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Perhaps the most profound change of all is taking place in the ‘biological signal’. If one of the key indicators of shifts in the planet’s geological, climatic and biological character is to be seen in the fossil record, then what kind of record is being left in the Anthropocene? Explosions of new life forms and mass extinctions have often marked the boundary between one geological period and another. Could the pollutants and poisons being released by our mines and industries be killing life on a global scale? Is global warming sounding the death knell for untold numbers of plants and animals? Has chopping down more than half the world’s trees since our arrival on the planet destroyed whole ecosystems? Does farming on an industrial scale, growing only a few crops, rearing only some animals, fertilising with synthetically manufactured nitrogen-based chemicals, signal the demise of many insects, birds and mammals? Are we on our way to a sixth major mass extinction? Are we seeing the first great extermination event, asks the environmental historian Justin McBrien, ecocide committed by just one species, Homo sapiens? Will palaeontologists of the future notice the sudden disappearance of tens of thousands of species from the fossil record as the Anthropocene gets under way? The signs are not looking good.
Insect numbers and diversity are falling dramatically. Microorganisms in the soil are being lost. Many bird populations are plummeting. Fish stocks are being depleted. Corals are dying. Rhinos are disappearing. Polar bears are threatened. The ecologists Gerardo Ceballos, Paul Ehrlich and Peter Raven found that more than five hundred species of land vertebrates are currently on the brink of extinction. Habitats suitable for wildlife are shrinking by the day.
The health of the biosphere appears to be in a very poor state. The May 2019 UN global assessment report warns that the planet’s life-support systems are being destroyed by The Anthropocene human activity. We destroy forests and grasslands to grow single crops and rear animals for meat, we degrade the land, we overfish, we pollute, and we burn fossil fuels and cause changes to our climate. The State of the World’s Plants and Fungi 2020, published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, reports that 40 per cent of the world’s plant species are currently under threat of extinction.
Across the plant and animal kingdoms, up to one million species, and counting, are at imminent risk of annihilation. And with their loss, we put ourselves in danger, too. Humanity’s health and well-being rely on a rich biodiversity. Food production, crop pollination, clean water, land quality and human health all come under threat if we plough on regardless. Ceballos and his colleagues cite the coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic as an example of what can happen. When we ravage the natural world, trade in wildlife and destroy so many natural habitats.
There is another, parallel, story also being told in the biological record. Every year we rear and slaughter billions of chickens. Beef cattle graze the grasslands where extensive forests once grew. Future palaeontologists might well puzzle over the extraordinary number of fossilised chicken, cow and sheep bones found in man-made layers of rock rubbish the world over. If the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods have been dubbed the Age of the Dinosaur, might far-future generations examining the fossil record mockingly name our times the Age of the Chicken?
