the “Anthropocene Era”

We, humans have changed and so are changing, the planet. Other species  may have an impact on the whole that is the Biosphere, the thin layer of soil and atmosphere within which all Life lives. In our insatiable humger for the last oil and coal that took millions of years to form we poison the ground, water, and air we share with all Life. We are increasing our number. It is said that we are growing enough food for now almost seven billion, but we cannot get the food from where it grows to those who need it; Human population is expected to be nine billion in less than half a century.

Scientists who study the long periods of planetary changes have identified geological changes, the slow but unstoppable changes of rising and lowering sea levels over eons, the birth and decay of volcanoes, shifting of whole continents and how that changed Life in all its variety. In the early nineteenth century the current period was named the Holocene, the ten thousand years after the last Ice Age. The time of modern Man.

Ten thousand years ago Man invented agriculture, and so, changed the earth. But also changed the thinking of homo sapiens by inventing such concepts as property, hierachy, and other imaginations.

Ten years ago, a Dutch Nobel Prize winner for his work on the ozone layer, coined the term “Anthropocene” (Anthropos = human) for the last few hundred years, recognizing that it is no longer planetary forces, geological changes, but the power with which we attack the biosphere that is changing our planet. It is rapidly becoming hotter, stormier, wetter and drier. More and more off balance. These changes are all too noticeable almost everywhere.

Proof of our power indeed, but power wielded almost entirely without knowing what we are doing. Not something to be proud of. Rushing full speed to manufacture every invention. And ever more intensely digging under the surface of the planet for the sources of the fuels we burn to make our power. The damage we continue to inflict on the planet is  destroying the biosphere. Unless we can change our biology as rapidly as the changing biosphere this may wipe humans off the planet, our only home.