Living and Writing in the Anthropocene

I don't need to imagine a dystopian future. The Anthropocene epoch is already here. Extreme weather events are happening right now where I live in South America. Right now, there is a severe drought in the higher altitudes of the Andes in Ecuador and Colombia, the Amazon basin, and it extends further south into Paraguay, Bolivia, Argentina, and Uruguay, and north into Panama, where the Panama Canal is drying up, causing a severe reduction in the number of ships passing through the canal, and also in Mexico, particularly Mexico City, where officials have begun to restrict water use as freshwater reservoirs continue to shrink.

How does this affect me?

The lack of rain has lowered the production of hydroelectric power where I live, leaving the Ecuadorian government no choice but to impose rolling blackouts throughout the country, which means that I am currently without electricity for two hours in the early afternoon every day.

Fortunately, my laptop is charged, and I can use the time to get back into a writing routine. For me, it's an inconvenience that I can easily take advantage of. Others are not so lucky. For them, the loss of electricity means a loss of income in a country where the average person earns only $6000 USD per year.

On the coast of Ecuador, we only have two seasons: the rainy and the dry. At the end of the last rainy season, it took almost two extra months for the savannah-like climate to return. A surplus of rain brought floods to my city, turning the normally dry vegetation into vast swaths of green.

We were warned that the onset of El Niño, the cyclical warming of the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean, now intensified by global warming, could bring extreme weather conditions. Drought and its impact on power generation were predicted. Fortunately, the early onset of heavy rains in the Andes has brought some relief, but what worries us now is the possibility of diluvial rainfall in the coming months, such as California received during the winter of 2022-23.

In fact, climatologists are warning that there is a good chance that this year's El Niño could bring catastrophic flooding the likes of which we haven't seen since 1998, when floods destroyed crops, roads, and bridges, caused landslides, soil erosion, and water contamination, and were responsible for 300 deaths and the displacement of more than 30,000 people.

Right now, the sea level is fifteen centimeters higher than normal, and the water temperature is three degrees warmer than average along the coast of Ecuador, which doesn't bode well for the immediate future. Reading this in a report, I couldn't help but think of Hurricane Otis, which recently devastated Acapulco, Mexico. In less than twelve hours, Otis went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, becoming the strongest storm on record to hit the Pacific coast of Mexico, taking dozens of lives and causing billions of dollars in damage.

I have reason to be concerned. I have reason to feel a twinge of eco-anxiety, but given the potential impact of El Niño on my life here in Ecuador, I feel remarkably calm. I guess all those years of watching news reports of catastrophic weather events in distant places have numbed me to the possibility that I could become a victim of climate change.

Until it happens to you, it's someone else's problem. In other words, if you don't realize that you're in harm's way, you'll just go on living your life like everyone else around you.

Ay, there’s the rub.

Those of us fortunate enough to have been born in the global North tend to take our collective comfort for granted, as if we had an inalienable right to live our lives in the lap of luxury, the right to indulge in the spoils of five hundred years of imperial conquest. However, as historical climate patterns enter an unstable, perhaps chaotic phase, there is no escape on the planet from the vagaries of the emerging hydrological cycle, which swings wildly from one extreme to another, making once-in-a-century weather events a regular occurrence.

At present, those with the most to lose are pinning their hopes on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to find a lasting solution to the most serious global threat since the deployment of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Despite annual meetings of the COP, the UNFCCC's supreme decision-making body, no binding agreement has emerged to curb the production and burning of fossil fuels. As a result, greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and global warming is accelerating.

With no viable solution on the horizon, it appears that the New Global Order has adopted the survival of the richest as its modus operandi, both within and between nation-states. Nations in the global South are being devastated by changing weather patterns due to the consumption patterns of those in the North. Calls for financial aid to respond to the economic and humanitarian disasters caused by extreme weather events are heard, but not acted upon. Having already been stripped of much of their natural resources during centuries of wealth extraction, first by Europeans and then by Americans, the poor nations of the global South are ill-equipped to meet the challenges of life in the Anthropocene.

Similarly, the treatment previously reserved for the colonized is now being applied to the population within the rich nations. Inflated asset values are driving up the cost of living for those who must work to live. In order to maintain a middle-class lifestyle, many are forced to increase the number of hours they work as side hustles become pervasive. Those "essential workers" who are unable to increase their income face the unenviable choice of paying rent and utilities or buying food. Worse, as affordable housing becomes scarce, the poor are forced to live out of their cars and vans or on the streets. No wonder life expectancy in the U.S. is declining, especially for people of color and those without college degrees.

What the rentier and the salaried classes have in common is an aversion to loss that prevents any meaningful reduction in the burning of fossil fuels. For the rentier class, global economic growth, which is predicated on fossil fuels, must continue in order to maintain the desired return on investment and increase the accumulation of financial wealth. For the salaried class, the transition away from fossil fuels can only be tolerated if there is no loss of material comfort. Together, both classes conspire to keep the industrial consumer civilization in place, allowing only marginal changes, such as the addition of renewable energy sources to the ever-increasing fossil fuel energy supply.  Consequently, we see a few electric vehicles on the road, a few solar panels on houses, and a few wind turbines in the distance, times whose presence gives the false hope that things are about to change, but in reality, there is little if any hope that humanity can prevent catastrophic global warming from taking place.

These are the in which we live.

As a writer, I feel the need to capture in a story my experience of watching a civilization collapse. I don’t think a post-apocalyptic tale will do. There is too much still in play, and future generations will want to know:

“What were you thinking?”

“How could you turn this beautiful planet into a living hell?”

“For what?”

“So, a few of you would never have to work and could enjoy the finest things that money can buy?”

“And you let them?”

“Your crimes against the future of humanity will never be forgotten.”

“May you find your just reward in the afterlife. May you feel the pain of those whose lives you have destroyed.”

 

It's good to feel my creative juices flow again. To return to the flow.