A lexicon of loss: we lack adequate concepts to describe our role in making the planet imminently unliveable

Developing a language to describe climate change needs both the sciences and the humanities

We most easily intuit the passage of time measured in days, months and years, the units with which we routinely calibrate our lives. But the span of the cosmos is incomprehensibly greater. The “Cosmic Calendar” is a useful way of thinking about time. It imagines the span of the universe’s existence as though it lasted a single year. The Big Bang, with which the universe began about 13.6 billion years ago, happens on January 1. The cosmic calendar year ends on December 31, at midnight, coinciding with our current time.

When compressed into a single year, all human endeavour is confined to the last few seconds before midnight on December 31. Indeed, modern humans appear just eight minutes before midnight and the Indus Valley civilisation just 12 seconds before that day ends. In the river of time, humanity leaves the barest ripple.

Despite its evanescence on a cosmic scale, the human race now has the power to irreversibly alter the course of life on earth. The impact of human activity on the planet’s climate is clear enough that one cannot think of the future of the biosphere without accounting for it. Humanity now determines the trajectory of planetary life and the speed at which it changes. Our present, the Anthropocene or Human Age, is a fusion of historical and geological eras, when our species dominates all others.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the apex international body that tracks climate change, projects increasingly gloomy scenarios for what might happen as levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increase. Their reports anticipate more and more events of extreme weather and dramatic temperature fluctuations, leading to a precipitous reduction of biodiversity, and permanent habitat loss for many species.  

Every other sort of historical circumstance, no matter how catastrophic, pales before these scenarios. Sadly, even if the emissions that result from burning fossil fuels could miraculously be reduced to zero, that would be insufficient to reverse these ominous trends for the next several decades. 

The experience of the Anthropocene is reflected in art. In tandem with the Venice Biennale this year is an exhibition of a set of brooding works by the German artist Anselm Kiefer, displayed in the magnificent Ducal Palace on St. Mark’s Square. These works, called the “Venice Cycle”, were especially commissioned to mark the 1600th anniversary of the city’s foundation. Kiefer titles his show with an enigmatic line by the Italian philosopher Andrea Emo (1901-1983): “These writings, when burned, will finally cast a bit of light.”

Kiefer’s eight monumental images, installed on the walls of a large hall within the palace, are hard to describe in their entirety. But the seventh canvas, 9 m wide, is perhaps the most imposing. It depicts the Ducal Palace collapsing and covered in smoke, in the process of being burnt down, as though it had been firebombed. The water of the Laguna rises to flood St. Mark’s Square.