In an article in Nature entitled “Defining the Anthropocene,” geographers and climate scientists Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin provide a new approach to dating this era that focuses on an event they call the “Orbis spike,” a dip in atmospheric CO2 occurring around 1610. Effectively, what their proposal does it to allow geologists to harmonize their work with historical and social scientific scholarship on the Columbian encounter and the spread of European colonialism across the planet. (I’m thinking especially of world-systems theorists, environmental historians like Alfred Crosby and Jason W. Moore, and the Latin American modernity/coloniality research program.)
Summarizing the article in context of the debates over dating as well as naming the Anthropocene, Dana Luciano notes that
“Lewis and Maslin’s proposal is compelling because it is, as far as I know, the first proposal for an Anthropocene “golden spike” to recognize genocide as part of the cause of epochal division.”
(See Scientific American for another summary, and Richard Monastersky’s piece for Nature‘s own contextualization.)
Lewis and Maslin are well aware that the science of the Anthropocene is not just a matter of observation, but also of social construction and political efficacy. Their concluding paragraphs are worth reprinting in full (emphasis and paragraph breaks added):
“The choice of either 1610 or 1964 as the beginning of the Anthropocene would probably affect the perception of human actions on the environment. The Orbis spike implies that colonialism, global trade and coal brought about the Anthropocene. Broadly, this highlights social concerns, particularly the unequal power relationships between different groups of people, economic growth, the impacts of globalized trade, and our current reliance on fossil fuels. The onward effects of the arrival of Europeans in the Americas also highlights a long-term and large-scale example of human actions unleashing processes that are difficult to predict or manage.
“Choosing the bomb spike [favored by the mid-20th century “Great Acceleration” dating approach] tells a story of an elite-driven technological development that threatens planet-wide destruction. The long-term advancement of technology deployed to kill people, from spears to nuclear weapons, highlights the more general problem of ‘progress traps’111. Conversely, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and later agreements highlight the ability of people to collectively successfully manage a major global threat to humans and the environment. The event or date chosen as the inception of the Anthropocene will affect the stories people construct about the ongoing development of human societies.
“Past scientific discoveries have tended to shift perceptions away from a view of humanity as occupying the centre of the Universe. In 1543 Copernicus’s observation of the Earth revolving around the Sun demonstrated that this is not the case. The implications of Darwin’s 1859 discoveries then established that Homo sapiens is simply part of the tree of life with no special origin.
“Adopting the Anthropocene may reverse this trend by asserting that humans are not passive observers of Earth’s functioning. To a large extent the future of the only place where life is known to exist is being determined by the actions of humans. Yet, the power that humans wield is unlike any other force of nature, because it is reflexive and therefore can be used, withdrawn or modified. More widespread recognition that human actions are driving far-reaching changes to the life-supporting infrastructure of Earth may well have increasing philosophical, social, economic and political implications over the coming decades.”
