The Anthropocene

BRT's Something to Consider, a riff on man's 21st century version of The Great Dying, has now been codified by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen as The Anthropocene Epoch: How We Became Nature, a frightening scenario whose impact is becoming ever more apparent as we move further into the future.

Although Anthropocene is not a new concept, it is only now that the authors present stunning evidence in support of their claim. The article describes the negative impact of the human footprint, which ensues a gradual destruction of the Earth. Highlighting different data elements - it yields overwhelming evidence that "man, the eroder" now transforms the atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric, and other earth system processes.

The list is long and unforgiving:

-Excessively rapid climate change, so that ecosystems cannot adapt

-The Arctic ocean ice cover is thinner by approximately 40% compared to 20-40 years ago

-Ice loss and the growing sea levels

-Overpopulation (fourfold increase in the 20th century alone)

-Increasing demand for freshwater

-Releases of NO into the atmosphere, resulting in high surface ozone layers

-Loss of agricultural soil through erosions

-Loss of phosphorous. Dangerous depletion in agricultural regions

-Melting supplies of phosphate reserves (leading to serious reduction in crop yield)

Describing the negative impact of human activities on the environment, the authors identify planetary boundaries, as means to attaining global sustainability. It is "a well-documented summary of all humankind actions affecting the environment on all scales. According to Crutzen, we live in a new era, Anthropocene, and our survival fully depends on us. I strongly recommend this unusual publication in the form of highly informative compressed slides and graphs." says Marina Frontasyeva from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.

As per WTFU, the message is becoming ever more clear, we must change or go the way of the dodo when earth recovers from our transgressions to once again, become a viable place for a new civilization to rise, wise enough to work in concert with nature and not destroy it, something radically different from the approach man has taken for the past 5000 years.