After 200,000 years of modern humans on a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth,
we have arrived at new point in history: the Anthropocene. The change
has come upon us with disorienting speed. It is the kind of shift that
typically takes two or three or four generations to sink in.
Our best scientists tell us insistently that a calamity is unfolding,
that the life-support systems of the Earth are being damaged in ways
that threaten our survival. Yet in the face of these facts we carry on
as usual.
Most citizens ignore or downplay the warnings; many of our
intellectuals indulge in wishful thinking; and some influential voices
declare that nothing at all is happening, that the scientists are
deceiving us. Yet the evidence tells us that so powerful have humans
become that we have entered this new and dangerous geological epoch,
which is defined by the fact that the human imprint on the global
environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of
the great forces of nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth
system.
This bizarre situation, in which we have become potent enough to change
the course of the Earth yet seem unable to regulate ourselves,
contradicts every modern belief about the kind of creature the human
being is. So for some it is absurd to suggest that humankind could break
out of the boundaries of history and inscribe itself as a geological
force in deep time. Humans are too puny to change the climate, they
insist, so it is outlandish to suggest we could change the geological
time scale. Others assign the Earth and its evolution to the divine
realm, so that it is not merely impertinence to suggest that humans can
overrule the almighty, but blasphemy.
Read more...
Data: 05.05.2017
Fonte: www.theguardian.com
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento