People are now in charge of the Earth and we are destroying it. Robert Krulwich writes that Planet Earth is Under New Management. [1] We are no longer in the age of the Holocene.
Earth is being dramatically changed, and the changer, this time, is us: humankind (“anthro” in the Greek). “We are no longer in the Holocene,” he told the group. “We are in the Anthropocene.” It’s a coinage he may have borrowed from biologist Eugene Stoermer, but here’s the logic: The Earth is no longer being shaped mainly by natural forces, forces that operate on their own with a logic of their own. Our little blue dot is now, increasingly, sculpted by one of its inhabitants. This is our planet now. We’ve taken over.
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