The Anthropocence & The HUMAN Factor (Choice)

In this article, I will use the notion of alternatives as a common factor to examine place and scale, regarding the Anthropocene. How the existence or non-existence of alternatives can influence the way we see things and we judge what is positive and negative, regarding this new geological era.

It is interesting to note that some people change when there is a “dead end” (when there is no alternative) while others prefer to stay immobile pretending that nothing happened and evoking images of a more pleasant past in order to neglect potential crisis. It is not only fishermen that continue to work and eat contaminated food (Yuki,2012, p.738). It can be people insisting on cultivating crops in their backyard, near a place where toxic wastes are buried, or people insisting on swimming in a place where waters are heavily polluted. Stories such as these can eminate everywhere in the world. As such, Masami Yuki studies the Anthropocene through literary texts, mainly tests of Japanese literature to study peoples’ reactions. (Yuki, 2012,p.734).

During the Holocene people could move from one place to another after a natural disaster. They could just move some hundreds of kilometers away and built a new city after a devastating earthquake. Imagine although what could happen if climate change will affect every region of the planet as a global phenomenon. Place will no longer be a significant factor to avoid a disaster.

But some places will be less dangerous and more adequate for survival (Steffen et al.,2015, 1259855 -3) indicates maps with zones or areas less contaminated at present levls. Consider then how reduced any alternatives will be for the more fragile and the opportunity for them to escape in what it would be considered a safe place. Does a doctor escaping from a decimated zone have the same opportunities as an old non – educated person in regards to immigration?

What will be the alternatives for such people as our collective civilization continues to expand? Will they stay immobile? And will such non mobility be a sign of lack of care, or lack of alternatives (confer Yuki,2012, p.736-p.738) ?

How this large scale destruction of earth will invariably impact human actions? Sometimes people prefer to live at the present and survive, disregarding what could happen in the future. From my perception that stands more for crisis affected areas. For example, there were few people who never evacuated villages near Chernobyl. It is important to note that this was not because they were careless. They couldn’t imagine the scale of the danger or the scale of the coming destruction, but could understand that something was imminent. Nancy Langston discussion with Prof. Finn Arne supports the idea that education can impact our decisions.

I would say education plus choices can change all this. Creating alternatives should be a priority in order to foster sustainability. It is not only nostalgia of the past and connection of a place to their bodies as Yuki notes (Yuki, 2012, p.738) that makes people neglecting change.

What could happen if people will discover some other livable planets? What then will become of our external environments? And how that will affect our conception of the Blue Marble (Lekan. 2014, p.171). Will it be an image of the remote past? Will it give a solution for overpopulation and exploitation? Or perhaps will continue our collective destructive trends on another planetary body.

References:

Lekan, T. (2014). Fractal Eaarth: Visualizing the Global Environment in the Anthropocene. Environmental Humanities, (5), 171–201.

Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., … Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 1259855. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1259855

Yuki, M. (2012). Why Eat Toxic Food? Mercury Poisoning, Minamata, and Literary Resistance to Risks of Food. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 19(4), 732–750. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/iss107