Defiant Earth

"Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch--the Anthropocene--one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilization to flourish are disappearing and we quail before 'the wakened giant'. The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth's geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilization itself. What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history…