Death, Life, and Longing in the Pandemicene

Abstract

This essay explores the concept of the Pandemicene, a proposed elaboration of the Anthropocene tailored to account for the COVID-19 pandemic and the world it is making. The Anthropocene itself is a new geological era defined by human industrial activity as the dominant shaping force on the planet and its resources. Humans have already created the conditions for nonhuman animal to human disease spillover, exemplified by the emergence and global spread of SARS-CoV-2. The bimodal impact of climate change is crucial: leading to a rapid and large-scale species die off, while also reconfiguring ecosystems and placing more and more species into close contact. The results are hard to predict, just like a pandemic, but epidemiologists working on spillovers are alarmed—even if climate change were to slow down, the acceleration is underway. The Pandemicene offers a useful articulation of the Anthropocene, a concept that too often floats freely without coming to the ground in the form of specific disasters, in specific places, killing real people. With COVID in mind, we know the Pandemicene as well as we know anything, and it has reshaped human society, economies, and geopolitics in only three years-time. Building on a body of interviews conducted for the COVIDCalls podcast, this essay digs deeper into the Pandemicene, exploring ways that it elaborates the Anthropocene, and the new research questions it raises.