Implications of Ash Dieback for Associated Epiphytes

Humans are now described as a global geologic force. The Anthropocene, a period that begins concurrent with the industrial revolution, is characterized with steep line graphs of human population, water use, biodiversity loss, nitrogen run off, atmospheric carbon dioxide, etc. (Steffen et al. 2011). The data irrefutably establish humans as the dominant driver of environmental change and have led scientists to declarations such as “virtually all of nature is now domesticated” (Kareiva et al. 2007). The characteristics of the Anthropocene are worrisome, but Caro et al. (2012) expressed the additional concern that “the concept of pervasive human-caused change may cultivate hopelessness . . . and may even be an impetus for accelerated changes in land use motivated by profit.” The Anthropocene is a dangerous era and, perhaps, a dangerous cultural frame. Words matter to perception, and perception matters to behavior. In experiments in the United States and Canada, people perceived themselves as taller when they felt more powerful (not like “the little people”) (Duguid & Goncalo 2012) and felt physically cold when excluded from social situations (e.g., “the cold shoulder”) (Zhong & Leonardelli 2008). When undergraduates were primed with a text about determinism—that free will is an illusion because genes and environment determine behavior—they cheated significantly more in subsequent experiments than undergraduates who read a neutral text (Vohls & Schooler 2008). But are these correlates or causations? Which came first, the language, the feeling, or the behavior? The power of positivity might seem hokey, but it has been repeatedly affirmed. In one medical study, a doctor confidently told some patients that they would get better in a few days (positive treatment) or that he was not certain whether their condition would improve (neutral treatment). The positive framing led 64% of patients to report getting better, significantly more than the 39% in the neutral treatment (Thomas 1987). This is a form of the placebo effect, which is most often used to describe the positive effects of an inert pill (a variation of the placebo effect that occurs only in cultures in which people believe taking a pill can cure an illness). The even stranger nocebo effect, where just mentioning the side effects of a treatment makes them more likely to occur, further demonstrates the power of the mind (Häuser et al. 2012). The anthropocebo effect is then what I call a psychological condition that exacerbates human-induced damage—a certain pessimism about humanity that leads us to accept humans as a geologic force and destruction as inevitable. How we frame willpower, medical examinations, medicines, and humanity all matter. To be sure, there are other behavioral phenomena that could be evoked to justify environmental apathy long before the Anthropocene, including self-interest (which arguably leads to a tragedy of the commons) and high rates of discounting. Some might even argue that the Anthropocene framing makes humans so central and powerful that it could empower us to solve the problem, for instance, via rewilding (e.g., Donlan et al. 2005), “domesticat[ing] nature more wisely” (Kareiva et al. 2007), or managed relocation (Richardson et al. 2009). My sense, however, is that these are not the outcomes one can generally expect from Anthropocene framing. I have seen symptoms of the anthropocebo effect in sources of cultural reflection in, for example, The Onion, which has run headlines such as “Rare Species of Frog May Hold Cure to . . . Ah, Never Mind, It’s Extinct,” and New Yorker cartoons, with captions such as “Tonight the part of the sea bass will be played by the chicken.” I recently heard a prominent physics professor make the glib remark that our incapacity to solve climate change is genetic (recall the effects of deterministic framing on cheating). A cross-national survey showed that between 2008 and 2012, citizens of 12 countries, including the United States and China, increased their agreement with the statement that “the impact our society has on the environment is so severe that there is very little individuals can do about it” and reported only one country, India, where citizens’ agreement decreased (Greendex 2012). A further problem is that the description of the Anthropocene focuses on a series of indicators, but these rarely encompass nuances about the human populations that caused the steep increases in the indicators (e.g., overexploited fish stocks, dammed rivers, and McDonald’s restaurants) (e.g., Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2011). Not all humans are a geologic force—and a geologic force is not what humanity must be. That humans have become the main driver of environmental change is largely the result of specific cultures mixing with specific economic systems and mixing with specific technologies. For instance, when presented per capita, the wealthiest 600 million humans appear most responsible for carbon dioxide emissions. An individual emission cap