Mark Maslin and Danny Dorling

Geography of our Future:

Understanding the consequences of the Anthropocene

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Are we already in the

Anthropocene?

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Are humans a geological superpower?

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Half of all Nitrogen fixed by humans

Greenhouse gases outside glacial-interglacial norms

>30% land surface cultivated

Sixth mass extinction?

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We are currently in the Holocene Epoch

which started 11,650 BP

Geologic Timescale 2012

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Holocene Epoch

Defined by the rise in Deuterium excess in Greenland ice core. That marks the first signs of climatic warming at the end of the Younger Dryas cold phase.

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Stage 1: Early

Agriculture and the age

of Empire

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Ruddiman 2013 Ann. Rev. Earth & Planetary Sciences

Agriculture developed independently

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Have humans prevented a new glaciation?

Red, Holocene

Blue, mean of previous interglacials, plus standard deviation

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Roman Empire – very little environmental impact

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Scale of changes small compared to recent

Lewis & Maslin 2015 The Anthropocene Review13

Stage 2:

Globalisation of

humanity and the dawn

of Capitalism

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1492 Columbus arrives in the Americas

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Collision of Old and New Worlds

Alfred Crosby 197216

Species exchange

Benjamin M. Schmidt, Northeastern University, USA

18th and 19th century shipping logs

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Orbis hypothesis Latin for “World”

50 Millionpeople died

in the Americas

Lewis & Maslin 2015 The Anthropocene Review

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Should Anthropocene start at 1610 ACE?

Lewis & Maslin 2015 Nature

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Our thinking changed after 1492

De revolutionibusorbium coelestium

(On the Revolutions of the Heavenly

Spheres)

Imagined 1510Printed 1543

Nicolaus Copernicus

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In 1631, René Descartes noticed that all around him

people had stopped thinking about much more

than earning money. He said: ‘In this great city

where I am living, with no man apart from myself not

being involved in trade, everyone is so intent on his

profits that I could spend my whole life without being seen by anyone.’

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Angus Maddison’s world data sorted by 16th century rise – www.worldmapper.org

DemographicTurmoil 1600-1820

Population (millions)

Population change in century (%)

1500 1820 16th 17th 18th

Netherlands 1 2 58 27 23

United Kingdom 4 21 57 39 148

China 103 381 55 -14 176

Total Asia 284 710 33 6 77

Total Western Europe 57 133 29 10 63

India 110 209 23 22 27

Japan 15 31 20 46 15

Total Africa 47 74 19 10 22

United States 2 10 -25 -33 898

Total Latin America 18 22 -51 40 79

Mexico 8 7 -67 80 46

Peru 4 1 -68 0 1

Everywhere else 31 92 23 20 101

World Total 438 1042 27 9 73

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About to explode

Charles Darwin – on slow breading mammals…“… after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive descended from the first pair. But we have better evidence on this subject than mere theoretical calculations, namely, the numerous recorded cases of the astonishingly rapid increase of various animals in a state of nature, when circumstances have been favourable to them during two or three following seasons. Still more striking is the evidence from our domestic animals of many kinds which have run wild in several parts of the world;

1849 (sixth edition 1873)

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Stage 3: The Industrial

revolutions

c. 1800-1950

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James Watt's industrial steam engine, 1788 26

With the industrial revolutions came a change in our thinking – with the emergence of socialism

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Stage 4:The Great

Acceleration and the

birth of Neoliberalism

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Increasing Global consumption

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The ‘Great Acceleration’ relative to the bomb spike

Lewis and Maslin, Anthropocene Review (2105) using data from Steffen et al. (2015) 31

Over 3.5 billion extra people since 1950

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Global distribution of Population

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Light Pollution

Map by Benjamin Hennig – Sources: http://www.dannydorling.org/books/geography/

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Croplands

Map by Benjamin Hennig – Sources: http://www.dannydorling.org/books/geography/

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Wilderness

Map by Benjamin Hennig – Sources: http://www.dannydorling.org/books/geography/

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Emergence of Neoliberalism in the 1980s

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True state of the Modern World7 million children die needlessly each year

700 million people go to bed hungry every night1,000 million people no access to clean drinking water

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• Richest 1% of adults owned 48% of global assets in 2014, 50% by 2015

• Bottom half (3.6 billion people) owned <1%

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Stage 5:Potential

geographies of the

Future

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All current trends are leading to the Perfect Storm

Development Population growth

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Limiting carbon emissions will require substantial and sustained effort (IPCC 2013)

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Paris COP agreement is very ambitious

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Is this because we have to many people?

Discussions on Global Population and Climate Change seem to raise the same hysteria

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UN Population growth forecast

The world population likely to increase from current 7.3 billion to 9.0 billion in 2100

It need not go higher if we are proactive - Family planning has dropped of the global political agenda over the last 20 years, as has concern over what makes people happier to have fewer children.

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Your eye is drawn upwards…

The middle estimate is so much less shocking than the upper estimate. Hardly anyone ever comments on the lower population estimates the UN has been producing and yet fertility continues to fall. Especially after 2008.

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Total and per capita emissions – target is 2 tons/capita

It is consumption not population that makes the difference

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Population + Development = faster Climate Change

But are all people equal when it comes to polluting the atmosphere?

9 billion people - 2050

Rapid Development

>4˚C temperature rise?

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Is it lack of money that is stopping us helping the poor?Or is tolerance of inequality peculiar to the UK – the most

economically unequal country in Europe…

GDP growth 1600-2010

UK GDP in 2014 was ~$3000 billionSo why are there poor people?

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Will the future be a healthier one?

Source: https://healthyplanetpro.wordpress.com/world-health-stats/ 50

Is progressive and inclusive capitalism – triple bottom lineand wealth redistribution enough?

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The Panama Papers will reveal the scale of our underestimate of the 1% wealth

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Return to social democracy?Progressive taxation and adopt the universal basic income

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Why do the

Anthropocene and

Capitalocene matter?

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Does defining Human geological time unit matter?

The Time Wars

Anthropocene: reinstating human importance after 500 years

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Good verses Bad Anthropocene?

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We have a choice!