2011 05 The Age of Anthropocene

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The Age of Anthropocene: Should We Worry?

If humanity's geologic effect on the planet becomes its own epoch, is that a bad or a good thing?1

Introduction
Mark Weaver
Schoolchildren are taught that we are still in the Holocene, the epoch in Earth's history that began roughly 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. But some scientists say that it's high time to enter the Anthropocene, or the Age of Man.

Last week, our colleague Andrew C. Revkin of Dot Earth reported on a conference at the Geological Society of London exploring the evidence for the Anthropocene, meaning that the human species has become a "globally potent biogeophysical force, capable of leaving a durable imprint in the geological record."

RELATED
Andrew C. Revkin: Embracing the Anthropocene (Dot Earth Blog) Are we really in our own geologic era? If we are, how does that change our view of the world?

Updated May 20, 2011, 12:22 PM

Thriving on Terra Humana

Jonathan Foley, professor and McKnight Presidential chair in ecology, evolution and behavior, is the director of the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota.

The global dominance of Homo Sapiens is a recent phenomenon. For nearly all of human existence, our collective footprint was small. The planet was full of untold resources, frontiers to be discovered and room to grow.

This completely changed in the last two centuries. Thanks to advances in public health, energy and agricultural technology, our population surged from 1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion today. In the past 50 years, the number of humans has more than doubled. During the same period, our consumption of resources grew to staggering new levels, fueled by increasing prosperity. The worldwide consumption of food and freshwater tripled, and the use of fossil energy sources grew fourfold.

In short, we suddenly became the dominant force on the planet – whether we intended it or not. Our collective actions have