The Anthropocarboniferous Era

The Anthropocarboniferous Era; Precursor to Anthropocene

March 2008

In 1615, the word ERA came into usage in the English vocabulary and its is a suitable time to mark the beginning of the industrial era as well, a time when we humans began to grow above and beyond the carrying capacity of game hunting, simple fishing and subsistence agriculture.

I have coined the term Anthropocarboniferous ERA to describe this first period of ERA usage characterized by rampant industrial development and coal and later oil burning lasting from 1615 to 2000 and continuing beyond. It began in England with the Hut Tax payable only in cash to force independent farmers off the land to work for cash in cities. This was augmented with the Forest Law which made vast areas of forest the private domain of the King and anyone caught hunting there would become an outlaw. To this day, forests in the Commonwealth are called Crown Land and government, not the local residents, makes laws pertaining to their usage. This meant that the former free source of food when farming wasn't good, was off limits and people became hungry. Land ownership was also kept below the 10 acres per family needed to survive.

These sneaky laws to rob people of their free birth rights were made by greedy corporations and they forced the wild growth of humanity upon planet earth and globalization and free trade have ensured their continuence. The complex growth of taxes combined with technological specialization and its infrastructure proliferation along with its technological dependency prevents people from going back to the land and the old moneyless barter and subsistance economy.

This ERA was a period of unbridled growth of population and geographic expansion of human populations and of technology and growth of dependence on fossil fuels. It has culminated in our present world with its enormous increasing carbon footprint and alienation, alteration and destruction of vast tracts of Terra Firma. It further accelerated the extinction phenomenon associated with the rise of humanity begun in the Pleistocene. It is the prelude to the Anthropocene ERA as defined by geologists.

The Anthropocene ERA beginning in about 2000 can be distinuished from the Anthropocarboniferous ERA by our scientific realization that the earth has limits of tolerance to the so called human Carbon footprint. This footprint is really a metaphor for our collective impacts on Nature. Nature has provided early on, its surplus capital but now that it is mostly depleted, services on credit. This amounts to trillions of dollars worth of services each year during this period of growth but nature is now retracting and demanding payment. We are for the most part, deferring the costs to our children. Fossil fuel supplies have started the slippery downhill slide and danger and disaster looms on the horizon when it will be depleted beyond general public access.

However, cultural unity on this realization and agreement to pay real environmental costs is by no means unanimous and without overlap due to the seductive allure of the abundance of the Anthropocarboniferous and habits spawned during the unbridled growth period which die very hard. By real costs I mean things like stopping acid rain, stopping use of toxica and agrochemicals and their permanent impact on the gene pool, stopping Greenhouse Gas emissions, stopping paving of soil, stopping the loss of natural habitat to human development, stopping the use of hydrocarbons in transport, stopping the growth and unmitigated dominance of the human population. 

People who do not make the awareness transition to the Anthropocene are remnants of the past and can be properly called living Fossils distinguished by a large carbon footprint not unlike a real fossil of the proper geologic Carboniferous Period. Their legacy will be to expedite the no oil Post Anthropocene.

I predict that in the Post-Oil ERA Cities as they are now, and Capitalism will collapse. Low tech high density low mobility subsistence farms will be in vogue. Life will be very hard for most.  There will be a rich privileged class and the majority poor class and this disparity will as it has always in the past, lead to mass starvation and class wars and the rise of militaristic Socialism and strong boss Fascism and International Wars as well. If you can imagine Beijing or Calcutta or New York City folks starving and freezing to death or walking back to the land, any available land anywhere, and what that would look like, then I think you have captured my Post-Oil ERA Prophesy.

Jormawankenobe

Copyright 2008 J. Jyrkkanen