Mark Maslin and Danny Dorling, Royal Geographical Society Monday night lecture, April 25th 2016

1. Mark Maslin and Danny Dorling
Geography of our Future:
Understanding the consequences of the Anthropocene
1

2. Are we already in the
Anthropocene?
2

3. Are humans a geological superpower?
3

4. 4

5. Half of all Nitrogen
fixed by humans
Greenhouse gases outside
glacial-interglacial norms
>30% land surface
cultivated
Sixth mass
extinction?
5

6. 6

7. We are currently in the
Holocene Epoch
which started 11,650 BP
Geologic Timescale 2012
7

8. Holocene Epoch
Defined by the rise in Deuterium excess in Greenland ice core. That marks the first signs
of climatic warming at the end of the Younger Dryas cold phase.
8

9. Stage 1: Early
Agriculture and the age
of Empire
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10. Ruddiman 2013 Ann. Rev. Earth & Planetary Sciences
Agriculture developed independently
10

11. Have humans prevented a new glaciation?
Red, Holocene
Blue, mean of
previous
interglacials,
plus standard
deviation
11

12. Roman Empire – very little environmental impact
12

13. Scale of changes small compared to recent
Lewis & Maslin 2015
The Anthropocene Review13

14. Stage 2:
Globalisation of
humanity and the dawn
of Capitalism
14

15. 1492 Columbus arrives in the Americas
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16. Collision of Old and New Worlds
Alfred Crosby 1972
16

17. Species exchange
Benjamin M. Schmidt, Northeastern University, USA
18th and 19th century shipping logs
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18. Orbis hypothesis Latin for “World”
50 Million
people died
in the
Americas
Lewis & Maslin 2015
The Anthropocene Review
18

19. Should Anthropocene start at 1610 ACE?
Lewis & Maslin 2015 Nature
19

20. Our thinking changed after 1492
De revolutionibus
orbium coelestium
(On the Revolutions
of the Heavenly
Spheres)
Imagined 1510
Printed 1543
Nicolaus Copernicus
20

21. In 1631, René Descartes
noticed that all around him
people had stopped
thinking about much more
than earning money. He
said: ‘In this great city
where I am living, with no
man apart from myself not
being involved in trade,
everyone is so intent on his
profits that I could spend
my whole life without
being seen by anyone.’
21

22. Angus Maddison’s world data sorted by 16th century rise – www.worldmapper.org
Demographic
Turmoil 1600-1820
Population
(millions)
Population change in
century (%)
1500 1820 16th 17th 18th
Netherlands 1 2 58 27 23
United Kingdom 4 21 57 39 148
China 103 381 55 -14 176
Total Asia 284 710 33 6 77
Total Western Europe 57 133 29 10 63
India 110 209 23 22 27
Japan 15 31 20 46 15
Total Africa 47 74 19 10 22
United States 2 10 -25 -33 898
Total Latin America 18 22 -51 40 79
Mexico 8 7 -67 80 46
Peru 4 1 -68 0 1
Everywhere else 31 92 23 20 101
World Total 438 1042 27 9 73
22

23. About to explode
Charles Darwin – on slow breading
mammals…
“… after a period of from 740 to 750 years
there would be nearly nineteen million
elephants alive descended from the first
pair. But we have better evidence on this
subject than mere theoretical calculations,
namely, the numerous recorded cases of
the astonishingly rapid increase of various
animals in a state of nature, when
circumstances have been favourable to
them during two or three following
seasons. Still more striking is the evidence
from our domestic animals of many kinds
which have run wild in several parts of the
world;
1849 (sixth edition 1873)
23

24. 24

25. Stage 3: The Industrial
revolutions
c. 1800-1950
25

26. James Watt's industrial steam engine, 1788 26

27. With the industrial revolutions came a change in our
thinking – with the emergence of socialism
27

28. Stage 4:The Great
Acceleration and the
birth of Neoliberalism
28

29. 29

30. Increasing Global consumption
30

31. The ‘Great Acceleration’ relative to the bomb spike
Lewis and Maslin, Anthropocene Review (2105) using data from Steffen et al. (2015)31

32. Over 3.5 billion extra people since 1950
32

33. Global distribution of Population
33

34. Light Pollution
Map by Benjamin Hennig – Sources:
http://www.dannydorling.org/books/geography/
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35. Croplands
Map by Benjamin Hennig – Sources:
http://www.dannydorling.org/books/geography/
35

36. Wilderness
Map by Benjamin Hennig – Sources:
http://www.dannydorling.org/books/geography/
36

37. Emergence of Neoliberalism in the 1980s
37

38. True state of the Modern World
7 million children die needlessly each year
700 million people go to bed hungry every night
1,000 million people no access to clean drinking water
38

39. • Richest 1% of adults owned 48% of global assets in 2014, 50% by 2015
• Bottom half (3.6 billion people) owned <1%
39

40. Stage 5:Potential
geographies of the
Future
40

41. All current trends are leading to the Perfect Storm
Development Population growth
41

42. Limiting carbon emissions will require substantial and
sustained effort (IPCC 2013)
42

43. Paris COP agreement is very ambitious
43

44. Is this because we have to many people?
Discussions on Global Population and Climate Change
seem to raise the same hysteria
44

45. UN Population growth forecast
The world population likely
to increase from current 7.3
billion to 9.0 billion in 2100
It need not go higher if we
are proactive - Family
planning has dropped of the
global political agenda over
the last 20 years, as has
concern over what makes
people happier to have
fewer children.
45

46. Your eye is drawn
upwards…
The middle estimate is
so much less shocking
than the upper
estimate. Hardly
anyone ever comments
on the lower
population estimates
the UN has been
producing and yet
fertility continues to
fall. Especially after
2008.
46

47. Total and per capita emissions – target is 2 tons/capita
It is consumption not population that makes the difference
47

48. Population + Development = faster Climate Change
But are all people equal when it comes to
polluting the atmosphere?
9 billion people - 2050
Rapid Development
>4˚C temperature rise?
48

49. Is it lack of money that is stopping us helping the poor?
Or is tolerance of inequality peculiar to the UK – the most
economically unequal country in Europe…
GDP growth 1600-2010
UK GDP in 2014 was ~$3000 billion
So why are there poor people?
49

50. Will the future be a healthier one?
Source: https://healthyplanetpro.wordpress.com/world-health-stats/ 50

51. Is progressive and inclusive capitalism – triple bottom line
and wealth redistribution enough?
51

52. The Panama Papers will reveal the scale of our
underestimate of the 1% wealth
52

53. Return to social democracy?
Progressive taxation and adopt the universal basic income
53

54. Why do the
Anthropocene and
Capitalocene matter?
54

55. 55
Does defining Human geological time unit matter?
The Time Wars

56. Anthropocene: reinstating human importance after 500 years
56

57. Good verses Bad Anthropocene?
57
We have a choice!