SA: The article below is an interesting take – one I think I agree with. While humans are presently fucking things up but good for themselves and most of the rest of life as well, this is but a blip in the cosmic scale of things. If we do have an Anthropocene Epoch, it will be the shortest ever. Once we either decide to voluntarily end fossil fuels or they run out (and they will) then human capacity to drastically alter the planet will end as well.
by Peter Brannon from The Atlantic
“The idea of the Anthropocene inflates our own importance by promising eternal geological life to our creations. It is of a thread with our species’ peculiar, self-styled exceptionalism—from the animal kingdom, from nature, from the systems that govern it, and from time itself. This illusion may, in the long run, get us all killed. We haven’t earned an Anthropocene epoch yet. If someday in the distant future we have, it will be an astounding testament to a species that, after a colicky, globe-threatening infancy, learned that it was not separate from Earth history, but a contiguous part of the systems that have kept this miraculous marble world habitable for billions of years.” Read the rest here
steve austin 