Embracing the Anthropocene

Embracing the Anthropocene – NYTimes.com.

An important look at our capacity to change our home planet, and how we choose to think about it.  Revkin’s thoughtful comments include:

Earth is what we choose to make of it, for better or worse.
Taking full ownership of the Anthropocene won’t be easy. The necessary feeling is a queasy mix of excitement and unease. I’ve compared it to waking up in the first car on the first run of a new roller coaster that hasn’t been examined fully by engineers.

What, you may ask, is the Anthropocene?  It’s a term coined in 2002 for the geologic epoch we find ourselves in, where humans have made sufficient changes to atmospheric and ocean chemistry, not to mention caused or contributed to the extinction of such a large number of species, that it will be detectable later in the geologic and fossil record.

“The Apocalypse?  You’re soaking in it.”
— Lindsay, Angel

Only, it’s up to us to decide how to cope.  We can even choose to build something better.  Or, as Stewart Brand once said:

We are as gods; we might as well get good at it.

To learn more about it, check out what National Geographic had to say on it – complete with photos!