Learning to live with the Anthropocene

Light is the fastest-moving wave or corpuscle in the universe; it travels 300,000 km per second (McClure, Bruce. 2017. “How far is a light-year?” EarthSky. http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-far-is-a-light-year). A light-year, the distance light travels in one year, is 9.5 trillion km (ibid.). To express the distance scale of the Universe in comprehensible terms, the twentieth century astronomer Robert Burnham Jr. related the light-year to the astronomical unit (AU) that is the Earth-Sun distance (ibid.). One astronomical unit, the Earth-Sun distance, equals about 150 million kilometers or the distance light travels in 8 minutes and 19 seconds (ibid.).

Scaling the Earth-Sun distance at 2.5 centimeters, Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth other than the Sun, is 7 kilometers distant. The center of the Milky Way Galaxy, the galaxy the earth belongs to, is 43,500 kilometers away and the Great Andromeda Galaxy is 3,700,000 kilometers distant (ibid.). Light takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds to travel from the Sun to Earth. It takes 4.4 light years, that is 35 minutes, to go from Earth to Alpha Centauri (ibid.).

The connection between distance and the speed of light puts Earth inside an observable sphere with a radius of 13.8 billion light-years; the sphere limits what can be seen, but the observable universe is not all that is out there (The Observable Universe. https://science.nasa.gov/observable-universe). Scaling again the Earth-Sun distance at 2.5 centimeters, 13.8 billion light-years correspond to an unimaginable 218 billion kilometers. The multiverse hypothesis suggests that our universe, already unimaginable in size, is just one bubble of another universe of bubbles of universes.

Bruce McClure is not a scientist. He writes on the website EarthSky and tries to explain some astronomical facts in an understandable way (McClure 2017). I turned to his article to get an understandable impression of my incredibly unlikely existence on planet Earth and within the universe. In relation to the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, Earth is a small particle of dust, and I am but a scattered particle of spatial atoms that got lost in the universe and reassembled on earth. In relation to the universe of galaxies in space, Earth resembles an insignificantly small and scattered particle stemming from all kinds of spatial matter and energies. This insignificant particle Earth is nevertheless kept alive by a preciously stable equilibrium maintained by the innumerably necessary constants for matter and energy.

There is no doubt that the sun’s light is a possibility condition for life on earth. It is interesting though, that the speed of light of the expanding universe does not govern the physical and biological processes on earth itself. The speed of the processes that operate the microcosm of the human body is definitely very slow compared to the speed of light. Atoms, considered the basic elements of life, are not visible to the human eye, their diameter is about 0.1 nanometer, that is 0,0000001 micrometers. The average diameter of a mammalian cell, is about 20 micrometers (“Useful fundamental numbers in molecular biology,” http://kirschner.med.harvard.edu/files/bionumbers/fundamentalBioNumbersHandout.pdf). I am aware that the shapes and sizes of the 200 human cell types that perform the functions needed to keep the human body alive show a variety of sizes; mature female egg cells are among the largest cell types and show a diameter of about 120 micrometers. The relationship between the diameter of a hydrogen atom and the average diameter of a mammalian cell is 1: 200 million. The relationship between Earth’s diameter of 12,742 kilometers and the radius of the observable universe of 13.8 billion light-years, keeping in mind that one light-year equals 9.5 trillion km, is about 1: 1 quintillion. I am not capable of imagining this type of relationship.

An atom consists of a centrally located nucleus surrounded by electrons (“Atomic Nucleus,” Bill Garland’s Nuclear Engineering Page, http://www.nuceng.ca/igna/atomic_nucleus.htm). The diameter of the nucleus is about 10-13 – 10-12 cm and the nucleus accounts for 99 per cent of the mass of the atom. The nucleus is made up of neutrons and protons that show a diameter of about 10-14 – 10-13 cm. The diameter of the atom is in the range of about 10-8 cm (ibid.). If I scale the nucleus at 1 cm, it will take me 10,000 to 100,000 cm to get to the orbits of the electrons that determine the chemical properties of the atom. This means that the diameter of an atom is more than 10,000 times the diameter of its nucleus (ibid.). The average diameter of a mammalian cell is about 20 micrometer and the average of diameter of the atom is about 0,0000001 micrometer. This means that the diameter of a cell is more than 200 million times the diameter of an atom. The diameter of the earth is 12.742 kilometers. The Earth-Sun distance is 150 million kilometers. Compared to the immense vastness of the visible universe, the molecular microcosm of a human cell appears to constitute a precious tiny unit of life on earth that one would expect to disappear from the cosmos rather than be nurtured to develop into a human body.

Is it possible to count the number of cells in a human body (Zimmer, Carl. 2013. “How Many Cells Are In Your Body.” National Geographic, October 23. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/10/23/how-many-cells-are-in-your-body/)? The author checked publications from the last two centuries and found a range from 5 billion to 200 million trillion cells (ibid.). If we take the mean weight of a cell to be 1 nanogram and an adult man to weigh 70 kilograms, we can conclude that 70 trillion cells make up that man (ibid.). If we calculate the volume of cells, one might conclude the body of that man consists of 15 trillion cells (ibid.). The author refers to a paper that estimated the number of cells in the body by breaking the body down by organs and cell types and reached a figure of 37.2 trillion cells. It is up to scientists to produce better estimates. The possibility condition for the life of my body are some 37 trillion cells that can cooperate for decades (ibid.). That is an amazing fact.

The most complex organ in the human body is the brain. Some 86 billion neurons form complex circuits that by way of electrical and chemical signals share information, communicate, and coordinate the action of neurons to assure the proper functioning of the nervous system (ibid.). An individual neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, signaling to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections. The estimates that this signaling activity corresponds to a computer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor and that the human brain’s memory capacity varies from 1 to 1,000 terabytes are quite impressive (ibid.). Comparing this memory capacity to the 19 million volumes in the US Library of Congress that represent about 10 terabytes of data (ibid.) helps us recognize the immense workload undertaken by the brain. It is also true that only a very small part of the brain’s activities reaches the level of consciousness. If the human senses gather some 11 million bits of information per second from the environment, we must acknowledge that our conscious activity amounts to about 50 bits per second, corresponding to a reading rate of about 5 words per second. I do not want to compare the functioning of the human brain to the functioning of the processor of a computer. The physiological knowledge of the neurons working with chemical and electrical signals looks like a very rudimentary, simple, and incomplete empirical model on the way to understanding the working of the human brain. Yet this modest knowledge already enables us to understand diseases and produce medications and therapies for many women, men and queer who suffer from malfunctions of the nervous system. It is up to the scientists working in neurobiology and many other disciplines to acquire a knowledge and understanding of the functions and modes of operation of the human brain, of unconscious processes and experiences of consciousness, memory, feelings, decision making, learning and behavior. I do not work as a scientist. I simply keep observing my speaking agency operating speech acts and try to conduct speech acts that show their sense and comply with human dignity. It is not my intention to speak of causalities or to produce hypotheses for scientific experiments. Nevertheless, empiric knowledge helps me understand how I am capable to cope with the challenges of life and that at every moment of my existence I must realize life-sustaining interactions with my environment. The nervous system is influenced by and influences all other body systems like the cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, and immune systems and enables us to walk, breathe, think, behave, and live. The brain enables us to be creative persons and to experience great personal satisfaction from our creative endeavors. It must be exciting for scientists to develop models and to access and picture the many neuronal networks that are constructed, that function or stop functioning over time. It must be exciting to be able to observe one day the oscillating cooperation of neurons and to understand the results of neuronal operations.

Compared to the universe of galaxies of visible space, planet earth resembles an insignificantly small and scattered particle of spatial dust. Somehow some of the infinitely small atoms and particles from the vast and expanding universe formed planet earth. Planet earth not only was kept alive, but also permitted the atoms to form molecules, proteins and cells that developed within the necessary conditions of an astonishing stable equilibrium that is maintained by innumerably constants for matter, light and energy. After millions of years of development within a very improbable favorable environment, there emerged a human brain, the most complex organ in the human body, that together with a larynx, muscles, a peripheral nervous system, and life sustaining organs is capable of speaking. At the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,700 years ago, a stable and mild climate rapidly helped emerge agriculture-based civilization. For 10.000 years the favorable climate sustained the development of civilization (Earth for All. A Report of the Club of Rome. Written by Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Gosh, Jorgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes. New Society Publishers. 15). This geological epoch is called Holocene, that translates “the whole new”, and could have lasted a further 50.000 years, if men, women, and queer on earth would have respected the limits of natural resources and the boundaries of growth. Women, men and queer invented science, the steam engine, the combustion engine and all the techniques and machines that started industrial production of goods in the 19th century (ibid.). The empirical sciences brought knowledge that women, men and queer lacked for millennials. The progress in development of microscopes lead to impressive insights into the reproduction of human life. In 1875 the German embryologist and comparative anatomist Oscar Hertwig discovered the process of fertilization in the sea-urchin (Oscar Hertwig (1849–1922). Nature 163, 596 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163596a0). The knowledge that fertilization includes the penetration of a spermatozoon into an egg cell ended centuries of women discriminating fantasies about man being the one who bears the little homunculus in his sperm and the woman’s uterus is but an incubator where the homunculus grows. In 1880 Scientist S. L. Schenk began animal In vitro fertilization (IVF) research making possible fertilization by joining an egg and sperm in a laboratory container (May 18, 2018. In Vitro Fertilization | Encyclopedia.com). Assisted reproductive technology was developed within a century of intensive research and innumerable experiments. On 25 July 1978 the first human IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born (ibid.). Scientific empirical research helped overcoming human infertility, a blessing for millions of men, women, and queer.

The vast progress of the natural sciences and the developments of technological techniques brought women, men, and queer to think about the use of the newly invented instruments. The understanding of energy as a product of the velocity of light and mass enabled not only a better understanding of the laws of the universe, but the development of the atomic bomb also enables mankind for the first time in its history to extinguish itself. The explosive growth of the insatiable burning of the natural resources of planet earth for energy production brought terrifying results. Beyond 1950 the Great Acceleration becomes apparent, that is the explosive growth of the Industrial Revolution and its direct destabilizing impact on Earth’s life support system (Earth for All. A Report of the Club of Rome. 2022.15). The Great Acceleration delineates the Holocene from the Anthropocene. In the Holocene the climate changed civilization, by 2000 CE civilization changes the climate. In 1972 The Club of Rome published The Limits of Growth, by 2000 CE “Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene” (ibid. 13). The Great Acceleration concerns the loss of tropical forest, domesticated land, terrestrial biosphere degradation, marine fish capture, shrimp aquaculture, coastal nitrogen, ocean acidification, surface temperature, stratospheric ozone, atmospheric methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, international tourism, tele-communication, transportation, water use, primary energy use, foreign direct investment, real Gross National Product, world population and much more (ibid. 14-15).

There are nine boundaries that determine the state of the planet: Climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion and novel entities (includes plastic and other chemical pollutants (ibid. 18). “We have crossed five planetary boundaries, and many around the world live outside of the social boundaries” (ibid.). The five boundaries that have overshot the ecological ceiling are land conversion, biodiversity loss, climate change, novel entities and nitrogen and phosphorous loading (ibid.).

In 2022 we are still allowed to say: “It is possible to bring humanity back into its safe operation space”, if women, men, and queer of the whole world are ready to organize five turnarounds that are interlinked and only taken together are capable of transforming the whole system. The five turnarounds concern poverty, empowerment of women, inequality, energy, and food (ibid.: 21). The Club of Rome suggests that it is only if we develop new growth models, progressive taxation, education and health to all, electrify everything, and change food production and diets “we see accelerated transformation toward a sufficiently fair, just, and safe world by the middle of this century (ibid. 23).