Anthropocene Independence Day
Today is July 4th and we now have 32 people confirmed to attend our little Independence Day Barbecue. I’ve already bought 60 pounds of ice that is sitting in the garage in coolers, trying not to all melt before the festivities begin. I imagine this is a big ice buying day and that the ice merchants will be out of stock in a few hours. Despite refrigeration being around since 1834 and being available commercially for home use in 1913, we Americans still can’t enough of the cold in the summertime, so we use lots and lots of ice in coolers and tubs to sink and chill every sort of beverage we can muster. We even have an outdoor bar refrigerator on the patio, which is currently full to the brim with water bottles and soda bottles and a few odd cans of beer (our crowd are not big beer drinkers, as it turns out). We can normally seat 11 on the patio, but I have added two camp chairs and four folding chairs, so I think we can no accommodate 17 at max seating capacity. We also have the deck which will be wide open from the kitchen via the folding glass doors. That creates a nice indoor/outdoor feel but will surely get hot in the afternoon sun. We can seat a dozen out there so with the six kitchen seats and the ten dining room chairs (which I predict will get moved out onto the deck at some point), not to mention all the seating in the living room (some people are bound to be wanting to stay in the air conditioning as much as possible), I think we will be fine. Of the 32, six are children in the peak of their run-around stages of childhood, so we really only have to properly seat 26, and by my count we have that number covered twofold at least. Everything is spic and span outdoors, so I think my work is done for the moment.
I am reading about all the excessive heat all over the rest of the country with a heat dome in the Pacific Northwest, a desert heat belt that runs down the Central Valley of California all the way through to and including most of Arizona, and some nasty hot and humid weather all across Texas. Meanwhile, the Eastern Seaboard and the Upper Midwest are plagues with turbulent storms through those regions. It’s only a matter of time during such holiday periods when the weather seems to be on everyone’s mind that the topic of climate change comes up in many ways in the popular press. While everyone on the right side of the political spectrum remains focused on Donald Trump’s legal woes and all that comes with that, especially reminiscences about the Deep State and the Weaponized DOJ, other topics like immigration, the economy and climate change have given way for the moment while the country builds to a lather with anti-wokism. Issues like affirmative action, reparations, student loans and LGBTQ rights abound. But on Independence Day, we gather out of doors mostly and celebrate our relationship with the seasonal weather patterns that constitute the time of year we all live for.
It seems that there are a bunch of scientists trying to define our current weather phenomenon just as they have characterized all of the epochs since recorded time and before. This is technically a geological time scale since we believe earth began, and these time scales carry very specific names and definitions. For instance there are four eons (the Hadean Eon, the Archean Eon, the Proterozoic Eon, and the Phanerozoic Eon, all of which cover billions of years). Those then are broken down into eras (hundreds of millions of years), periods (millions of years), epochs (hundreds of thousands of years) and ages (thousands of years). These scientists gather regularly as either the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) or the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) to debate when we have switched into a new time period due to observed geologic or climate phenomenon. The current big debate is about when the next epoch started. That epoch already has a name, Anthropocene, and it comes right after the Holocene Age, which has lasted 11,700 years more or less and means in Greek, “the recent age of man”. Anthropocene in Greek means newly impacted by man and it implies that it is the era where man has left an indelible mark on the earth’s climate and ecosystem.
Apparently, none of the prior human activities including the three prior industrial revolutions have left much of a mark, but things have now changed. The best current thinking is that the Anthropocene Epoch started in about 1945-1950 and has a great deal to do with the released radioactivity of the atomic era. These scientists look for what they call Golden Spikes or Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Points (GSSP), which are places where Paleontological evidence exists of the start of a major new epoch. They actually demarcate them with a brass plaque and they have identified 79 of them covering the 101 possible defined time periods approved. Well, even though they have not yet formally agreed on the existence and timing of the Anthropocene Epoch, it seems that they do have a Golden Spike that fits all the criteria. Its a lake in Canada, near Toronto, called Crawford Lake, which is a fairly small lake, but one with a unique convergence of attributes. Apparently it is a glacial lake formed in a big granite caldera, so it is like a sealed bowl. It is unusually deep and have two temperature layers the lower of which is simply too cold to sustain any life form, called a meromictic lake. That makes for a relatively undisturbed bottom and the limestone surrounding the lake means that the annual runoff creates a layer of white to neatly distinguish seasons from one another. This makes core samples particularly useful in establishing the impact from vegetation, air and water quality and other external factors that sift their way down to the bottom of the lake and create a continuous time capsule for scientists to carefully examine for changes due to man.
It is noteworthy that they can easily distinguish between the sediments before 1950 and those since, thereby giving them that golden spike that they feel they need to formally designate a new paleontological epoch of the earth, one that has been distinctly impacted by man in his quest for the good life. That good life consists of many things, but at the top of the list is his ability to dominate nature and to bend it to his will whether for controlling the temperature, moving himself and his stuff from here to there or seizing dominion over his fellow man. I am man and I choose to leave my mark on this world.
I often ponder about the landscape in a place. Sometimes I wonder why man stakes his claim and then does not exploit it, leaving nature for nature’s sake. Other times I marvel at how much man feels the need to bulldoze himself into oblivion by building where nature keeps wanting to tear it down, especially on the coastline. Around here I stare out at the boulders on the hillside and know that they are igneous and were spewed at some time or other from the depths of the earth with its molten core. For some reason, my post-apocalyptic mind assumes that one day this hillside will revert to natural form and anything that I have done to the garden will quickly revert to chaparral scrub with its natural beauty. I feel no need to leave a lasting mark on the earth for others to know that I was independent and here. The greater independence available to us is to choose to enjoy the earth while we can and then leave it as close to how we found it that we can. I hereby declare this Anthropocene Independence Day.