The Ocean in the Anthropocene
This week in class we spent a lot of time talking about the anthropocene – the geological epoch in which humans are a dominant driver of planetary systems and processes with the anthropo meaning “man” and cene meaning “new”. Like last week I was curious on the effects of the anthropocene directly on the oceans of the world, so I did a little research. In May of 2013 there was a conference held that 500 scientists from around the world attended to talk about the water effects of the anthropocene. With the changing climates it has an effect on snow cover and sea ice, which in turn intensifies the water cycle and creates an altered pattern of rainfall and river flow. Human activity has also acidified the oceans, caused the nitrogen cycle to be altered, drained nearly half of the world’s wetlands, caused 100 billion tons of sediment that would replenish coastlines to get trapped behind dams, and caused major rivers to point where they can no longer reach to oceans. What we can do to slow or stop the process is something many scholars have thought about. Will Steffen, and others have proposed “planetary boundaries” as a safe space in which civilization can do its thing. He believes these are important because he says there’s “no guarantee civilization lasts forever” he goes on to say “the Romans aren’t around, nor the Mayans and we might not be either unless we start thinking globally as well as locally”. I found these statements to be very powerful.
I think it is very important that we think about things and try to come up with a global solution because the problem is very much a global problem. Unless we can all work together to make changes I don’t think the changes will be significant enough to create the kind of change that needs to be made to stop the problem and try to reverse it as much as possible. I think obviously all over the globe people are concerned with the effects of the anthropocene, but we don’t quite know how to deal with it yet. There are so many ideas on how to help, but they would need to be globally accepted and applied to work, and I think the accepting is the hard part. I think for people to care more about making changes things need to get worse. People don’t really care about things they can’t see, and until something inconveniences their lives they may care, but they’re not going to be willing to make the changes and stay in the same routine. I think especially with water, it is so important for so many different aspects of life we can’t really wait until it gets bad, we need to make the changes that need to be made now because it has such an effect on everything. Not only our drinking water, but out food sources agriculturally and otherwise. If we have nothing to eat or drink obviously there is no way life can go on, and just like that it’s the end of civilization. To me that’s reason enough to want to fix things and make them better. Things like running out of oil supplies and fossil fuels may not resonate with people so much but not having food or water is something that should really hit home.
It is really crazy to think about the fact that human actions have caused such a negative effect on the environment, so much so that if something doesn’t change soon we may not have any resources on day. The fact that that’s something that’s in the foreseeable future is almost mind-blowing. Even with all of the information I feel like some people still don’t believe it partially because it is so unfathomable and honestly scary to think about. I hope it doesn’t come to a ‘things have to get worse before they can get better’ situation, but that’s what I think is going to have to happen for serious change to happen.
This video does a great job at explaining the oceans and other water sources in the anthropocene, definitely worth a watch!!! https://vimeo.com/66087863
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-06-07/water-and-us-in-the-anthropocene