Living in the Anthropocene

by W. John Kress

  WHY SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS MUST WORK TOGETHER

  G. WAYNE CLOUGH

  Climate change was an abstract concept for me until I chaired the National Research Council’s Committee on New Orleans Regional Hurricane Protection Projects following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The committee was charged with reviewing plans proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a new system with a price tag of more than fifteen billion dollars. During our discussion of the design elevation for the levees and floodwalls, I asked what the system’s life expectation was. After some give-and-take, we agreed it should last at least one hundred years. Because sea levels are predicted to rise two to three feet over that time, climate change instantly moved from a scientific concept to a very real design issue for engineers. And in 2012, Hurricane Sandy demonstrated once and for all that this problem extends to all of our coastal cities, not just New Orleans.

  In the ensuing years, awareness of the effects and magnitude of climate change has grown. In 2014, all U.S. federal agencies were required to produce adaptation plans to address the potential effects of climate change. Concerns surfaced about food and water supplies, vulnerability of defense bases in coastal areas, and the likelihood of increased global conflicts. The Smithsonian Institution cited the growing potential for flooding of some of its largest museums in Washington, DC, as a result of increasing levels of storm surges. The cumulative impact of the adaptation reports was a wake-up call. In 2015, the historic Paris Agreement was signed by 195 nations committing to changes aimed at limiting warming to no more, and preferably less, than 2°C (3.6°F) above the average temperature of the preindustrial age.

  All of the expressions of concern were important, but open questions remain as to exactly how the driving forces behind climate change can be slowed or reversed, how rapidly this can be achieved, and how this might be done while sustaining a positive world economy. I contend that the answers can be found only through research and the application of knowledge at the intersection of the sciences and engineering.

  After retiring from the Smithsonian, where I had been the director since 2008, and returning to the Georgia Institute of Technology as a faculty member in 2014, I made it a point to meet with faculty working on issues relating to climate change. The issues being addressed ranged from national policy to the science of changes taking place in our oceans. I was pleased to learn about new approaches that were being developed to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it below ground. I was impressed to hear of the work of the Carbon-Neutral Energy Solutions Laboratory and the University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaic Research and Education, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, in developing energy sources that are both carbon neutral and economic. For example, advances in photovoltaic technology reduced the cost of solar energy by 70 percent from 2009 to 2016. Solar costs are now competitive with those of coal and will soon be lower than those of natural gas. In the past several years, well over 30 percent of the new energy produced in the world has come from solar sources.

  My engineering friends were rightfully proud of their progress in creating beneficial technologies, but it was apparent they were not aware of a context that would help them appreciate how much difference their work could make in the effort to mitigate the effects of climate change. Would it be enough to restrain the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, slow the rise of sea levels, and minimize the acidification of our oceans so that our world could sustain life as we know it? This was a question with an answer that lay in the science underlying climate change.

  While at the Smithsonian, I had made it a point to spend time with as many of the five hundred or so scientists who work there as possible, often traveling around the globe to observe their work. I witnessed the effects of the oceans’ warming and acidification on coral reefs, observed evidence of the threat posed by melting Arctic tundra to the way of life of Alaska’s Yupik people, and walked through tropical and temperate forests where the growth patterns of many different species are changing in almost real time. Every story was compelling, demonstrating how climate change is dramatically impacting natural systems. However, I found that scientists, like engineers, have a blind spot. Few of them were aware of the work of engineers on new carbon-neutral energy sources or atmospheric carbon removal, which could mitigate the effects of climate change. And here as well no one was asking, “What would it take to really make the difference needed?”

  If the communications gap between engineers and scientists were to be closed, we could develop a more cohesive and robust strategy to address climate change. At a minimum, a coming together would make both groups better informed and more effective collective advocates for addressing the challenges at hand. The merging of forces would allow both sides to better appreciate the practical issues involved and how economic factors play into the equation.

  Steps are being taken to address this problem. At the Smithsonian, an institution-wide initiative led to the development of Living in the Anthropocene, a project offering people from different disciplines the opportunity for dialogue about common issues. In conjunction with the 2015 Paris meeting, two additional major initiatives were announced. First, twenty nations, together accounting for upward of 75 percent of today’s carbon emissions, announced Mission Innovation, a promise to invest billions of dollars in public-sector monies to accelerate global clean-energy innovation. As part of America’s commitment, the U.S. Department of Energy launched the Clean Energy Investment Center, to make information about energy and climate science from government agencies accessible and understandable to the public. Second, a group of philanthropists and corporations banded together to create the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, to provide a fund of twenty billion dollars to match the public-sector monies of Mission Innovation.

  The timing could not be better for scientists and engineers to work together to bring clarity to issues of joint interest and paramount concern to the world. In 1853, the Smithsonian’s first secretary, Joseph Henry, said it this way: “James Smithson was well aware that knowledge should not be viewed as existing in isolated parts, but as a whole, each portion of which throws light on all the others, and that the tendency of all is to improve the human mind.”

  HAZARDS TO OUR HERITAGE

  CHOICES AND SOLUTIONS

  CORINE WEGENER

  Cultural heritage is indivisible from what it means to be human. It is what we receive from our ancestors, what we decide to preserve (or not to preserve) in the present, and what we intend to pass to future generations. It embodies a society’s identity and hope. Heritage may be mostly of local significance, such as a war memorial inscribed with the names of local veterans, or it may be internationally renowned, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. All cultural heritage is an expression of our memory, creativity, and innovation, and it has value. But heritage, like Earth itself, is vulnerable to the impact of our activities and the choices we make. The hazards that humans impose may be characterized by three Es: environment, encroachment, and escape. The actions that humans undertake to prevent the loss of heritage are represented by three Ms: mitigation, movement, and memory.

  • • •

  Hazards to cultural heritage make for a very long list: fire, armed conflict, extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and urbanization, to name only a few. In the past, we typically labeled hazards “natural” or “human-made.” These terms are misleading. While humans do not control many of the hazards, we do control how we plan for them and reduce their impact. On the other hand, anthropogenic activity exacerbates each of the three Es.

  Environment. Although no region in the world is hazard free, certain locations are exposed to increased risk. Much of the history of human activity has occurred near water. Many of the 720 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites are near coastlines, making them vulnerable to coastal erosion, tropical cyclones, and flooding. Climate change is a slow-onset disaster, producing rising sea levels an
d storms of increasing duration and intensity. Some studies predict that sea levels may rise by as much as six feet (nearly two meters) by 2100, potentially swamping sites such as the city of Venice and submerging whole island cultures. Our environment can also demonstrate its destructive power very suddenly. Earthquakes and volcanoes threaten heritage sites around the world, particularly within the Pacific Ocean’s famed Ring of Fire.

  Encroachment. Human encroachment is a major cause of heritage destruction. Overpopulation, urban sprawl, and economic development often outstrip a community’s ability or desire to preserve historic structures. Legal protections may exist but are often not enforced because of corruption or lack of capacity. Cairo’s urban expansion now nearly surrounds the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx, while one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s greatest architectural achievements, the Francis Little House on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, was dismantled for museum period rooms in 1972 and the rest razed because no one was willing to buy and restore it.

  Today cultural heritage is facing a more violent form of encroachment: armed conflict. While the loss of life and human suffering are an incalculable tragedy, the cost to our heritage is also immeasurable. In the wake of the 2012 conflict in Mali, Islamic extremists forbade cultural expressions such as dance, music, and traditional dress, destroyed Sufi religious sites, and burned thousands of the legendary manuscripts of Timbuktu. In Syria and Iraq, conflict and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have taken a devastating toll. Intense combat has destroyed the Old City of Aleppo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and many other sites like it. ISIL has carried out a systematic campaign of deliberate destruction of cultural heritage, smashing collections at the Mosul Museum and razing ancient sites such as Nimrud, Palmyra, and Nineveh. ISIL blew up the Tomb of Jonah (Nebi Junis) in 2014 and then hauled away the rubble, removing all traces of its existence.

  Escape. Conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa have spurred a refugee crisis. In Syria, long-term drought, likely due to climate change, was a contributing factor. Drought-stressed rural populations surged into urban centers, exacerbating the economic and political instability that ultimately fueled a civil war. That situation proved fertile ground for ISIL. As often happens in war, local populations resorted to looting archaeological sites to feed their families and help fund their escape, causing irreparable damage. But sometimes ancient sites can provide a haven for refugees who take up residence in them because of their protected status under international law. In the best cases, refugees help to preserve such sites and defend them from looting, as is now happening in the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria, a World Heritage Site.

  • • •

  How do we respond to the three Es? The three Ms frame our humanitarian response for our heritage.

  Mitigation. If your basement is prone to flooding, it is probably not the place to store your comic book collection. You can mitigate the risk by storing valuable objects on upper floors. In the same way, caretakers and stakeholders of cultural heritage can plan for and mitigate the impact of many hazards. In the earthquake-prone country of Nepal, staff at the historic Patan Durbar Square retrofitted some buildings with earthquake-resistant construction, an expensive undertaking for which they received international grants. Their efforts were rewarded in 2015 when those buildings withstood the devastating 7.9 Gorhka earthquake with minimal damage while adjacent structures collapsed. Reconstruction of the damaged buildings will cost far more than the investment in earthquake-resistant retrofitting. The caretakers of Patan also had strong local volunteer networks, which quickly organized salvage and safe storage of valuable architectural fragments. In Syria, cultural heritage professionals and activists have managed to evacuate whole museum collections and safeguard immovable heritage in situ. At the Ma’arra Museum in opposition-controlled Syria, staff covered and sandbagged Byzantine-era mosaics to protect them from damage. When the museum was bombed in 2015, the mosaics remained intact.

  Movement. In some cases, the only solution to preserving cultural heritage is to move it to a safer place. This involves a great deal of risk. In 2003, staff at the Iraq National Museum secretly emptied their galleries and hid most of their collections ahead of the U.S. military invasion. Looters stole or destroyed thousands of objects when they broke into the museum, but the “secret place” remained intact. During the 2012 Ansar Dine occupation in northern Mali, caretakers there secretly evacuated thousands of the irreplaceable Timbuktu Manuscripts to safety in the capital of Bamako, in the south. And in one of the greatest engineering achievements since the building of the Pyramids, the Egyptian temples of Abu Simbel were disassembled in 1968 and moved to higher ground to save them from being submerged by the Aswan High Dam.

  Memory. Documentation is one of the most important responsibilities of cultural heritage caretakers. In the best case, it is fundamental to good collections management practices. In the worst case, when cultural heritage sites are destroyed or looted, documentation is critical to reconstruction or to memorializing what has been lost for scholars and future generations. Advances in 3-D scanning, high-resolution digital photography, and internet databases have made this work easier today than it was in the past. In a dramatic example, archival collections of historic photos and architectural drawings at the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Museums document ancient sites in Kathmandu, Aleppo, and Palmyra. All of these images have been digitally scanned in high resolution and made available online, where they are being used by researchers, conservators, and preservation architects.

  Cultural heritage is evidence of the best of human activity: artistic genius, historic achievements, and architectural wonders. But at the same time, human activities represent potential hazards that put that heritage at risk. This has been true since ancient times, and over the past hundred years the Anthropocene has introduced new and intensifying threats. Our capacity to destroy cultural heritage sites has reached unprecedented heights, thanks to profound advances in military and industrial technologies, remarkable human population growth, destructive air pollution, and human-induced climate change. To counteract these trends and preserve our cultural heritage we need new research and bold new approaches to disaster risk reduction. Seismic retrofitting and building codes, water mitigation, evacuation of heritage from conflict zones, and more careful military planning: the solutions are often difficult and costly, but the alternative—the loss of identity, stability, and hope for the future—is a much higher price to pay.

  THE UNEQUAL ANTHROPOCENE

  ROB NIXON

  The impossible is the least that one can demand.

  —JAMES BALDWIN

  “A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach,” Pope Francis wrote in his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’. “[We] must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” The pope’s words are exhortatory, but they are also indicative of the astonishing rise of environmental justice movements worldwide. The global ascent of activism among the world’s most environmentally beleaguered communities is one of the most hopeful stories of our time. Not long ago, those outside the wealthy North commonly dismissed environmentalism as green imperialism, as racist, as antihuman and pro-animal, as an indulgent form of politics that only the comfortable could afford. But in the twenty-first century we are witnessing unprecedented efforts to create coalitions of change, however precarious, between those whom the historian Ramachandra Guha and the economist Juan Martínez-Alier call “full-stomach” and “empty-belly” environmentalists.

  The odds of achieving anything resembling justice—for themselves or the environments they depend on—remain stacked against Earth’s most impoverished billions. We inhabit an era of short-term, shortsighted plunder, as megacorporations of historically unprecedented wealth, size, and mobility destroy environmental safeguards, creating, in society after society, what George Monbiot calls a globalized “bonfire of regulations.” Unanswerable corporati
ons team up with unspeakable autocrats; even in democracies, we witness concerted attacks on public safety nets and the long-term common good. But the fast-moving, deregulated pillage of the most vulnerable ecological and human communities has triggered a pushback, a desperate, determined surge in environmental justice activism, not least in frontline communities at heightened risk from climate collapse. Such communities are already experiencing the Anthropocene’s accelerated impacts as an ongoing, staggered trauma.

  Empty-belly environmental activism now stretches from the equatorial forests to lowlying Pacific islands, from the Sahel to the Arctic, from the deltas of the Ganges and the Niger to the favelas that have joined the sustainable cities movement. Local environmentalists are creating transnational networks to expose and oppose habitat fracture, biodiversity loss, land seizure, unregulated mining, food and water insecurity, infrastructure deserts, runaway emissions, and the failure to decentralize, decarbonize, and democratize energy access.

  Another way of voicing Pope Francis’s appeal is to insist that we acknowledge the link between the Great Acceleration and what economists are calling the Great Divide. For the global environmental crisis and the inequality crisis are joined at the hip. In countries as diverse as India, Russia, the United States, Jamaica, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Guatemala, China, and Nigeria, the destabilizing fissure between the megarich and the destitute is widening. In 2010, the 338 most affluent individuals possessed a combined wealth equal to that of the 3.45 billion people who constituted the world’s poorest 50 percent. In 2015, a mere sixty-two tycoons matched the combined wealth of the world’s poorest half. During those same five years, that club of sixty-two gained $500 billion in personal wealth while the wealth of humanity’s poorest half dropped by 41 percent.