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ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM
Dangerous Climate Change: Is it inevitable?
Friday, 9 May 2008

A new geological epoch, the Anthropocene
by Professor Will Steffen

Will Steffen was born in the USA and has a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri. He has a masters and PhD in chemistry from the University of Florida. Following a research fellowship at the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University (ANU), Will joined the CSIRO Division of Environmental Mechanics in the roles of science management, editing and communication. His research interests include terrestrial ecosystem interactions with global change, the global carbon cycle, incorporation of human processes in Earth system modelling and analysis, and sustainability and the Earth system. He was executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme for six years, based in Stockholm, Sweden. Will returned to Canberra to a visiting fellowship with the Bureau of Rural Sciences, and was later appointed director of the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (now the Fenner School of Environment and Society) at the ANU. He also became science adviser to the Australian Greenhouse Office, a position he still holds. He serves on a number of advisory panels and is a member of the Academy’s National Committee for Earth System Science.

Climate change has recently risen to the top of the political agenda. However, it is just one of a growing array of human-driven changes to the planetary environment. Over half of the Earth’s land surface has been extensively modified by humans, and much of the rest is managed by humans or is too cold or dry to be of use. Nearly all of the world’s wild fisheries are fully exploited, over-exploited or have collapsed. The atmosphere as been transformed by human activity, by the rapid increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases, the emissions of completely new, synthetic compounds, and the build-up of a large number of particles that cause smog in urban areas and acid rain in the hinterland. The evidence is now strong that the climate is being modified by human activities; and the Earth is experiencing its sixth great extinction event, but the first caused by a biological species.

This talk will focus on the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch in which humans have become a geophysical force at the planetary scale. We will explore the nature of the human forces that are driving the many environmental changes observed at the global scale, and will examine the changing nature of the human-environment relationship. What can we learn from the ways in which human societies have dealt with environmental challenges in the past? Are contemporary societies headed for sustainability or headed for collapse?