On why it's We, not I: Arguments against the Anthropocene

In general, we humans can be decidedly anthropocentric. Historically, many of our religions have told us that the world is ours to use. Prevailing cultural narratives have tended to align with this extractivist idea; and concurrent capitalism continues to engender this maximal outlook, regardless of impact. And impactful has this outlook been. So much so, that it has been suggested that our current time be renamed, from the Holocene, to the Anthropocene.

This new term was widely popularised by chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen in 2000, who has suggested the atmospheric impacts of human activity as significant enough to merit its own epoch. Since then, the Anthropocene has gained informal scientific use; been added to the dictionary; and become widely synonymous with our current era. To get an idea of the impacts of Crutzen’s suggestion, it helps to better understand what the renaming of an ‘epoch’ means.

Ecological epochs

An ‘epoch’ is a measure of ‘deep time;’ a form of horology on a scale unknown to us. Where humans work in single years, deep time is calculated by the millions. This is done by roughly subdividing time into groups of years: categorising billions of years into ‘aeons;’ into which hundreds of millions are ‘eras;’ tens of millions become ‘periods;’ hundreds of thousands are ‘epochs;’ and tens of thousands become ‘ages.’ Thinking in deep time is a practice against existentialism. In deep time, the human species has existed for barely an epoch. On a scale that functions in the millions of years, a single human lifespan becomes utterly insignificant. 

The Anthropocene has been ascribed numerous potential geneses: from the Agricultural Revolution around 12,000 years ago; to the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago; or the Green Revolution, 70 years ago. It is this most recent Anthropocenic genesis which perhaps resonates the most. On a timescale in which the 300 million year existence of our entire species is generally considered brief, it is sobering to think that within a mere 70 years we could have impacted enough change to merit a new epoch.

The Green Revolution is generally associated with the plant breeding of Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug. Borlaug’s seeds revolutionised agriculture with their yields, helping alleviate looming famines. Concurrent advancements in harnessing atmospheric nitrogen into chemical fertilisers; engineering bioweaponry into pesticides; mechanising production; and the now-widespread practice of monocropping, drove a worldwide change in the way crops were produced, and paved the way for the conventional agriculture that feeds us today.

Norman Borlaug

Yet this new normal has proved to cause more problems than it solves. The vast quantities of fertilisers Borlaug’s seeds and their subsequent iterations require rely heavily on fossil fuels to produce. The pesticides that ensure they grow free from predation, and the homogenisation that they favour, wreak untold damage to diversity. Additionally, seed suppliers have become contemporary colonisers, seizing crops from indigenous populations, patenting them, and selling them back to the communities from whence they were bought. 

The commodification of our landscapes under the auspices of the Green Revolution have left our world bereft. The worldwide diversity of crops from which farmers once chose has been whittled down to a mere handful; endless fields of homogeneity forming a united front in the march for standardisation. Conventional agriculture is calculated to cause 75% of planetary damage; generate 40% of greenhouse gases; and occupy 65% of all agricultural land. 

How then, in the face of such widespread homogeneity, might we challenge the notions of the Anthropocene, and the conventional agriculture that it engenders? Though the term the Anthropocene has garnered widespread scientific and everyday use, its critics suggest that its generalisation belies the culpability of those who use it. 

Indigenous writer Zoe Todd believes the term the Anthropocene generalises the dominant narratives of those which have led us to climate crisis, which erases the narratives of those who are not complicit. In her Indigenising the Anthropocene, Todd denies the single philosophical, epistemological, or ontological lenses of the Anthropocene. Instead, she suggests locally informed responses to localised challenges must be taken worldwide.

Similarly, writer Hanna E. Morris suggests that the term Anthropocene perpetuates a mechanised ‘we’ which detaches us from the source of harm through its generalisation. Both Todd and Morris suggest specificity over generalisation, which breaks down global issues with localised actions.

Vandana Shiva

This notion can also be understood through the lens of agriculture. Concurrent food systems rely on a few hyper-generalised crops which are intensively grown worldwide. Activists such as Vandana Shiva and Vivien Sansour negate the homogeneity of conventional agriculture by promoting species diversity through seed libraries and heirloom varieties. In both their practices, they highlight the need for a re-diversification of agriculture away from today’s predominant crops.

In spite of the widespread application of the term the Anthropocene, perhaps we would be better to think in deep time, and embody our epoch's official name, the Holocene. Derived from the Greek holos meaning ‘whole;’ the Holocene engenders holism: a theory which promotes intimate interconnection, such that parts cannot exist independently of a whole. In our recent Journal post, Let our Ferments Foment us: A radical manifesto, we examined philosopher Donna Harraway’s renaming of the Anthropocene with Chthulucene. Harraway’s Chthulucene promotes a worldview based on multispecies collaboration over anthropocentrism. 

Drawing from Harraway’s Chthulucene; Todd and Morris’ notions of specificity; and Shiva and Sansour’s practices in diversity, we might engender a more holistic notion of the earth. Perhaps in doing so, we humans might remember that it is ‘we,’ not ‘I,’ who make up the multispecies inhabitants of this diverse earth.