Book review: Adventures in the Anthropocene - deadly age of man
In her new book, science writer Gaia Vince lays out the damage human beings have wrought on the earth: polluted oceans, depleted stocks of wildlife, burned-out forests. The list goes on. And with global warming comes a host of new problems: climatologists announced last month that 2014 was the warmest year on record.
by Gaia Vince
Milkweed Editions
In her new book, science writer Gaia Vince lays out the damage human beings have wrought on the earth: polluted oceans, depleted stocks of wildlife, burned-out forests. The list goes on. And with global warming comes a host of new problems: climatologists announced last month that 2014 was the warmest year on record.
So, is it possible to fix the earth?
That's where Vince begins her real work, framing the question as a series of engineering problems: how will we find the water to quench our thirst, the food, the energy? And how will that be done without destroying what we haven't already degraded?
She begins with a summary of human history. Just 74,000 years ago, a super-volcano wiped out all but a few thousand human beings. From there, with our brains and our ability to control fire, we set out on a planet-conquering course. In just the past 150 years, particularly since the second world war, we have grown at a tremendous pace: a 45-year-old person today has seen a doubling of the earth's population.
"The same ingenuity that allows us to live longer and more comfortably … is transforming earth beyond anything our species has experienced before," writes Vince. "Welcome to the Anthropocene: the Age of Man."