Living in a Second-hand Planet

Here is a delightful op-ed by Erle Ellis in Wired magazine. I liked it so much, I've cut-and-pasted the whole thing:

Nature is gone. It was gone before you were born, before your parents were born, before the pilgrims arrived, before the pyramids were built. You are living on a used planet.

If this bothers you, get over it. We now live in the Anthropocene ― a geological epoch in which Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere and biosphere are shaped primarily by human forces.

Yes, nature is still around ― back-seat driving, annoying us with natural disasters from time to time, and everywhere present in the background ― but definitely in no position to take the wheel. That’s our job now. Don’t blame nature for global warming, sea level rise, invasive species, mass extinctions, crop failures and poverty. That’s our thing.

Society needs to learn from recent scientific efforts to explain changes in greenhouse gases and the biosphere during the Anthropocene. Three lines of evidence demonstrate that we live on a planet reshaped by humans for thousands of years.

The first evidence dates back to the beginnings of science itself, when amateur scientists stumbled across the bones of massive, long-extinct mammals like the mastodon, giant ground sloth and saber-toothed tiger. The last glaciation can’t explain their disappearance 10,000 years ago, because they survived many preceding glaciations.

Current theory holds that prehistoric hunters drove these species to extinction. A few human-driven extinctions might seem like just a sad historical footnote, but it’s far more than that. The species that humans eliminated were keystone species whose lifestyles, like those of elephants in Africa today, tended to profoundly shape and sustain ecosystem form and function by their feeding habits.

Nature just hasn’t been the same since well-armed hunters came on the scene.

And what of the wild forests of Amazonia and North America that we think of as pristine? Think again. The second line of evidence — from archaeology, paleo-ecology and even epidemiology — that humans lived all over these lands is growing. Man burned down the forests millenniums before Columbus, first to enhance hunting for the wild species attracted to the regrowth, and later for agriculture.

While probably never cleared in their entirety, areas long believed to be the wildest places on Earth are almost certainly still recovering from human alterations that are evident from earthworks, artifacts, anthropogenic charcoal and the sediment record.

Finally, the geologic evidence. About 7,000 years ago, levels of carbon dioxide and methane began rising. During every previous similar interglacial period, of which there are at least seven, greenhouse-gas levels fell.

To explain this, palaeoclimatologist Bill Ruddiman formulated the “early anthropogenic hypothesis,” which holds that the source of these gases was land clearing and flooding for rice production by prehistoric farmers beginning 8,000 years ago. While this hypothesis still ruffles the feathers of many a climatologist, there remains no better evidence explaining the Holocene greenhouse-gas anomaly.

It is even possible that global warming caused by prehistoric farmers has delayed the onset of the next ice age, which is due right about now.

So there you have it: Ours is a used planet. Thanks to us, Earth has become warmer, less forested and less biodiverse for millenniums.

So what now? First of all, we’ve got to stop trying to save the planet. For better or for worse, nature has long been what we have made it, and what we will make it.

And it’s time for a “postnatural” environmentalism. Postnaturalism is not about recycling your garbage, it is about making something good out of grandpa’s garbage and leaving the very best garbage for your grandchildren. Postnaturalism means loving and embracing our human nature, the nature we have created to feed ourselves, the nature we live in. What good is environmentalism if it makes you depressed about the future?

This is about recognizing that our farms, and even our backyards and cities, are the most important wildlife refuges in the world and should be managed as such. We can keep people out of places we want to think of as wild, but these places will still be changing because of global warming and the alien species we introduce without even trying.

If we want these places to look like they did before us, we will have to constantly recreate them. It will be a huge job for us humans to keep nature “wild.”

Instead, it’s high time we saved ourselves — and not from nature. It’s true that prehistory is littered with the remains of failed civilizations, but Homo sapiens is not going away. Indeed, we humans can totally trash the planet and still survive. We already have in many ways.

Don’t like it? Stop trashing it!

Use renewable energy. Clean it up. Repair it. Get to work. There is plenty more mileage left in this spaceship Earth. Think about that while enjoying a trip to your local zoo or arboretum — the most biodiverse places that ever existed on Earth.

This is a message I can get behind. We have already done a "global warming" trip to the planet. So the real question right now is do we "go back to nature" and allow the overdue glaciation take place, do we accept that human activity can alter climate and take prudent steps to control and direct our activity? I'm for taking prudent steps. But I'm not for the wild-eyed global warming alarmists who want to de-industrialize the earth. I think we need to do some hard science and do a lot of politicking, consensus building, and then use a truly global political commitment to do something reasonable. The trick right now is to hear all sides, and explore all the technical possibilities, then make a choice. We shouldn't be stampeded by moral absolutists like the global warming gang into drastic actions. (I have nothing against them shrinking their carbon footprint. My objections are purely over their deciding for me what carbon footprint I will be "allowed" to have. I'm willing to go with a political consensus, but I refuse to recognize back room politics or a politics of fear. I want informed, consensual politic decisions.)

What I truly love about Ellis' op-ed is his honest admission that humans have already 'trashed' the planet. I can get nostalgic about the pre-human "wildness" but at the same time, I really wouldn't want to go back-to-the-future of a general ice age. I think humans are perfectly reasonable in acting to keep the planet warming than having ice sheets two miles thick covering most of North America. I especially think this is right because I would right now be under one of those ice sheets!