Repeatedly, over hundreds of thousands of years, glaciers expanded south and north from the polar regions, covering much of the Earth with ice sheets several kilometres deep. Twelve thousand years ago, the Earth warmed and the ice retreated — the relatively warm and stable time since then is known to geologists as the Holocene epoch. It’s the time when agriculture was invented and all great human civilizations were formed. Holocene conditions, as Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center likes to say, are the only ones in which we know for sure that humans can survive and prosper.
Is the Holocene now over? Has human activity changed the Earth System so much that a new epoch has begun? Are we now in the Anthropocene?
in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
Friday, January 15, 2016
Anthropocene Working Group: Yes, a new epoch has begun
Click here to access article by Ian Angus from Climate & Capitalism.