Anthropocene Quotes

As for climate change, it's by now widely accepted by the scientific community that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the Earth's climate is being radically modified by human action, creating a very different planet, one that may not be able to sustain organized human life in anything like a form we would want to tolerate.

Within only 2,000 years of humanity’s arrival in the New World, indigenous peoples drove to extinction 84 of the 107 genera of large mammals – all before the invention of the wheel, writing or iron tools.

There are more humans than all of the rabbits on earth. There are more of us than all the wildebeests, than all the rats, than all the mice. We are the most numerous mammal on the planet. But because we're not like rabbits or rats or mice, we have technology, we have a consumptive appetite, we have a global economy.

What I wonder most about the Anthropocene is not when did it start - but when, and how, will it end? Will it end? Or is it possible that our own growing awareness of our role on Earth can itself play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome toward one that we would desire?

When geologists announced the beginning of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, humans destroying the environment, one of the main things they pointed to is the use of plastics in the earth.

We, Homo sapiens, destroyed the majority of the large mammalian species in North America and Australasia just over 10,000 years ago. We, Homo sapiens, now are destroying the other species that presently exist on this planet at a rate of about 15,000 to 20,000 per year.

Regarded zoologically, man is today an almost isolated figure in nature. In his cradle, he was less isolated.

For the first time since life appeared on earth, one species- us- is single-handedly altering the physical, chemical and biological nature of earth. We have become a force of nature

Over most of history, threats have come from nature - disease, earthquakes, floods, and so forth. But the worst now come from us. We've entered a geological era called the anthropocene. This started, perhaps, with the invention of thermonuclear weapons.

What I'm interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth's geological history.

A weird thing is a strange loop, what some of us call 'an object.' Thus it is looked down on by the constructivist spokespeople of anti-art, which is also an anti-products movement - the dominant mode of high art since the inception of the Anthropocene.

Many of the crises we see in the 21st century, I would argue, have their roots in the dawn of the Neolithic.

I am always struck by the fact that human awareness of our place in nature, like so much of modern science, began with the Industrial Revolution.

There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.'

Thinking about the new epoch - often called the Anthropocene, or the age of humanity - challenges us to look at ourselves in the mirror of deep time, measured not in centuries or even in millennia, but over millions and billions of years.

I intend to apply the perspective of astrobiology, which is a deep-time way of looking at life on Earth, towards the question of the Anthropocene. What does the human phenomenon on Earth look like viewed from an interplanetary perspective?

Whether you like the label 'Anthropocene' or not, whether you find the prospect of what it signifies inevitable or appalling (or both), the time has come to address its implications, as these thoughtful, battle-tested authors attempt to do. The time has long since come.

With our evolved busy hands and our evolved busy brains, in an extraordinarily short period of time we've managed to alter the earth with such geologic-forcing effects that we ourselves are forces of nature. Climate change, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction of species.

When geologists announced the beginning of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, humans destroying the environment, one of the main things they pointed to is the use of plastics in the earth. We don't think about it, but it has a tremendous effect. But these are things you don't see right in front of your eyes. You need to think about them a little, to see what the consequences are. It's easy to put them aside, and the media don't talk about them.

Now, humans have become a dominant force of planetary change and, thus, we may have entered an eon of post-biological evolution in which cognitive systems have gained a powerful influence on the planet.

Earth's biosphere gave birth to humans and our thoughts, which are now reshaping its planetary cycles. A planet with brains? Fancy that.

We have altered the physical, chemical and biological properties of the planet on a geological scale. We have left no part of the globe untouched.

We are killing life on Earth, we're in the sixth mass extinction event and it's possible that human beings will go extinct. We're in a culture that doesn't want you to think about that.

As scientists have discovered - or perhaps explained is a better word, or perhaps identified - we now live in the age of the Anthropocene. The geologic age of the Anthropocene. Those high priests of material evidence have given us our own epoch like the Holocene, the Pleistocene! Apparently we now, it seems, have superhuman powers.

We live on a human-dominated planet, putting unprecedented pressure on the systems on Earth.