Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
What appears to connect Ray Bradbury and the Curiosity Mission is not a desire to better
understand Mars per se, but to grasp more fully the nature of life on Earth. Just as science fiction
reveals collective truths about the nature of human existence through the exploration of extreme
socio-technical scenarios, the exploration of Mars appears to reflect a collective desire to comprehend
Earthly ecologies. In this context, Mars appears to be an important, if perhaps unexpected, place in
and through which to consider the nature of the Anthropocene. While the Earth and Mars appear
so similar they have, of course, taken very different geological and ecological paths. As Bilger
observers, 'By the time Earth took its first breath three billion years ago . . . Mars had been suffocating
for a billion years' (Bilger, 2013: 66).
Literary reflections and scientific explorations of Mars are about opening up the dialectic of life
and death that both connects and separates it from the Earth's own environmental history; it is about
the (re)construction of a geo-ecological hypothetical; a 'what if things had been different?'! In relation
to the Anthropocene the red planet thus looms menacingly: a salutary lesson in the contingency of
the Earth's life giving potential. But the Curiosity Mission, with its elaborate Sky Crane and mind-
blowing budget, is also suggestive of technological solutions to our current ecological predicament:
the off-planet future that Bradbury was so keen to explore.
The news is now full of accounts of Curiosity's latest findings as it forages and drills on the Martian
surface. As I read the updates on the mission I am reminded that finding life on Mars is a difficult
task. It is for this reason that it is such an important place to think about the nature of the
Anthropocene. Mars appears to be a place that is both furthest from and closest to our own ecological
experience; as such, it may provide an extraterrestrial promontory from which to develop a new
appreciation of life on Earth.
Key reading
Bilger, B. (2013) 'The Martian chronicles: A new era of planetary exploration', The New Yorker 22 April: 64-89
NOTE
1
Anthropocene', Progress in Human Geography
36(5): 593-612. A more challenging, but im-
portant reflection on what the Anthropocene
means for the ways in which geographers think
about and study nature. Lorimer is keen to point
out that the idea of the Anthropocene should
not be used to simplify our contemporary
environmental situation, and suggests that it
could provide a framework within which to
understand the multitude of different geo-
graphical ways in which the Anthropocene is
emerging and being experienced throughout
the world.
Steffen, W., Crutzen, P.J. and McNeill, J.R. (2007)
'Are humans now overwhelming the great
forces of nature?', Ambio 36(8): 614-621. This
paper provides a more detailed introduction to
the forms of environmental change that are
associated with the Anthropocene.
Crutzen's first discussed the idea of the Anthro-
pocene in an article that he co-authored with
Eugene F. Stoermer: Crutzen, P.J. and Stoermer,
E.F. (2000) 'The “Anthropocene” ', Global
Change Newsletter41: 17-18. Although Crutzen
popularized the notion of the Anthropocene,
Eugene Stoermer was the first to actually coin
the term.
KEY READINGS
Crutzen, P.J. (2002) 'Geology of mankind', Nature
415.3: 23. This short overview provides an
accessible introduction to the idea of the
Anthropocene and the different options it
appears to present humanity with.
Lorimer, J. (2012) 'Multinatural geographies for the
