A recent article was published that suggests a new name for our current geological era. Scientists are claiming that because all of the major changes brought to the planet by humans, we have entered the Anthropocene, saying goodbye forever to the Holocene. The evidence of the dramatic Earth changes (even without accounting for the horrors of nuclear waste and future nanotechnology) are apocalyptically depressing. The exciting thing is, Anthropocene, as constructs go, is very appealing to me. No longer will I have to say things like “whatever it was that happened that messed things up so bad” or “What some people call the Fall, or the rise of alphabetic literacy, or the invention of agriculture” or “Industrialization and its effects,” or any other names of this great extinction.
We need to grieve what we’ve lost for generations. But we’re still alive and in the Anthropocene. Let’s figure out how to thrive in it.