The growing evidence and understanding of anthropogenic climate change is arguably the strongest argument for the idea that human activity is pushing the very operating state of Earth systems across irreversible thresholds and tipping points. The Anthropocene thesis goes far beyond this, situating climate change in a much more comprehensive tale of planetary system change – but climate change still remains a crucial part of the picture. Human activity is increasing the concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which absorb the outward long-wave radiation of heat from the Earth’s surface. This is causing a decade-by-decade increase in average global temperature, changing weather patterns, increasing likelihood of extreme weather events such as powerful storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts. Warming also expands the ocean and melts ice stored on landmasses, with a resulting rise in sea level. The fact that it is the global north who bear most historic responsibility for this process, and the global south that suffer the worst consequences and have the least resources to support adaptation, raises profound questions of equity and justice.
The ice-core proposed GSSPs reference this, as do many of the monument designs. Etienne Chambaud’s geothermal plant, set to the temperature of a human fever references anthropogenic global warming – and perhaps the wider idea that the more general energy capture and utilization by humans was a major deep-time event, a revolution in Earth history.[i] Adam Lowe’s 3D-printed projection of the Earth’s solid surface with its rhythmic ingress and egress of water puts contemporary concerns about sea-level rise due to melting ice and thermally expanding oceans in a deep-time context, without blunting the force of contemporary concerns, as whole landmasses disappear under the water. Tomás Saraceno proposed to repurpose one of his aerial ‘solar sculptures’ as a monument to the Anthropocene – a mobile monument that would drift around the globe in response to the currents of the air, alert people to the inequalities and injustices inherent in anthropogenic climate change – but also show the possibility of a radically different way of inhabiting the atmosphere.
[i] Timothy M. Lenton, Peter-Paul Pichler and Helga Weisz (2016) ‘Revolutions in energy input and material cycling in Earth history and human history,’ Earth System Dynamics, 7(2), pp. 353-70.
