Anthropocene is the unofficial human era where humans have developed the capability to influence the biosphere. Due to the increase in the complexity of the world and the exponential increase in the collective learning, we can say that more changes have happened in the last century than in the whole human history of 200000 years. One century is just a very short time, your, your parents and your grandparent’s lifetime- that’s it. Though we can say that we are living in the most technologically advanced stage of human history, people living a thousand years from now will consider us as the primitives of the technological era.
Since 1800 we have seen a bubble burst of innovation and discovery, from the fundamental particles of the universe to the black holes to the antibiotics to the jets and the electric cars. We are mow 7 billion plus and our mobile has more computing power than what NASA had at the time of its first mission to moon.
The collective knowledge has increased at a tremendous rate. With the growth of human population, it has a snowball effect on the collective learning. In the last 200000 years about 9 billion people lived and died. Due to agriculture in the last 5000 years about 5.5 billion people lived and 7 billion are living now. Now we are globally and almost instantaneously connected and we have mastered the technology to harness the power of the earth and the sun. We are now able to understand some aspects of the quantum world as well as the cosmos. This is in sync with the big history that started 13.8 billion years ago.
The beginning of this so called anthropocene age was not all sunshine. In 19th century we have seen the power of innovation in the destructive power of weaponry and the colonization of 80 percent of the countries of the world. The increased complexity saw a rise in the bigotry and nationalism which led to wars and chaos till the 20th century. The World War 1 and 2 killed about 65 million people and the Spanish flu eradicated around 45 million. This is the price humanity paid for all the innovation and complexity of this era. After the World War 2 there was a wave of industrial revolution in the third world countries especially in Asia. Innovation in agriculture led to increase in production of food grains which helped countries with large population like India and China.
The bottom line of organic history of humans’ as well as animals has been to cope with the scarcity of resources. So the human history can be divided into 4 zones, the agrarian communities within the zones were further divided into various classes and social order depending on the degrees of wealth. The wealthy and the aristocrats in a general agrarian society were generally between 10 and 20 percent. Today in the globalization period if you earn about 20000 dollar a year then you are among the top 20 percent of the world. But you are far better than the kings of Middle Ages, you have the TV and the refrigerator and the mobile and the electricity. And now the average person is a little more concerned about the challenges of this century like poverty. For the next 100 years a lot will depend on how the developed world behaves with the developing world.
So now let us see some of the pros and cons of this anthropocene age:
Pro: Since 1960’s the manufacturing jobs have lifted about 600 million people from poverty. Modern technology can clothe and feed more people than ever.
Con: More and more people are leaving their traditional jobs and moving towards industrialized jobs, with poor wages. Most of their produce goes to the rich and prosperous nations leaving them stuck in their current state. In 1820 the ratio between rich and poor country was 1:3 but now it’s closer to 1:70. The wealth inequality gap has increased though the standard of living has increased.
Pro: We are now capable of harnessing the energy store of the earth, mostly non renewable. This has seen a massive growth in development around the world.
Con: As most of these are non renewable energy therefore it is limited and this has also led to an unprecedented climate change. As we are forcing our need on the environment therefore its consequences have started to show up.
Pro: Advancement in agriculture, medicine and genetics have improved the life expectancy and lowered the death rate.
Con: The increase in population which is expected to be in between 10 to 12 billion by the end of this century- the world will only be able to support 2 to 3 billion people to have the same standard of living of the developed nations. The climate change will reduce the amount of cultivable land by 20 to 25 percent and therefore we may face a severe population problem.
The stabilization of the population growth is extremely important for the next 100 years. Early agrarian people produced more children to compensate the high mortality rate and to get more hands on the field. With education and more jobs now developed nations have stabilized their population growth. While China and India may stabilize their population growth by 2050 to 2070, the African continent where poverty and chaos is the highest may face the biggest challenges.
Even then it will be a huge problem to give a decent standard of living for all the population, considering the 10+ billion people to feed coupled with dwindling natural resources. It is to be remembered that we were 1 billion in 1804, and in next 216 years we are at 7+ billion.
What are the future scenarios?
Some new technology saves us.
We collapse in chaos and anarchy
We guide ourselves into a gentle decline in the complexity of our progress and live a simple subsistence living.
The next 100 years will write the history of anthropocene.
Nice article