Have you ever wondered what kind of era or epoch we live in today? To be honest, I never have. We often hear the term, “end of an era”, but we hardly ever actually hear that era being labeled a specific word or term. For those of you who are now curious, we are currently living in the Anthropocene. Until recently, I had never heard that word before. The Anthropocene refers to human kind acting as the most important geological event and the ones that have the greatest influence over the climate and environment. In previous eras, it was natural disasters shaping Earth’s landscapes and events such as the Ice Age and even organisms. We are currently in the middle of a new era in the geological history of the Earth, an era in which it is for the first time, human kind is inadvertently, unwittingly shaping the grand geological, geophysical processes.
How incredible is that? To me, I have always known that humans were shifting our Earth in a way never done before because of what I have been taught in school and physically seen with my own eyes. Humans are moving the soil and makeup of our planet on such a large scale that it is in comparison to glacier erosion (Bradshaw). We are intelligent beings, yet we are also manipulative beings. Now I don’t mean manipulative in the sense that we get what we want in certain situations by using cunning words… I mean we get what we want in regards to landscapes, food, and resources. If something does not naturally exist, we manipulate things to create what we want. Unfortunately, our progressive selves are destroying our planet more and more every day because we are changing the planet in ways never seen or experienced before. For example, the chemical production and gasses released into our atmosphere from industrialization are damaging our oceans and ozone layer.
The Anthropocene Era is quite remarkable, but also extremely disturbing. Species are going extinct due to their habitats being replaced by cities and diseases spreading, the global temperatures are rising due to pollution and other factors, and many other damaging effects are being seen due to human’s manipulating their environment. Currently and throughout history, we have changed the landscape, animals, plant life, and even the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans. Our worlds food system is being greatly affected, pesticides are killing insects such as honey bees (which, without honey bees, our entire food system would be dramatically changed) and change must happen sooner rather than later in order to preserve our great planet. Rather than using our intelligence solely for self-benefit, we need to change the way we live and engineer our planet for a better future. While it may come with a tone of “doom”, we must change our ways in terms of harmful production and damaging habits in order to preserve our planet and save all forms of life on earth. So with that being said, what will you do to help be a part of this change?
Bradshaw, S., Richards, Jenny, Kyriacou, Sotira, Gabbay, Alex, Ostby, Magne, Cassini, Stefano, Bullfrog Films, publisher. (2015). Anthropocene. Oley, Pennsylvania: Bullfrog Films.
