The Anthropocene and the Near Future: Crash Course Big History #9

Summary

The video script discusses the Anthropocene, an unofficial geologic era where human influence significantly impacts the biosphere. It highlights the rapid advancements in technology and knowledge since the 19th century, such as the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the harnessing of nuclear power. However, it also acknowledges the negative consequences of these developments, including increased wealth inequality, environmental degradation, and the potential for mass extinctions. The script explores the challenges of supporting a growing global population, the need for sustainable energy sources, and the importance of education in fostering innovation. It concludes with a call to action for humanity to navigate the complexities of the Anthropocene, emphasizing the potential for a future of continued progress and the responsibility to ensure the survival and prosperity of our species.

Takeaways

• 🌏 The Anthropocene is an unofficial term for a new geological era where human activity has significant impact on the Earth's ecosystems, even though it's not yet officially recognized by geologists.
• 📚 Collective human learning and the rise in complexity have led to more change in the past century than in the previous 250,000 years of human history.
• 🚀 Since 1800, there has been an explosion of innovation and discovery, including advancements in physics, astronomy, and technology such as electric cars.
• 📱 The growth of collective learning is exponential, with the population having access to a level of communication and computational power that was unimaginable in the past.
• ⚙️ The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw an increase in destructive weaponry, colonialism, and chaos including World War I and II, which had devastating impacts on humanity.
• 🌾 Agricultural advancements and industrialization have helped prevent famine and increased food production, leading to population explosions in countries like India and China.
• ⚡ The harnessing of nuclear power has given humans immense potential for good or ill, and has raised concerns about nuclear holocaust and environmental disasters.
• 💰 Economic growth has generally led to better standards of living for many, but it has also increased wealth inequality, with a significant gap between the rich and the poor.
• 🌳 The reliance on non-renewable resources for energy production has negative environmental impacts and contributes to climate change.
• 🌍 The Earth's ability to sustain the current human population at a high standard of living is limited, and overpopulation could lead to severe challenges, including violence.
• 📈 Economic development tends to slow population growth and change demographic trends, making education and individual opportunities more accessible and valuable.

Q & A

What is the Anthropocene and why is it significant?

The Anthropocene is an unofficial geologic era where humans have an immense influence over the biosphere. It signifies a period where human activities have a significant impact on Earth's ecosystems and climate, though it is not yet officially recognized by geologists.

What does the term 'Anthropocene' derive from?

The term 'Anthropocene' is derived from the Greek word for human, 'anthropos', highlighting the central role of human activity in this era.

How has collective learning influenced human history in the past century?

Collective learning has led to an unprecedented rate of change and innovation in the past century, with more advancements occurring in this period than in the previous 250,000 years of human history.

What are some examples of recent scientific discoveries and technological advancements mentioned in the script?

Examples include the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle, the largest ever black hole, preserved woolly mammoth blood, and the development of electric cars capable of speeds over 125 miles per hour.

How has the growth of human population and technology impacted the world's wealth distribution?

While the overall standard of living has improved, the wealth inequality gap has widened. The ratio of impoverished to wealthy countries has increased from about 3:1 in 1820 to closer to 72:1 today.

What is the concept of 'creative descent' mentioned in the script?

The concept of 'creative descent' refers to a guided, gentle decline of complexity to more simple, subsistence living as an alternative future scenario for humanity, should technological salvation not occur.

Why is economic development important in stabilizing population growth?

Economic development can slow population growth by increasing the cost and duration of raising children, offering adults more opportunities, and changing societal values towards having fewer children.

What are the potential environmental consequences of our current modes of production?

Current modes of production rely heavily on non-renewable resources, leading to environmental degradation, climate change, and accelerating the rate of extinction of plant and animal species.

How has the advent of agriculture influenced the population growth and complexity of human societies?

Agriculture has allowed for the support of larger populations by providing a stable food source, which in turn has enabled the development of more complex societies and the rise of global networks.

What are some of the challenges humanity might face in the next century?

Challenges include managing population growth, reducing wealth inequality, transitioning to renewable energy sources, addressing climate change, and avoiding potential global conflicts or instability.

Why is it crucial for humanity to survive the 21st century?

Surviving the 21st century is crucial as it is seen as a bottleneck period fraught with risk. If humanity can navigate through this period, the potential for further innovation, education, and collective learning could lead to a prosperous and interconnected future.

What role does education play in the potential future of humanity?

Education plays a vital role in unlocking innovative potential and fostering economic growth. A well-educated population is more likely to contribute to technological advancements and solutions to global challenges.

Outlines

00:00

🌏 Introduction to the Anthropocene Era

John Green introduces the concept of the Anthropocene, an unofficial geologic era where human influence on the biosphere is significant. He emphasizes the era's unofficial status pending geologists' approval. Green discusses the rapid changes in the past century, highlighting innovations like the discovery of the Higgs Boson and electric cars. He also mentions the growth of human population and technological advancements, comparing modern smartphones to NASA's computing power during the Moon landing. The video sets the stage for a discussion on the complex and impactful times we live in, marked by both progress and challenges.

05:02

📈 The Rise of Human Progress and its Consequences

The video explores the pros and cons of the Anthropocene. On the positive side, manufacturing jobs have lifted millions out of poverty, and modern technology can support a larger population than ever before. However, this progress has also led to a shift from traditional lifestyles to factory work with poor conditions and widening wealth inequality. While energy production has increased complexity and living standards, it relies heavily on non-renewable resources, contributing to environmental issues like climate change and species extinction. The video also discusses the impact of population growth on infrastructure and resources, and the potential for economic development to slow population growth, though it may also exacerbate environmental problems.

10:04

🌱 The Future of Humanity: Challenges and Hopes

The script outlines potential future scenarios for humanity, including a technological breakthrough that could save us, a catastrophic collapse, or a 'creative descent' to a simpler way of living. It acknowledges the uncertainty of which path we'll take but suggests that continued reliance on technology seems the most likely. The video also addresses the risks of the 21st century, such as environmental disasters and global instability. Despite these challenges, if humanity can navigate through this period, referred to as the '21st-century bottleneck,' there's potential for a stable and well-educated global population that could lead to further advancements. The importance of education in reducing poverty and fostering innovation is emphasized, and the video concludes with a hopeful outlook on the potential directions humanity could take in the future.

Keywords

💡Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is an unofficial term for a proposed new geological era characterized by significant human impact on Earth's ecosystems. It is derived from the Greek word for human, 'anthropos'. In the video, it is discussed as a period where human activities have an immense influence over the biosphere, marking a significant shift in the Earth's history.

💡Collective Learning

Collective learning refers to the cumulative increase in knowledge and skills within a society over time. The video emphasizes its exponential growth, illustrating how it has led to rapid innovation and discovery, such as the Higgs Boson and electric cars. It is a key factor in the rise of complexity and the challenges faced during the Anthropocene.

💡Complexity

Complexity, in the context of the video, refers to the intricate and interconnected systems that have developed over the course of human history. It is highlighted as a continuous trend in Big History, from the formation of stars to the development of human culture. The video discusses how the rise in complexity has led to both advancements and challenges in the Anthropocene era.

💡Industrialization

Industrialization is the period of social and economic change where production shifts from manual labor to machines, often leading to a significant increase in productivity. The video mentions a new wave of industrialization post-World War II, which has had profound effects on population growth and economic development, but also on the environment and resource depletion.

💡Wealth Inequality

Wealth inequality refers to the uneven distribution of assets, income, and wealth among the population. The video discusses how despite an increase in average standards of living, the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, with a current ratio of impoverished to wealthy countries being 72:1, indicating a significant social and economic challenge in the Anthropocene.

💡Non-renewable Resources

Non-renewable resources are natural resources that do not replenish within a human timeframe, such as coal, oil, and nuclear power. The video points out that our current modes of production heavily rely on these resources, which poses a significant environmental challenge and is unsustainable in the long term.

💡Climate Change

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions on Earth, primarily due to human activities. The video discusses climate change as a major consequence of the Anthropocene, with potentially devastating effects on ecosystems and human societies.

💡Extinction

Extinction is the disappearance of a species or taxonomic group. The video mentions that the Anthropocene could be marked by a mass extinction event due to human-induced environmental changes, which would rival the most devastating pre-human mass extinctions in history.

💡Population Growth

Population growth is the increase in the number of individuals in a population over time. The video explores the challenges of sustaining a growing global population, projected to reach between 9.6 and 12 billion by the end of the century, and the strain this puts on resources and infrastructure.

💡Economic Development

Economic development refers to the process of improving a nation's economic well-being through increased production and consumption. The video discusses how economic development can influence demographic trends, potentially slowing population growth and improving living standards, but also how it can exacerbate environmental issues.

💡Creative Descent

Creative descent is a concept that suggests a deliberate and managed decline in complexity to a simpler, more sustainable way of living. The video presents this as a possible future scenario for humanity, contrasting with a technological salvation or a catastrophic collapse, and implies a more balanced approach to development and sustainability.

Highlights

The Anthropocene is an unofficial geologic era where humans have an immense influence over the biosphere.

More change has occurred in the past century than in the previous 250,000 years of human history.

Since 1800, there has been a Cambrian explosion of innovation and discovery.

The Higgs Boson, the largest black hole, and preserved woolly mammoth blood are among recent scientific discoveries.

Electric cars can now reach speeds over 125 miles per hour.

The human population has grown to seven billion, with smartphones having more computing power than NASA in 1969.

Collective learning is increasing exponentially, leading to a snowball effect in human knowledge.

Agricultural advancements have allowed the population to grow significantly in the last thousand years.

The potential for new technological breakthroughs is heightened by our interconnected global network.

The late 19th century saw an increase in destructive weaponry and colonial empires.

World War I and the Spanish flu resulted in a massive loss of life, highlighting the devastating cost of increased innovation and connectivity.

Newly developed crops have helped prevent famines in countries like India and China, leading to population explosions.

The threat of nuclear holocaust and environmental disasters encourages the colonization of the Solar System for species survival.

For most of human history, the world was divided into isolated zones with distinct social orders and wealth disparities.

Today, earning more than $20,000 per year places one in the top 20% of the world's richest people.

Modern living standards in the developed world are better than those of kings just a few centuries ago.

The behavior towards the developing world in the next 100 years will significantly impact future generations' perception of our actions.

Since 1970, manufacturing jobs have lifted approximately 600 million people out of poverty.

The wealth inequality gap is widening despite increasing standards of living on average.

Current modes of production rely heavily on non-renewable resources, contributing to environmental concerns and climate change.

Collective learning has lowered the death rate and freed billions from cycles of starvation and famine.

The world's population is expected to grow to between 9.6 and 12 billion by the end of the century.

Economic development can slow population growth and change demographic trends.

Developing countries often use inexpensive, fast, and dirty forms of fuel for economic growth, exacerbating environmental problems.

The 21st century will be fraught with risk, but if humanity can navigate through it, the potential for collective learning and innovation is immense.

Increasing access to education and reducing poverty are key to unlocking the innovative potential of the global population.

Transcripts

Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course Big History and today we're going to talk about the Anthropocene.

Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Anthropocene? What does that even mean? That sounds like gibberish.

No, Me From the Past, your tenth grade essays were gibberish. The Anthropocene is a word

derived from the Greek word for human. Like you know how anthropologists study humans?

Well, the Anthropocene is an unofficial geologic era where humans have

an immense influence over the biosphere.

But I want to emphasize that it is unofficial because geologists are a vicious and terrifying

bunch and the word is not official until they say it's official. But even if it's not yet

a word, the underlying concept is very useful.

So due to the intensification of collective learning and the continued rise of complexity

we've been talking about, you could argue that more change has happened in the past

century than in the previous, like, 250,000 years of human history.

And it's all roughly within living memory. You, your parents and your grandparents have

lived in one of the most complex and interesting times ever.

[Theme Music]

So, since 1800, we've had a Cambrian explosion of innovation and discovery, like in the last

few years alone we've discovered a fundamental particle that weaves together the fabric of

the universe - The Higgs Boson. We discovered the largest ever black hole, which is about

17 billion times the mass of our sun, we found preserved woolly mammoth blood, we even have

electric cars that go more than 125 miles per hour.

Although, you should drive them more slowly, obviously.

We've grown to a population of seven billion people and your phone has more computing power

than all of NASA did when they sent men to the Moon in 1969.

And collective learning is increasing exponentially, here's Emily Graslie from The Brain Scoop

to help us understand the scale of that growth of knowledge.

As human populations grow exponentially, collective learning is undergoing a snowball effect.

In humanity's first 250,000 years as foragers, about nine billion people lived and died.

Thanks to agriculture in the last thousand years, about 55 billion people have lived

and died, and seven billion of them are around now.

This is great for rising complexity. We now live in a unified global network of billions

of brains. Communication is almost instantaneous and we harness the power of the Earth and

Sun on a massive scale. The potential for new breakthroughs in technology or in our

understanding of the cosmos is heightened by all of this.

It's all part of the continuous rising complexity in Big History, a trend that has been preceding for over 13.8

billion years -- from gas clouds to stars to single-celled organisms to trilobites to dinosaurs to culture.

The beginnings of the Anthropocene weren't all sunshine and daisies, however.

The late 19th century was marked by an increase in the destructiveness of weaponry, a number

of colonial empires covered the entire Earth, with the exception of a few non-European states

which managed to maintain their independence, and mounting nationalism and bigotry led to

some terrible chaos in the early 20th century.

World War I killed 15 million people, the Spanish flu which followed it and spread largely

as a result of the unified global system that had previously been so valuable to collective

learning killed off three times as many, and 50 million people were killed during World

War II. Such is the devastating cost of increased innovation and connectivity.

Following World War II, a new wave of industrialization entered East Asia, Central and South America,

The Middle East and other areas. Newly developed crops, especially strains of wheat and rice,

helped places like India and China, which in the mid-20th century still suffered famines.

Their populations exploded for better or worse, and we harnessed the power of atomic fission,

putting immense power in the hands of humans to be used for good or ill.

It's the threat of nuclear holocaust combined with the possibility of an asteroid impact

or super-volcanic eruption that makes scientists like Stephen Hawking encourage the colonization

of the Solar System to increase the chances of our species surviving.

Coping with scarcity is the bottom line of much of organic history encompassing all species, including humans.

So for most of human history the world was separated into four isolated zones.

The agrarian communities within those zones were largely subdivided into separate social orders and

classes and varying degrees of wealth.

And the number of the wealthy, landed gentry and aristocrats in the average agrarian civilization,

whether it was Mughal India or Louis XIV's France, was between ten and twenty percent

of the total population. So, at most, twenty percent of people were not poor.

Today, in a united global system (I mean, except for North Korea) if you earn more than

roughly $20,000 per year, as most working adults in the developed world do, you are

in the top 20% of the world's richest people. You are part of the global aristocracy.

But I should note that a couple things definitely have changed. For one thing, if you are

part of the global aristocracy, you are enjoying a standard of living better than what kings

had only a couple centuries ago. You probably have a refrigerator. You flip a switch and

the lights come on. You have antibiotics, at least for a few more years. I mean, admittedly

Netflix doesn't have any of the good movies, but that's still a better entertainment option

than what Louis XIV had. All he had was public executions. And hopefully the average person

in the developed world today is a little more enlightened about the challenges of poverty

than an 18th century aristocrat would have been, but the jury is still out on that one.

I mean that's why "first world problems" is a meme, right? But, how we behave toward the

developing world in the next 100 years will determine much of how we are viewed not only

by them, but by the thousands of future generations that come after us and read of our deeds in history.

So, is human history a story of progress where life has become better for most people over

the course of 250,000 years and will life continue to get better for most people during the Anthropocene?

We're going to try to answer that by looking at the Anthropocene in light and shade, which

is basically just a list of pros and cons.

Pro - Since 1970, manufacturing jobs have lifted approximately 600 million people out

of poverty, modern technologies can now feed and clothe more humans than ever before.

Con - More people in the developing world are forced from traditional ways of life and

into factory jobs with poor safety standards, long hours and measly wages. And a lot of

the goods that they produce go overseas to enhance the standard of living of a prosperous

and wealthy developed world. And while the ratio of impoverished to wealthy countries

in 1820 was about 3:1, today it's closer to 72:1. Standards of living may be increasing

on average, but the wealth inequality gap is getting wider and wider.

But pro - we have managed to harness a lot of energy, our use of coal and oil and nuclear

power. These energy flows have allowed us to generate an astounding amount of complexity

in our little corner of the universe and improved people's standards of living.

Yeah, but con - current modes of production rely heavily on non-renewable resources that

are not great for the environment. Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past twenty years,

you will probably have heard of climate change and the potentially devastating effects it will have.

Furthermore, as humanity continues to force the environment to adapt to our needs, we

are accelerating the rate of extinction of plant and animal species that don't happen to be useful to us.

One of the reasons we call this period the Anthropocene is, if humanity were to suddenly

disappear and aliens were to land on Earth 500 million years later and start excavating,

even if they saw no sign of the humans on the fossil record, they would see a mass extinction

event rivaling the five most devastating mass extinctions in pre-human history.

Pro - collective learning's advances in medicine, agriculture and genetic engineering have in

the past 200 years lowered the death rate and freed billions of people from the cycles

of starvation and famine that affected agrarian civilizations.

Con - the tremendous expansion of populations in India and China have created a severe problem

for the infrastructures of those countries.

We now have seven billion people on Earth and we'll grow to between 9.6 and 12 billion

later in the century. Yet, at our current rates of consumption and

modes of production, the world could only support a population of two or three billion

people who enjoyed the same standard of living as people in the United States do.

China's population may level off by around 2050, India's might level off by 2070, but

Sub-Saharan Africa, a region of the world that already suffers from the highest levels

of poverty and is least equipped to deal with problems of overpopulation is set to expand

enormously even past the year 2100.

Add to this the likelihood that climate change will reduce the amount of arable cropland

on the Earth by 10-25% and we may have a severe population problem on our hands. And as we

can see from the population cycles of the agrarian period, overpopulation tends to spark more violence.

Pro - in the long term, development of a country's economy tends to change demographic trends.

While an agrarian civilization benefited greatly from a farmer having half a dozen kids, first

to combat the high infant mortality rate, and second, because by the time they were

twelve, they could help out at the farm, today, kids take 18-22 years to educate and they're expensive.

Also, adults end up having other opportunities open to them. Fewer kids, more

hours on the Xbox or pursuing a law degree or a high-flying business career, whatever.

Economic development can slow population growth.

And many of the developed regions' of the world populations are stabilizing,

which is why it is important to foster economic growth in places like Sub-Saharan Africa.

Con - but what drives a lot of the economic growth? Energy production, and developing

countries are more prone to use inexpensive, fast and dirty forms of fuel to develop, rather

than more expensive, eco-friendly alternatives. This compounds the environmental problem,

which in turn can mess up the environment and compound the population problem.

So it turns out, it's complicated and we are a little bit ambivalent about the Anthropocene.

In the next century, humanity's population growth will continue, but it'll hopefully

level off between 10 and 12 billion people due to declining birth rates. If it doesn't,

we might be in trouble. Well, we'll definitely be in trouble at some point, we just don't know when.

But even if it does level off, we've still got problems concerning how to support all

those people at a decent standard of living and how to find the energy to fuel that process.

I mean, we're talking about between 10 and 12 billion people?

The first time the world's population got to one billion humans was 1804.

So right now, we're still heavily dependent on non-renewable fossil fuels.

Well, technically, they are renewable but you need, like, a 100 million years.

But there are a few possible future scenarios.

One - we are miraculously saved by some technology in the same way that the industrial revolution

lifted humanity out of the recurring cycles of famine in the agrarian era.

Two - we collapse miserably into ruins and ashes. I don't like "two," Stan, is there an option three?

Oh there is, that's good news! Three - we can guide human society into a

"creative descent," a gentle decline of complexity to more simple, subsistence living.

Actually, you know what, I'm not crazy about "three" either, I am all for "one."

Now, at present, we don't know what scenario will play out. We're acting as if we will

be saved by some technology, and in fact, that's the only way that leads to the continuing

rise of complexity, but we can't just assume that will happen.

And as for the potential dangers of the 21st century, there are environmental disasters, the rise

of a superbug that wipes out millions upon millions of people, possible global conflict or a rise in instability.

The next fifty years will be fraught with a lot of risk.

But if we can somehow make it through what some call the 21st century bottleneck, things start to brighten again.

We'll be a stable population of 10-12 billion increasingly well-educated and interconnected

innovators, and that's great for collective learning in the 21st century.

Who knows where such massive potential could lead?

It's important to remember that while there are seven billion people in the world right now,

many of them don't have access to good education and that limits their innovative

potential. If in the future we see less poverty, as we've seen in the last twenty years, and

more access to education, I'm kind of hopeful.

As far as we know, we are unique in the universe, and if for nothing else, it is our duty to

our own innate curiosity to survive and to see where this rising complexity leads.

Our task as a species in this century is to survive it. If we can just manage that, from the end

of the 21st century, the universe may take us in a thousand astonishing directions.

More on that next time.