Drive about 20 minutes from my home on Canada’s East Coast, and you’ll see part of Africa.
In the rockface that rises above Saint John’s famous Reversing Falls, there is geological evidence of the ancient supercontinent Pangea, one of the few places on Earth where it can be seen.
When you stand on the east side of Wolostoq/St. John River and look across beneath the metal trestle bridge; on the right, you will see billion-year-old light gray Precambrian marble that broke away to form what is now part of South America, and to the left, 750 million-year-old Cambrian rock that is now part of North Africa.
It is a wonder to stand there and consider that I am looking at the Earth’s ancient history, placidly existing beneath the old highway bridge as vehicles rumble by, tourists snap photos, and the pulp mill goes about its business.
Centuries from now, what, if anything, will Earth’s rocks reveal about our time here? Are humans leaving a permanent mark?
A growing body of scientific research argues we are at the start of an epoch-defining transition in the earth’s natural history called the Anthropocene. It is marked by changes to the planet’s climate and ecosystems caused by human activity that is so significant it will permanently mark the earth’s geological record, the fossil record of humanity’s time on earth.
Earlier this summer, the group of scientists tasked with gathering evidence of the Anthropocene announced they had identified Crawford Lake, about 40 minutes northwest of my childhood home in Mississauga, as the ‘golden spike,’ a specific place that reveals where one epoch ends and the next begins.
Crawford Lake, while small, is unusually deep, which means the water at its depth doesn’t mix with surface water, allowing sediment to settle undisturbed. That allows it to record layers, or strata, year over year of the ecological, environmental, and human records.
Signs of the Anthropocene include the big one we all talk about – climate change – but it also provides evidence of mass extinction and endangerment of living organisms, the reshaping of the earth’s physical properties and resources, and the changing chemical composition of the world’s four primary elements – earth, water, air and fire – all caused by human activity.
There is healthy debate as to whether we have entered a new epoch – the current Holocene epoch started over 11,500 years ago – or whether the cumulative effect of human activity should be classified as an event within the existing epoch. I’ll leave that to the scientists to consider, something they’ve been doing since 2009.
It is important to note that geologists aren’t debating whether humans have altered Earth’s systems; they are debating how to classify those changes.
Shall we call the Anthropocene a new epoch, or is it something else?
What I do know is, whether we’re ready or not, you, me, and all of us now live and work with the ongoing effect of what the Anthropocene describes: a massive, world-encompassing wave of change that doesn’t care what impact it has on any of us.
Environmental change, by its nature, is amoral. It is neither good nor bad; it just is. The sun warms us, gives us light, and is essential for photosynthesis; it also burns us, can cause cancer, and creates droughts and wildfires.
The change described by the Anthropocene is doing more than simply disrupting how we live and work; it is changing us at our core.
It is causing our values to shift, to consider our impact on the earth, having a ripple effect through the four distinctly human and highly moral systems we depend on to organize our societies: our political, economic, social, and regulatory systems.
This is why our newsfeeds are dominated by reports of massive political, economic, social, and regulatory disruption and change.
Scratch beneath the surface of any of these four waves of change, and I guarantee you will find a connection back to massive environmental change.
Welcome to global systems change.
It’s very deep.
