Spread of the cycles: a feedback perspective on the Anthropocene

Abstract

What propelled the human ‘revolutions' that started the Anthropocene? and what could speed humanity out of trouble? Here, we focus on the role of reinforcing feedback cycles, often comprised of diverse, unrelated elements (e.g. fire, grass, humans), in propelling abrupt and/or irreversible, revolutionary changes. We suggest that differential ‘spread of the cycles' has been critical to the past human revolutions of fire use, agriculture, rise of complex states and industrialization. For each revolution, we review and map out proposed reinforcing feedback cycles, and describe how new systems built on previous ones, propelling us into the Anthropocene. We argue that to escape a bleak Anthropocene will require abruptly shifting from existing unsustainable ‘vicious cycles’, to alternative sustainable ‘virtuous cycles' that can outspread and outpersist them. This will need to be complemented by a revolutionary cultural shift from maximizing growth to maximizing persistence (sustainability). To achieve that we suggest that non-human elements need to be brought back into the feedback cycles underlying human cultures and associated measures of progress. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.

Our fragile future under the cumulative cultural evolution of two technologies

“…To reiterate the caveats discussed in §2, we can parameterize the model in this way to match certain properties of contemporary industrial societies. In doing so, however, we work only with population averages, and we ignore the fact that χ , η → 0 specifically because of the highly developed division of labour that holds in these societies [18]. Intuitively, such an approach captures the average effects of a division of labour, but it does not represent the division of labour itself.…”

“…In contemporary industrial societies, the average time allocated to food production is not low because everyone spends 10 s a day farming. It is low, of course, because of the division of labour [18]. Only a handful of farmers produce food for everyone, which in turn frees up capacity for other specialized forms of labour like those needed for armies, saxophone playing and research in human evolutionary ecology.…”

Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis

“…The authors suggest that system traits which have facilitated the Anthropocene trajectory include fire use, agricultural development, state formation, labour specialization and industrial investments. Like Richerson et al [77], Lenton & Scheffer [97] conclude that such positive feedback loops will have to be purposefully engineered to prioritize persistence to deal with the Anthropocene sustainability crisis.…”

“…Two papers draw on the importance of persistence selection and differential spread as an explanation for Anthropocene evolution. Both papers suggest that social-ecological system structure is a critical feature for explaining the origins Lenton & Scheffer [97] argue that the differential spread of human systems with certain reinforcing feedbacks have been a major mechanism in the origins of the Anthropocene. They argue that feedback processes enabled the spread of human systems, creating a general type of selection mechanism acting on ecosystems.…”

Towards understanding human–environment feedback loops: the Atacama Desert case

“…Our analysis finds that the human-environment loop for the past agrarian populations from the inland Atacama Desert over the past 1200 years involved processes affected by population growth, warfare and hydroclimate as well as social complexity. This means that when dealing with projected scenarios for shared socio-economic trajectories this positive feedback should be explicitly considered-particularly the climate-related risks on economy and socio-political stability under a context of unprecedented human population growth accompanied by accelerated transformations in the functioning of the Earth system [89][90][91][92].…”