Green Options » Anthropocene

Global Collapse, Human Survival & the Planet’s Boundaries

Zachary Shahan — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:11:43 +0000

A new study by nearly 30 of the world’s best scientists concludes that we have crossed three of the world’s nine thresholds. It is not only about climate change.

David vs. Goliath, Microbe vs. Man

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:52:00 +0000

Humans might have ushered Earth into the Anthropocene, but we’d be unwise to ignore the fact that we’re always going to be living in the Age of Microbes, according to a new article in Microbiology Today. “Microbes will continue as climate engineers long after humans have burned that final barrel of oil,” says author Dave Reay of the University of Edinburgh. “Whether they help us to avoid dangerous climate change in the 21st century or push us even faster towards it depends on just how well we understand them.”

Image courtesy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Exit the Holocene

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:00:35 +0000

Humans have so altered the Earth — from carbon dioxide levels to wholesale changes to plant and animal populations — that we’ve created a whole new geological epoch for ourselves, according to research published this week by the Geological Society of America. The authors of the study conclude that Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen was right and we no longer live in the Holocene, but in the Anthropocene.

Graphic of the Earth’s geological time scale courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey