Prof. Jürgen Renn, Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany, and Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State University, Santa Fe Institute, USA

The Anthropocene discussion of the present

In order to respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene we need to develop innovative research approaches, new kinds of scientific activities and new forms of communication between science and society. But what is the Anthropocene and what are its scientific challenges? The Anthropocene concept offers a comprehensive, systemic perspective on the state of our planet and on how humans have shaped it, are shaping it, and should shape it in the future.

That was Paul Crutzen’s original motivation when he launched the concept in 2000:[1] a wake-up call, for all of humanity and consequently also for the sciences. A knowledge capable of doing justice to the fundamental changes humanity has imposed on its home planet must be “catholic” – all-encompassing, incorporating all scales, regions, and experiences.

But how to operationalize this demand in all relevant fields of knowledge into which the concept of the Anthropocene entered as a disruptive, disturbing factor to their routines? On March 5, 2024, the International Commission on Stratigraphy – the body responsible for defining units of geological time – announced its rejection of the well-founded proposal to formalize the Anthropocene as a geological epoch that represents an interval of overwhelming human impact on the planet. This rejection has so far not been substantiated by a detailed scientific justification and remains a puzzling affair, one that symbolizes, however, the challenge that the Anthropocene concept represents for the traditional disciplinary organization of science.[2]

How to define the concept of the Anthropocene?

So what is the Anthropocene? Whatever geologists call it, it describes a new state of the relationship between humanity and the Earth system. In this paper, we argue that a decision in favor of the Anthropocene cannot be left to the geologists or any other single discipline but affects the whole of humanity.[3] Let me present you a few, currently much discussed approaches to the concept of the Anthropocene.

A much discussed alternative to a purely stratigraphic Anthropocene is the so-called Great Acceleration, dated to the same period, the mid-20th century.[4] In the iconic diagrams of the Great Acceleration various socio-economic parameters such as gross domestic product, fertilizer use, water consumption and traffic are plotted alongside Earth system parameters such as the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the degradation of the terrestrial biosphere. These graphs show strikingly parallel exponential increases in all selected indicators – a signature pattern of the Anthropocene, but one that calls for a more detailed and in-depth historical analysis of these processes and their causes.[5]

The graphs clearly show that we are on an unsustainable path, but what do they tell us about the causal mechanisms and what about the measures we need to bend these curves? On closer inspection, there is no compelling reason why the Great Acceleration should actually be coeval with the stratigraphic Anthropocene.[6] After all, the stratigraphic Anthropocene is about sediments of processes and not about their causes, and there is no evidence that the dynamics driving the greenhouse gas emissions, for example, really took a decisive turn in the mid-twentieth century. A better understanding of the Great Acceleration and its drivers remains one of the main scientific challenges of Anthropocene research.

But one consequence is clear: The concept of the Great Acceleration by emphasizing the striking correlation between physical and social changes suggests that we must consider global humanity and the Earth system as one integrated complex system, sometimes also referred to as the Human-Earth system. Consequently, another widely discussed approach to understanding the Anthropocene is the investigation of this complex system’s non-linear dynamics. A particular focus of research and public communication is its so-called tipping points.[7]

Analyses of the non-linear dynamics of the Earth system and its components typically assume that a small number of control parameters govern the system’s behavior leading to qualitative changes in the system dynamics when certain threshold values are exceeded in these parameters. This tipping point behavior is often illustrated by the model of a sphere moving on a potential surface with several local minima.

Incidentally, the sphere can also represent the Earth as a whole, its trajectory potentially leading to a greenhouse state if climate change continues.[8] However, in view of the fact that the real Earth system is a high-dimensional, highly interconnected system, such an image involves simplifications.[9] One could try to further “historicize” this model, for instance by introducing a temporally changing potential surface or by making it depend on the trajectory. Nevertheless, the actual historicity of change processes, as it is characteristic of major transformations of the Earth system such as the emergence and evolution of the biosphere, cannot be fully captured by this physics-based model of analysis.

What does this perspective tell us about the Anthropocene dynamics and the necessary measures to cope with it? It helps us understand the couplings and feedbacks within the system, the likelihood of extreme events, and the necessity to take into account a broad spectrum of relevant time-scales. For instance, it highlights changes already committed by our past actions that will unfold within hundreds and thousands of years in the future, such as the melting of glaciers.[10] But what responses are being suggested on the basis of this perspective on the Anthropocene?

The tipping point analysis of the Earth system raises important questions such as: Have we already passed significant thresholds or are we about to do so? Here the concept of planetary boundaries helps to identify such thresholds acting as warning signals.[11] But warning signals to whom, and to prompt what actions? One response is to identify planetary commons and seek measures of planetary government to address the most sensitive tipping elements and their couplings.[12] Another response involves corrective measures intervening in the market system such as carbon pricing.[13] The hope is to once again turn the market into an invisible hand acting for human welfare but this time in a sustainable way. Fundamentally, these measures rely on structures and mechanisms that we have already established in the past, now being further developed to address the challenges of the Anthropocene.

However, if we assess the progress made so far, there is little reason for optimism. The record of cumulative CO₂ emissions which are responsible for global surface temperature increase shows no substantial impact from our efforts to reduce the share of fossil energy sources by global agreements or the introduction of carbon pricing.[14] There are many reasons to doubt that we will achieve the ambitious goals of the Paris agreement or of the European commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050, based solely on the measures already established or planned.[15] Against this backdrop we see that the problem is not so much to stop the Great Acceleration but rather coping with the consequences of what one might call the Great Accumulation of problems which it has caused.

An innovative response to this challenge is to extend the tipping point analysis to the social component of the coupled human Earth system: If the problem is positive feedback loops causing catastrophic tipping point cascades, then a suitable response may be a cascade of counter-acting feedbacks triggered by the social component of the coupled human-Earth system.[16] How can more sustainable agricultural practices, for instance, become contagious and spread through self-reinforcing dynamics?[17]

This vision deserves further exploration, but it has already become clear that the complex dynamics of human societies cannot be fully captured by an approach that focuses solely on small disturbances causing a system to shift from one state to another.

Geoanthropology

The new transdisciplinary approach of geoanthropology follows a broader vision, extending the Earth system sciences to human-Earth system sciences.[18] Geoanthropology takes its methods from Earth and complex systems science, such as data collection, analysis and modelling, and integrates them with those from the humanities and social sciences, expanding their insights to a planetary scale without neglecting contingencies and regional differences. It also incorporates experiences and stimuli from outside the academic sphere, from local practical and indigenous knowledge to insights from the arts, philosophy, and religion.

Geoanthropology aims to understand the emergence, development and future pathways of the human-Earth system and needs to adopt an evolutionary approach. At its core is the study of the technosphere, the new Earth sphere created by humans that encompasses all human-made technology and infrastructure and now weighs, according to one estimate, over 30 trillion tons.[19] How did the technosphere emerge from the construction of the human niche within the biosphere and how did it attain the status of a new Earth sphere, on a par with and interacting with the other Earth spheres? What are our possibilities to shape the future evolution of the technosphere in ways that enable sustainable living conditions for humanity in the Anthropocene? These are some of the key questions geoanthropology seeks to answer.

This brings me to briefly touch upon the founding of the new Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.[20] The institute aims to become a hub for the collaborative synthesis of research on human-Earth system interactions where data and expertise from various disciplines are brought together, modelled and interpreted.

The institute will comprise five departments, of which three are currently in the process of being built up. They deal with Structural Changes of the Technosphere, Integrative Earth System Science, Coevolution of Land-use and Urbanism – these are the departments already established or in the process of creation – and then there are the departments to be created: Coevolution of Biosphere and Technosphere, and Societal Dynamics of the Technosphere.

There will be no walls between the departments and an emphasis on joint projects. Work across the departments is oriented along a set of common core research themes: The Anthropocene Engine, the Great Acceleration Observatory, Tipping Points and Major Transitions, Extreme Events and Shocks, the Transformations of Collective Behavior and Decisions, Land Use and Regenerative Practices, The Technosphere as a Complex System, and The Anthropocene Biosphere.

A central goal of our research is to understand how, throughout history, behavioral structures of human societies, such as new forms of land use or new energy regimes, have been reflected in changes to our planetary environment and how these changes, in turn, have shaped the further development of human societies, creating feedback loops between Earth system dynamics and human activities. From the perspective of an extended evolutionary theory that focuses on these feedbacks, it is plausible to assume that the fundamental driver of the overall dynamics leading the human-Earth system into the Anthropocene involves at least three key factors: population size, energy and resources, and their regulatory systems, such as social structures and knowledge.[21]

More generally speaking, the technosphere, as an object of scientific investigation, represents a typical borderline problem. It can only be adequately described by considering and merging different knowledge systems. As an Earth sphere, the technosphere falls into the area of Earth system sciences, but as a human construct, it also falls within the realm of the social and human sciences.

The Anthropocene as humanity’s self-reflection on its position in nature is nothing new in itself. Such reflections have accompanied the history of our species since its beginnings and are part of our self-analytical process. This includes not only science and philosophy, but also political worldviews, as well as religion and art, as we can see in this early representation of a technosphere by Marten van Heemskerck, which characterizes one way of conceiving humanity’s relation to nature.[22] The answers of the past also have an impact on the current debate, though often in a subterranean and unreflected way.

Let me explain the significance of this legacy using a specific example, which we would like to characterize with the term “origin thinking”. Origin myths answer the question of where we come from by invoking the authority of origin powers. They assert that what comes from the origin must inevitably return to it, be it the social group, blood and soil or “Nature”. Myths of origin are the foundation of all conservative and romantic thinking in politics, according to the theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich.[23]

Origin thinking in a historically particularly effective sense is characterized by the assumption that the distance from the origin itself represents the actual problem, the solution to which can ultimately only consist in a return to the origin. This assumption forms the basis of a logic of sacrifice that underlies many mythical, religious and ideological ideas. According to this logic of sacrifice, the debt to the origin can only be redeemed by a complete return to it.

Some aspects of the discussion about the Anthropocene, and in particular the question of the beginning of the Anthropocene, also show characteristic features of origin thinking. Was perhaps the Neolithic Revolution a kind of expulsion from paradise, through which we hopelessly exceeded the limits of our original physical and mental endowment?[24] Or was it Western modernity, with its supposedly sharp separation of nature and culture, body and mind, reason and sensuality, that initiated a misguided and ultimately catastrophic development, which also had a global impact through colonialism?[25] Or was it extractive and expansive capitalism, especially industrial and fossil capitalism, that caused the Great Acceleration, which inevitably leads to catastrophe?[26]

All these approaches search for the origin from which we have fatefully distanced ourselves, combined with the romantic hope that by turning back, back to Nature, back to a pre-modern unity of nature and culture, back to a simpler life, we can redeem ourselves from the guilt of distancing ourselves from our alleged origins. They ultimately prevent us from recognizing that there can be no turning back from the Anthropocene and that we must shape it – instead of fleeing from it.

A historically effective response to the pitfalls of origin thinking is the idea of development, as we know it in modern science, though it has deep roots in cultural history, reaching back to the European Enlightenment and even further to the idea of an alliance with God in the Hebrew Bible which enables a mediation between origin and what has sprung from it.[27] The essence of this idea is that although the new is indebted to the old, it can also emancipate itself from it through processes of mediation which take different forms in different cultures and may lead to forms of self-organization with increasing complexity and autonomy.

The Anthropocene as a Major Transition

Against this background, a new understanding of the Anthropocene opens up. The Anthropocene is the most recent step in an evolution of complexity of the Earth system that began with the origin of life some 3.8 billion years ago.[28] In this history, we observe some common features that characterize all major evolutionary transitions, such as the emergence of multicellular life, including the development of new energy sources and the reorganization of information and material flows.[29] Typically, major transitions are associated with an increasing investment into higher coordination functions, relative to the energy investment into the maintenance of pre-existing individual components. These transitions are the product of a more complex evolutionary dynamics, involving feedback between regulatory structures and surrounding niches.[30] The technosphere seems to be following the same path.

Let me illustrate this point by taking a closer look at the interactions between the Earth system and global human society that have brought us into the Anthropocene. A crucial turning point in the dynamics of the human-Earth system was the coupling between the material economy and the economy of knowledge in the early modern period when knowledge started to become a crucial fuel for the global economic development that eventually resulted in the accelerating dynamic that has become so drastically visible in particular in the past 100 years.[31]

A further indication of the increasing investment of energy into the “brain” of the technosphere is the rise of information and communication technologies, culminating in the current expansion of energy-hungry AI.[32] The technosphere is thus subject to an innovation dynamic that follows principles similar to those that have dominated biological evolution for eons. Evolution is an irreversible process so nothing can bring us back to the Holocene. It is also an inherently open process whose outcome cannot be predicted or determined by simple interventions. Rather, a major transition amounts to creating a new platform allowing for different developmental pathways, in particular when we purposefully steer them towards greater sustainability, using our intelligence in an encompassing way, including our capacity to learn from past experiences.[33]

Looking back historically at the Anthropocene, the dominance of globalization and homogenization processes is striking. Two other features are noteworthy: the successive elimination of negative feedbacks and the tendency to externalize ecological costs due to the availability of unused niches and untapped resources. Recent historiography has emphasized the role of environmental factors in the demise of states and empires, but also provided new insights into past responses to these challenges, with the search for new land and resources being the most common one. Only with the emergence of the technosphere as a global niche for humanity were limits placed on this evasionist strategy.

But not all societies functioned in an exploitative and expansive way.[34] There were others that lived in a long-term sustainable relationship with their natural environment, such as certain indigenous societies, a fact that is still underestimated in the grand narratives of global history. To investigate their impact on the human-Earth system, historians have been mapping the history of deforestation in tropical South America. In part due to Indigenous resistance, a large area of the continent, particularly in forest biomes, remained outside European jurisdiction until the late 19th century. This resilience has continued from the 16th century until today and continues to obstruct deforestation, playing a critical role in slowing down climate change.[35]

Conceiving the Anthropocene as a major transition and realizing that we are in the middle of it, helps us to understand that there will be hardly any flip-the-switch interventions that will rapidly improve our predicament because of the already committed long-term changes to the Earth system. Yet, we need to act urgently, in particular regarding the global energy transition, because, with unrestrained emissions from fossil energy use, we are quickly moving outside the temperature range in which human life has existed so far.[36]

To address this and similar dilemmas of the Anthropocene we need new orientation knowledge and new forms of communication that help us find our bearings in a world that has no Holocene analog. Such knowledge cannot be generated and circulated exclusively in the academic world. It requires the broader engagement of thought and life collectives that take seriously the challenges of the Anthropocene. One initiative is the “Anthropocene Curriculum” which has developed a bottom-up and field-oriented approach to exploring practices adequate to the Anthropocene.[37] The initiative has meanwhile established a worldwide network of hundreds of researchers, artists, and activists, which is unique in its scope and global reach, fostering a continuing exchange between basic science and pressing political issues that are vital in tackling the Anthropocene challenge.

Another example of new forms of interaction between science and society are platforms that facilitate collective decision-making based on data-based models and simulations. The Decision Theatre methodology of Arizona State University is such a data-driven, real-time modeling and dialogue format for discussing possible futures with all kinds of stakeholders, from school pupils to politicians.[38] This enables participants to explore the consequences of possible decisions and interventions in different model scenarios, creating an experimental space for decision-making and allowing participants to question their assumptions as well as finding ways to reach mutually acceptable compromises that must, however, take into account the systemic character of the Anthropocene dynamics, to avoid the pitfalls of unilateral interventions.

In summary, we need orientation knowledge, system knowledge, but also transformation knowledge that help us to find, if not the optimal solutions, then at least the most pragmatic and swift ones, that make intelligent use of the existing infrastructures, repurposing them for life in the Anthropocene.[39] This brings me finally back to the question of what a decision for the Anthropocene can mean: This decision cannot be in the hands of a single discipline; it is too comprehensive and too important for that. The decision in favor of a human Anthropocene also has a profoundly normative dimension and can therefore not be made through scientific analysis alone, no matter how encompassing. It is ultimately a question of the will to survive and to enable a good life for all of humanity, a question of knowledge and belief, in the sense of visions of the future, ideas of community, and life plans.

But not only that: the decision for a good, a “beautiful Anthropocene”, as Paul Crutzen once called for, is also a decision by all of us to view the world itself as a real laboratory, as a planetary experimental set-up in which all our lives are at stake, especially if we do not attempt to survive in it together.[40] That is the decision, we believe, we must take.

 

Acknowledgments

We would like to warmly thank Jochen Büttner, Lina Schwab, and Malte Vogl for their many suggestions and their careful reading and editing of the manuscript.

 

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[1] Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; reprinted as Crutzen and Stoermer, 2017.

[2] Kolbert, 2024. Zalasiewicz et al., 2024.

[3] Cf. Trischler, 2016.

[4] McNeill, 2001, Steffen et al., 2015 and Head et al., 2022.

[5] Görg et al., 2020.

[6] Nielsen, 2021.

[7] Lenton et al., 2008, Lenton et al., 2019, Wunderling et al., 2021.

[8] One of the most emblematic illustrations of this kind is contained in Steffen et al., 2018.

[9] See for instance Ambika and Kurths, 2021 and Milkoreit et al., 2018.

[10] Wigley, 2005, Edwards et al., 2021.

[11] Steffen et al., 2015b.

[12] Chapin et al., 2022. Rockström et al., 2024.

[13] Emeka-Okoli, 2024, Zapf et al., 2019. Döbbeling-Hildebrandt et al., 2024.

[14] Meinshausen et al., 2020.

[15] Geiges et al., 2020.

[16] Donges et al., 2017. Otto et al., 2020. Stadelmann-Steffen et al., 2021.

[17] Breier et al., 2023.

[18] Renn, 2020 and Renn, 2022.

[19] Zalasiewicz et al., 2016, Zalasiewicz et al., 2019.

[20] See https://www.gea.mpg.de/ (last accessed: 09-19-2024).

[21] For the concept of extended evolution, see Laubichler and Renn, 2015.

[22] Böhme, 2020.

[23] Tillich, 1980.

[24] Van Schaik, 2016.

[25] Latour, 2018.

[26] Federau, 2023.

[27] Heinrich 2020a, 2020b, 2021.

[28] Levin, 1998.

[29] Szathmáry and Maynard Smith, 1995.

[30] Laubichler and Renn, 2015.

[31] Burginh and van Zanden, 2009, Eisenstein, 1980. https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-book-production/

[32] Strubell et al., 2020, van Wynsberghe, 2021. Analyses like Tomlinson et al., 2024 potentially neglect the increased rate of production.

[33] For social systems such ideas have been presented early e.g. in Sewell, 1996.

[34] Roberts, 2019. Graeber and Wengrow, 2021.

[35] Stokes, 2022.

[36] Lenton et al., 2023.

[37] Rosol, 2021. See also https://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/ (accessed 19-09-2024).

[38] Wolf et al., 2023.

[39] Renn, 2020.

[40] Crutzen et al., 2013.