing life, their future, and all the knowledge and beauty humanity amassed due to the rich.
So no, the climate crisis is not our collective responsibility. The Anthropocene should not be called “anthropo-.”
The rich and powerful built systems to support themselves, ruin the planet and hurt the most vulnerable.
Why is the Anthropocene a lie?
When talking about the climate crisis, always remember that just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
The Carbon Majors Report in 2017 published a document that proved that 100 companies were responsible for 70% of the entire world’s emissions. It inextricably linked climate change to economic inequality.
The wealthiest 10% of the population contributes almost half of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the world’s poorest 10% contributes but 5%.
If you live in the “global North,” you are most likely part of the wealthiest 10% of the global population. It takes around 100k USD of net worth to be part of the richest 10%.
The wealthiest 1%, the fossil fuel lobby, and the politicians they bankroll pose the most significant threat and roadblock toward a future for all.
As of now, life as we know it will end in the next handful of decades.
Fossil fuel idiots are stealing humanity’s future.
The reason we aren’t cutting fossil fuels is not that it is hard. It is hard indeed, but not more challenging than many things we have done before, such as transforming the US industry to serve WWII efforts or recent lockdowns.
We are not cutting fossil fuels because a tiny fraction of humanity is resisting and lobbying.
They have considerable power, people in political power positions, and policymakers' ears and vested interest. They wield the power they have accrued with fossil fuels to double down on drilling and nuclear plants in the name of energy sovereignty.
There is only one solution to the climate crisis, to avoid worst-case scenarios.
It is to ban fossil fuels. And the industry knows it, and they are holding on to the last straws with their considerable influence.
We, of course, can’t phase out our fossil fuel dependence overnight, as it would kill billions, but we have to do it in less than three years. That is all the window we have left.
Source: The Visual Capitalist
1% of the global population holds 50% of global wealth, while 55% of the population holds 1.3% of total wealth.
So, no, what we are living in is not the Anthropocene. A tiny fraction of humanity built a system that only serves them, in which the wealth gap is wider than it was during feudal times in Europe. When serfs and kings existed.
The systems we inhabit aren’t a system built by humans for humans. It is a system built for capital by capital. This is a system built on the backs of marginalized peoples and exploitation.
That is until we say no more.
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