Bring on the Biocene

by Kelsey K. Sather

Let us move forward by taking a look back in time. Way back. Say, 11,700 years back, when our current epoch, the Holocene Epoch, began.

Epochs are the second to smallest units of time measured by large planetary changes discernible in deposited rock layers. The beginning of the Holocene epoch marked the last glacial retreat. Around this time, the Mesolithic period, or “Middle Stone Age,” began. Humans began domesticating animals and agricultural efforts gained more ground in societies around the world, from the Levant in the eastern Mediterranean to the Andes of South America.

Scientists are now proposing a new epoch, where humans are the driving force in shifting planetary systems. From the increased amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—namely, carbon, nitrous oxide, and methane—to widespread ecological alterations, as seen in deforestation, ocean acidification, plastic pollution, ozone depletion, and alterations of waterways, the planet has been fundamentally changed by humans.

Thus, a new epoch is proposed: the Anthropocene. The Age of Man.

While there is unanimous agreement among climatologists on human-caused climate change, the beginning of the Anthropocene sparks heated argument. Did it begin 8,000 years ago, when we first began practicing large-scale agriculture? Or was it initiated with the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s? Perhaps it began with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski, when radioactive particles dispersed around the globe like seeds upon the wind. Or was it a decade later in the 1950s, when the Great Acceleration propelled us into a modern life of near-ubiquitous consumption of plastics and fossil fuels?

The onset remains debatable. Evidence of the Anthropocene, meanwhile, continues to grow. Extinction rates accelerate anywhere between 100 to 1000 degrees faster than the natural average, with one million species facing extinction today, (roughly one in eight species). In addition to the biodiversity crisis, climate readings put carbon parts per million at 419, the highest it has been since measurements commenced over 60 years ago, accelerating the planetary heating via the greenhouse gas effect.

So here we are in the Age of Man. Guilt may prick our hearts as we contemplate the human-caused suffering of human and other-than-human life consequential to an ecologically-unstable planet. Hopelessness may wrap around our throats as we witness important milestones for sustainability efforts come and go, like the proposed cap of 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere.

And yet. And yet…

Scientists agree: while it is too late to stop the climate from changing, we can still act to mitigate the worse of it. (Ethically speaking, the verb might better read as must. We must do everything we can to mitigate the worst of it. But we’ll return to ethics in a minute.) A sustainability target adopted at the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 offers a goal we could still collectively achieve: a 1.5 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of the century.

Without immediate action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, climate models put us at an estimated 4 degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. And while this might not seem like a big shift in terms of weather, this kind of increase in global temperatures wreak havoc on planetary systems because of the interconnected nature of all things: from warmer oceanic surface temperatures creating larger hurricanes, to the shifting of rainstorms causing historic flooding in one region, drought in another. 

The last time the world was 4 degrees Celsius warmer was in the Miocene, fifteen million years ago. Volcanoes in western North America filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. It’s in facts like these where we find a dynamic, philosophical exploration of the changing climate. Wasn’t the world as we know it always going to end? If it isn’t a super volcano, it’s going to be an asteroid. If it isn’t an asteroid, it’s going to be (in a very distant future) the sun dying out. Ninety-nine percent of species that have ever existed have gone extinct. Civilizations have come and gone; temples erode into dust; languages perished alongside the dodo; cultures died out with the dire wolf.

Now, we are the asteroid, as the Brooklyn-based artist Justin Brice Guariglia says through his installations. Human activity ushers in the sixth mass extinction, while climate change models hint at our own species’ extinction, should drastic and urgent action to go “carbon neutral” not unfold. The reports read code red. Literally.

But again, isn’t the world always ending? What makes climate change any different from the Black Plague, a human health crisis in the 14th century that had alarmists proclaiming the end of humanity? The Cold War, black holes, Y2K—proclamations of the end of human kind seems to be as old as human kind itself. None of the proclamations are entirely wrong, either, when we think about it: one could reasonably argue human kind will end at some point. We might not know when or how, but humans will most likely be among the 99 percent at some point.

Why then? Why. Why should we care about climate change? Why should we work to mitigate biodiversity loss?

The question becomes one of ethics. If we know something is causing suffering to others, do we act to eliminate the source of suffering, or at least mitigate it? If we know the scale and severity of suffering will only increase given the current trajectory of actions and reactions, should we view the call to reform our actions as one of even greater urgency?

Like the planetary systems, many of modernity’s leading issues are interconnected. They are likely all interconnected, from human hunger to habitat loss, bleached coral to obesity. It’s clear that the current systems in which we function are not working. From meeting basic human rights to ensuring ecological stability, we are failing—to the peril of all people, regardless of race or ethnicity, socio-economic standing, political alignment, or religious beliefs. (This isn’t to say the degree in which people suffer is equal; climate justice requires a hard look at the disproportionate bearing of versus responsibility for the climate change crisis and the ethical demands this evidence creates.)

The world is always ending. It’s true. The minute we are born, we are dying. This is as true for the individual as it is for the whole.

And yet. And yet…

We are given the time we have on earth, and no more. How much time we have, as individuals and as a species, is perhaps not as important as what we do with the time we are given. Are we going to continue on the road we’ve paved, even if it means we’ll burn and drown the world doing it, causing immeasurable harm to humans and other-than-human life alike?

Or are we going to pivot: not only in how we act, but in the very way we see ourselves in the world?

If the Anthropocene means the Age of Man, the Biocene means the Age of Biocenosis. A term describing the integral connections of different organisms forming an ecological community, biocenosis embodies a fundamentally different way of viewing the way human and other-than-human life interact. Rather than having a single species atop a fictional pyramid, the biocenosis model integrates humans into a circular system of give and take, where ecological boundaries are respected and a linear economic model is recognized as an irresponsible and delusional fallacy.   

In its essence, the Biocene represents a kind of homecoming—a back to nature movement that goes much deeper than kitschy outdoor industry advertisements.

It’s a restoration of wild places that provide the physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment humans need to not only survive, but thrive.

It’s a melding of technological revolutions for carbon-neutral infrastructure with Indigenous place-specific knowledge for sustainable land stewardship backed by millennia of survival stories.

It’s a movement away from consumer culture, where we seek to fill our life with things, when what we really crave are deeper connections with one another and the places we call home.  

The concept of the Biocene is an imperfect ideal. It’s a Fool’s Journey forward, where hope of what is possible meets the despair of what is likely if we don’t pivot.

Perhaps someday we’ll measure the Biocene in ice cores as a steep decline in carbon emissions. But it’s really not about carbon, not in its heart. The Biocene is about coming home, grounding down in Earth, where we still have time to meet the ecological crisis with compassion, courage, creativity—with nothing less than our full being.