Humans Produce So Much Junk, We Are Creating a New Geological Layer By Starre Vartan
Consumerism plays a
massive role in climate change—all those fossil fuels we have to burn to make
and ship our stuff, all those trees cut down to make way for expanding cities
and businesses, all that livestock that sate our increasing appetites for
burgers and steak. But the environmental impact that all of our material goods
have on the planet goes far beyond the greenhouse gases emitted in the process
of creating and transporting these things.
In fact, much of it
has to do with what we leave behind. It’s a manmade phenomenon so massive that
that earth scientists suggest it’s creating a distinct geological layer upon the Earth made
up of technofossils. Most people associate geological layers with eras long
gone: paleontologists digging up fossils of stegosauruses or ancient corals,
the stunning layered lines of the Grand Canyon giving testimony to the billions
of years of life on Earth. But we’re creating our own coating on the planet
that will outlast us. Just as dinosaur bones and petrified wood persist, so too
will markers of our time, and they increasingly include the nonorganic.
Couches, ballpoint pens, garage doors, safety pins, zip drives, plastic water
bottles, cars, buildings - almost anything that’s not recycled has the potential
to fossilize - that is, partially or entirely preserved over time due to burial
in the earth or within layers of other fossils - think landfill. There are almost
certainly numerous future technofossils in front of you right now.
More than just
creating a geological mille feuille of our past,
scientists warn that this phenomenon is also making a deep impact on our
terrestrial future. And like the Anthropocene—another
buzzword popular in the Earth sciences community used to mark a new geological
epoch in which human influence became the dominant force on Earth—it represents
a profound change.
According to a
conservative geological estimate from a team of international researchers led
by the University of Leicester, all this stuff weighs 30 trillion tons. That’s 110 pounds—the
weight of a semi-truck’s tire—for every square meter of the earth’s surface.
The group also calculated that the sheer diversity of the types of
technofossils we as a species have made—it already exceeds the number of biotic
species living on Earth now, and may even “exceed the total biological
diversity through Earth’s history.”.. read more:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/03/humans_are_creating_a_new_geological_layer_of_technofossils.html