2020, the year buildings outnumbered trees

For the first time in history, the mass of roads, buildings, bottles, bricks or toys exceeds that of all living beings (biomass).

A study dating back to 1900 shows how, while the

kilos

of animals and plants have been reduced rapidly, the amount of concrete, brick, agglomerates or plastics grew at an even greater rate.

The accumulation of the artificial is such that it has been doubling every 20 years, but it will triple in the next two decades.

A group of researchers has relied on a wide collection of studies, statistics and reports to estimate the biomass represented by bacteria, fungi, protists, archaea, plants and animals.

They have done the same with the mass incorporated into everything built by humans, from railways to soda cans, through glass windows and computer chips.

Then they compared both figures.

As published in

Nature

, in 2020, the artificial mass has surpassed the natural one for the first time.

This turnaround could be seen as a milestone in the beginning of what they call the Anthropocene, the age of humans and their legacy.

The study highlights how the 7.7 billion human beings only account for 0.01% of all biomass.

However, his works, expressed as anthropogenic mass, have already exceeded the figure of 1.1 billion tons (teraton, Tt) compared to just over a teraton that represent all the living beings of the rest of the species that inhabit the Earth.

“At work, we show that the mass of all buildings and infrastructure is greater than the mass of all trees and bushes,” exemplifies the main author of the research, the environmental researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences (Israel) Emily Elhacham.

And they have more examples: the mass of plastics is already double that of all animals, land and sea.

Only the streets, buildings, bridges ... of New York already

outweigh

the total number of fish in the seas.

On the website Anthropogenic mass they have published even more comparisons and summarized their results.

Aurora Torres, researcher of the anthropogenic mass and its impacts at the Catholic Universities of Louvain (Belgium) and Michigan State (USA) adds another example, although it is not about biomass: the sediments from mining have already exceeded those from the rivers.

Also geological is the fact that humans have already created 208 new minerals.

For the Spanish scientist, who has not intervened in this research, this event is one more indicator that we have entered the Anthropocene, but "not the only one".

The mass of plastics is twice that of all animals and the streets, buildings, bridges ... of New York already weigh more than the total number of fish in the seas

The authors of the study divide the anthropogenic mass into six broad categories: concrete, aggregate asphalt (sand and gravel), bricks, metals and others (plastics, glass ...).

Although the first two are the most abundant human artifacts, in both the presence of sand or gravel is essential, which leads Torres to affirm that "the basis of all this accumulation is in the aggregates."

An OECD report estimated that 24 billion tonnes of aggregates were pulled from the earth in 2011 and studies estimate that society's livelihood is almost 80% sand.

With European funding, Torres leads the Sandlinks (sand connections) project, which studies the global crisis of this material and its impacts.

In addition to the

surprise

, the most striking thing is the rhythm that has led to it.

Using projections from the available data, in 1900, the anthropogenic mass was only 3% of what the biomass assumed.

By then, it was around two teratons.

However, since the beginning of the century, while the artificial has not stopped increasing, the natural has not stopped decreasing.

Thus, human artifacts and infrastructures have doubled in mass every 20 years on average in a process that accelerated after World War II.

In fact, up to four fifths of the products and objects in use are less than 30 years old.

In parallel and probably closely related, the biomass has dropped by half.

Although the extinction of animal species is the most striking, 90% of the natural mass is of plant origin.

So here the reduction has been concentrated, with deforestation and other changes in land use (urbanization, infrastructure deployment, mining ...) being the main responsible for the natural decline.

"The results are very solid," says Fridolin Krausmann, an economist from the Institute of Social Ecology at the University Vienna (Austria), who is not related to the study.

And he details it: “First, there is a slow but continued and persistent decline in biomass induced by humans.

Second, a rapid, exponential, increase in anthropogenic mass.

And third, we have already reached or are about to reach the crossing point of both tendencies, where the mass of society exceeds that of the biosphere ”.

How much anthropogenic mass do we need to [have] a good life?

What is the healthy and appropriate body mass index for society? "

Fridolin Krausmann, expert in industrial ecology at the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna (Austria)

Krausmann, one of the main authors in the field of industrial ecology, investigates the flow and

stock

of materials in what has been called the metabolism of societies.

In 2017, it published a calculation of the amount of non-biological natural resources that supported human communities: with data from 2010, the figure almost exceeded 800 teratons.

But more relevant than when the artificial has surpassed the natural is "the alarming of the trends and their environmental impacts," he maintains.

The work now published in Nature does not include in the anthropogenic mass all the material already in disuse, obsolete or simply turned into garbage.

If it did, the anthropogenic mass would be even greater.

In addition, as Krausmann highlighted, if it continues at the current rate, the artificial will exceed three trillion tons in 2040, tripling in just two decades the amount accumulated in more than a century.

As Elhacham recalls, the study co-author, "in recent years, a degree has been reached where, on average, an amount of mass equal to their body weight is created each week for each person."

"The big question is," Krausmann raises, "how much anthropogenic mass do we need to [have] a good life?

What is the healthy and appropriate body mass index for society? "

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