There is a strong feeling among scientists that human activity has created a new geological era, though this is yet to be ratified, and debate is far from settled about where to plant the golden spike between the Holocene and what will likely be called the Anthropocene. However, while this name has established itself informally, it’s not uncontroversial, particularly because it infers that all people are equally responsible for these vast changes. Some academics have instead proposed the terms Capitalocene (to make it clear that our growth-addicted global economy is largely to blame); the Thermocene or Carbocene (emphasising CO2 accumulation) or even the Thanatocene (concentrating on the role of wars).
For me the name that rings most achingly is the Age of Loneliness. Not only will the world be less rich without its many wild creatures, but we face a future in which we are thrown back only upon ourselves. As John Berger, and many writers since, have pointed out, humans have used animals to think with since we first began to paint their drawings on cave walls with our blood; they entered our lives, Berger writes, not as our subjects but as ‘messengers and promises’, their presences magical oracular, sacrificial. We study them when we are tiny and learning to become human: polar bears, alligators, elephants, apes, and pets fill our nursery shelves and picture books. With their different life spans, they even help us measure time. I have always loved St Bede’s description of human life as being like ‘the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall,’ where the fire blazes, before flying out again into the winter. Of what lies before and ahead, we are utterly ignorant, said Bede. But now we look at a future that we have already predetermined by our own actions.
