The Anthropocene Is Overrated

There is every reason to be alarmed about anthropogenic climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, all of which have been accelerating in recent decades and do pose existential threats. Warming trends could cause the collapse of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets that would dramatically increase sea levels by dozens of feet by the end of this century. If that happens, say goodbye to New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Mumbai, London, Istanbul, Dubai, St. Petersburg, Mumbai, and Beijing, to name just some of the most populous cities that would be drowned. Left unchecked, climate change would also involve ocean acidification (as the oceans absorb atmospheric carbon), terrible droughts and heat waves (with equatorial regions reaching unlivable temperatures for much of the year), air pollution at unbreathable levels in many major cities, and mass extinctions of plants and animals at levels not seen since some of the greatest geological catastrophes in the Earth’s history—perhaps as severe as the “great dying” at the end of the Permian period some 250 million years ago, when as many as 96 percent of all living species may have died out. The resulting Earth from this catastrophe may become devoid not only of humans but perhaps of most complex life on land and in the seas.

Welcome to the age of humans—the Anthropocene. Scientists, academics, public intellectuals, and policymakers have been using this term to describe a new geological epoch marking an unprecedented era of human impact on the natural environment. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, carrying through the development and testing of nuclear weapons, and peaking in recent decades with rapid global warming and the catastrophic depletion of the Earth’s biodiversity, the Anthropocene is often framed as an existential threat to the survival of the human species. Like some of the great environmental catastrophes of the past—such as the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago—the footprint of human activity will be present in the geological record for millions of years to come. Or so the reasoning goes.

Welcome to the age of humans—the Anthropocene. Scientists, academics, public intellectuals, and policymakers have been using this term to describe a new geological epoch marking an unprecedented era of human impact on the natural environment. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, carrying through the development and testing of nuclear weapons, and peaking in recent decades with rapid global warming and the catastrophic depletion of the Earth’s biodiversity, the Anthropocene is often framed as an existential threat to the survival of the human species. Like some of the great environmental catastrophes of the past—such as the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago—the footprint of human activity will be present in the geological record for millions of years to come. Or so the reasoning goes.

This article is adapted from the author's most recent book, Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity From Darwin to the Anthropocene.

There is every reason to be alarmed about anthropogenic climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, all of which have been accelerating in recent decades and do pose existential threats.