Many people care about keeping their house clean. We always think of ways to improve our quality of our home. People care about what is happening in their house. Most of us would be offended if someone came into our homes and made a mess. In the film, Anthropocene, watching the Earth from outer space allowed us to stop, take a step back, look at ourselves, and realize that the Earth is our genuine home.
Anthropocene, the term itself, is a reminder for the mess that we have artificially created in the Earth, which brought irreversible changes with growing dead zones. The already-started Anthropocene epoch proves that humans did not mind sacrificing parts of the Earth for our needs and wants. Humans decided to make the cheapest food possible to feed the growing population, and created new types of rocks/minerals and chemicals to satisfy those immediate populations.
In some respect, Anthropocene was unintentional; the focus was for the survival and to raise the quality of a human system by creating a food system. We simply did not see the connection between the food system to the ecosystem. Unfortunately, we discovered that humans played the biggest role in converting the nature into an artificial place, which perhaps gave birth to the term, Anthropocene. In a book called, Political Ecology, Paul Robbins explains how the complexity of global ecology is mainly due to the constructed resources (political ecology) rather than naturally given (apolitical ecology) (Robbins 17).
When such concepts, like “Political” Ecology and Anthropocene, have reached the academia, I believe that it is the warning signal from the Earth, and we must consider it as a wakeup call. We must gain control of what we have modified for our own greed to stop ourselves from hitting the peak of the Anthropocene. We can’t change the past, but we can change the future. Although, the effort must come from the entire globe, altogether; in fact, we are sharing one Earth.
Both the inside of the house that we want to keep clean and the land outside, they are a part of the Earth that we live in. We must realize that keeping the Earth clean and safe is same as keeping ourselves and our home clean. Don’t make a mess. If we found out that we did, then it is time to clean up.
Works Cited
Robbins, Paul. Political Ecology, Wiley, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=822568.
Sluka, Gatis. Globalization. Digital image. Cagle. N.p., 6 Jan. 2016. Web. 14 July 2017.
Great post!
The dead zones that humanity has created are not necessarily irreversible, the solution just entails a huge amount of effort and cooperation. If we were to design a solution I’m confident that we can at least begin to remediate some of these dead zones. Where I live there used to be a landfill nearby and it was later turned into a golf course, creating a sanctuary for wildlife as well as golfers. This is just one example of how an environment can change drastically. Though the example of a golf course is not normally centered on environmental preservation, but in this case it had that effect. Scientists are discovering new ways to use waste to create energy which could mean that our past wrong doings were ultimately for the greater good.
What an engaging and eye opening post! I love how easily comprehensible and to the point it was. I especially like your comment that in some respect, Anthropocene was unintentional and I completely agree. While we are an advanced species, we are still learning an evolving. Creating the world we live in today, the foods we consume, and the materials we obtain was intended to better our species and develop ourselves even further. It was not intended to bring “doom” to planet Earth. Unfortunately, we are finally realizing that what we thought was making us better and more self sustainable is actually causing more harm for our future selves. I am sure if we were well aware of this in the beginning of our industrialized selves, we would have taken the proper precautions and proceeded more carefully, with the environment in mind. The most difficult task at hand now and rerouting our current direction and moving towards a better, cleaner future. This is where education is so incredibly important in regards to the environment and global health, especially for our younger and future generations. These are the generations that will be responsible for cleaning up what our ancestors have created. While we have certainly done a significant amount of damaging to our ecosystem and earth as a whole, what we have done is not entirely irreversible. It will take an enormous amount of time and money for the changes to happen, but with the right policies and choices, I do believe we can’t set ourselves on the right path.