Great power, great responsibility

Dave Powell

15 June 2011

When I was small I used to think that dinosaurs were made up. Whopping great lizards flurping around the place, millions of years ago? Nonsense.

To be honest it's still a bit of a headbother when I think about it for too long. That's the problem with time on a planetary scale. There's been an awful lot of it. With apologies to Douglas Adams, it may seem to you like it's been a long time since breakfast, but that's just peanuts to the planet.

As far as the Earth is concerned, humans have been around for a heartbeat. But we've already done so much to the way the planet works that we've left an indelible mark. We've altered the climate, knackered the nitrogen cycle, and changed things like how efficiently plants can photosynthesise.

A growing movement of geologists reckon we've changed things so much that we've tipped over into a new geological era. They've called it the Anthropocene - "the recent age of man".

This is a big deal. So much so that the Economist led on it last week: "The sheer scale of what is going on," it says, means "treating humans not as insignificant observers of the natural world but as central to its working, elemental in their force".

If officially recognised, as the scientists want, this'll mean acceptance that humanity not only has the power to permanently fiddle with the mechanisms of a whole planet, but that it's already done so. Whether we like it or not - and I can't say I'm cock-a-hoop about it - the Earth just doesn't work the same as it did before we came along.

Take climate change. There's a consensus that we've already warmed the planet, with much more in store if we don't buck our ideas up: a few degrees rise could lead to disastrous tipping points, beyond which all bets would be off. That's why we think the UK's carbon budgets, which are only set in line with a 50/50 chance of avoiding a two degree rise, play too fast and loose with the odds.

But climate change isn't the only example. Academics warned last year that of nine 'planetary boundaries' they identified, three - carbon emissions, biodiversity loss, and changes to the global nitrogen cycle - have already been transgressed.

The big question is this: given that we already seem to be changing the systems of the planet without really meaning to, should we embrace the power of 'geoengineering', and harness it to get us out of this rather large hole?

With climate change, this is a live debate. We know the scale of emissions cuts needed; we know how far away our governments are from committing to anywhere near it; and we know, frankly, that even if we do make it we still might have to cross our fingers a bit. So the option of somehow sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, or reflecting sunlight back into space, has to be seriously considered - unproven and a bit alarming though the concept is.

It's not all scary. Some big changes to the planet's energy systems could be very good things indeed. A revolution in the use of energy from the sun, wind, land and sea would see a transformation in energy resource the likes of which the Earth has never seen.

But I'll be honest. Deliberately fiddling with the way the Earth works doesn't really feel like something about which we should be gung-ho, particularly not when we're not trying anywhere near hard enough to cut carbon by the conventional 'emit less' method.

We know we need to find a way to give nine billion people a good life on this delicate planet without freaking it out too much. We need to get on with it. But the real issue is that dinosaurs aren't just in the ground, they're alive and well: the fossils in suits that do things like obstruct or talk down action on climate change, put profits before the planet or take short-term, irresponsible political decisions.

The massive power of humanity can be a pretty humbling thing sometimes - rightly or wrongly. So the question for me is: how do we want to use it?