Ponies and the Anthropocene: The role of MLP:FiM in the New Epoch · 6:16pm Dec 3rd, 2016
I have always found the way in which ponies manage the environment of Equestria to be a fascinating idea to play around with in my stories, such as Time on Their Hooves. But the more I think about it, the more relevant this fantasy world seems to be to our own…
We live in epoch-making times. It is now acknowledged by the International Union of Geological Scientists that the Holocene—the geological epoch of the last ten thousand years is at an end. We are now entering the Anthropocene, the new era when human activities are the dominant force shaping our planet. If in millions of years, any intelligent life were to excavate the geological strata currently being laid down, they would find a clear signature of humans in the form of a spike in radioactive nuclides, sediment layers of artificial materials, a fossil record of a mass extinction, and a dramatic rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Of course humans have been shaping the environment ever since our Stone Age ancestors first learned how to burn down the forests, but the scale of changes is now global. We could debate whether this started in the Industrial Revolution or more recently, but that’s really not important. Geological epochs are not defined by precise dates.
Yet the ponies of Equestria have been the dominant force shaping their world since forever. Alicorn princesses move the sun and moon. Clouds are made in the weather factory and distributed across the land by the pegasus ponies, who also direct migrating birds. Caring for cute furry animals is an important business which all ponies take very seriously. While the precise role of rock farmers is not clear, it is fair to bet that they stamp their hooves on the sediment layers. Any future examination of geological strata from this era will reveal a clear horseshoe-shaped imprint of ponies. As humanity begins a new chapter in our history, what can we learn from the adventures of Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash and friends about how best to manage the climate?
The Anthropocene is not a political or environmental slogan, it is a statement of scientific fact. But the term is now being used more and more by journalists and writers. The acknowledgement that we are in a new era is inevitably reflected by wider culture. The world of Equestria, created as a cartoon mirror of our own, gives a brightly coloured sugar-coated reflection of the challenges we face. The Ponthropocene is very different from our world. Ponies have a much better idea of what they are doing. Sure it doesn’t always work out quite as planned. Winter wrap-up is delayed by poor management. The weather factory is susceptible to random acts of terrorism when somepony takes it into her head to try to stop winter. Eternal night was a real risk. But overall it seems that ponies know what to do to make the environment they want. Although the Hearth’s Warming Eve tale shows that this was not always the case
Earlier this year the American Geophysical Union published a blog reviewing the fantasy novel Games Wizards Play by Dianne Duane. This was not so usual—most of their book reviews are about serious academic textbooks. The justification was that a story of wizards casting spells to manipulate geological phenomena was appropriate at a time when there is much discussion in the geoscience community about geoengineering. This includes benign schemes such as planting trees to absorb more carbon dioxide, but also more controversial ideas such as artificially generating clouds in an effort to cool the planet. Every geophysicist I’ve spoken to is adamant that such high-tech geoengineering schemes would be way more expensive and risky than current efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions. These futuristic ideas to ‘fix’ global warming may well turn out to be even crazier than the 1960s visions of how nuclear power would bring the world cheap abundant electricity. But there is also an increasing pessimism about the ability of humanity to move to a low carbon economy in time. (This pessimism has increased significantly over the last three weeks.) The fear is fifty years in the future, these costly, dangerous ventures might be the only chance to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Perhaps in the Anthropocene, fantasy stories about magically changing the weather will not be just fairy tales. The children now watching Rainbow Dash kicking clouds around will, in thirty years’ time, be designing machines to spray sea water in the air to seed clouds. But there is a danger here. By portraying the Anthropocene as a fun world of artificial rainbows, we may give the impression that our changing environment is something we will sort out easily—nothing to worry about. The reality could not be more different. This is the biggest challenge our species has faced for 10,000 years.
Articles on the Anthropocene like to begin with: “We live in epoch-making times”. At a first glance this sounds like journalistic hyperbole, but it is actually meant literally. The cliché to end with is: “Welcome to the Anthropocene”. This is meant with a certain irony—the Anthropocene is not really a welcoming place—but it also conveys a bit of a thrill. Yes, the future is uncertain and there is good reason to be afraid, but it’s also kind of exciting isn’t it? The start of a new epoch. Like reaching a new level on a computer game, with challenging new puzzles and villains to fight. Unfortunately we will probably lose a lot of lives before completing this one.
The level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is now at the highest level in over five million years. The consequences of global warming are already being felt. This summer, Arctic sea ice shrank to its second lowest level on record. We are looking at a prospect of increased severe weather, flooding, desertification, global economic crises, millions of refugees from arid countries, and the deaths of cute baby polar bears.
What will happen over the next hundred years? Will humanity managed to achieve the aims of the Paris Agreement and cut greenhouse gas emissions to limit warming to 1.5°C? Will we fail this, but manage, at enormous expense, to mitigate the effects with high-tech geoengineering schemes? Or will we be hit by catastrophic climate change, witness the destruction of coastal cities, and resulting famine and war?
But the human population has a better understanding of the environment than at any time in the past. We face a bigger crisis than ever before, but we are better placed to deal with it. There is hope. To end with a more positive vision: maybe after a few hundred years, we will have learned how to manage the Anthropocene. Maybe one day we will be able to combine the scientific knowledge, technological power, and political will to make a world where we can manage the climate and environment for the mutual benefit of all humans and other species. Maybe we will create something like our fairy-tale world of flying ponies here on Earth.
Welcome to the Anthropocene.
the big problem with using cute ponies palying with clouds, is that people look at the cute ponies and say, aww, theyre playing with clouds.
Instead of saying, just how badly did we screw it up that these poor sods have to manually maipulate the planet itself because the automated geoengineering solitions to try and save humans crashed and burnt under the load?
4327510 Maybe Discord was the last geoengineering scheme that humans attempted to implement, and the ponies are what he turned all the automated equipment from the previous attempts into.
4327560
its Discord. Makes more sense than some other stuff Ive heard of.
Thanks for posting these.
4327560 4327589
Ah yes, modelling atmospheric systems requires a good understanding of chaos theory
4327603
You're welcome
I can't think of anything sensible to say to this, but I want to acknowledge it and thank you for writing it.
These are frightening times, and I don't know that we are equipped to handle them. I write stories, but I am not convinced they can adequately prepare or inform us any more.
But thanks.
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The idea of humanity taking control of the environment like that, bringing weather where it's needed and shepherding the world around us, is an appealing one.
Would 'the Hippocene' be a better term?
Jargon quibble aside, this was a really interesting post. Thank you, Pineta.