Embracing the Anthropocene

May 20, 2011, 7:20 AM
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

USGS Center for EROS and NASA Landsat Project Office
Satellite image of part of the Bolivian Amazon, converted from rain forest to pasture.


Following up on my coverage of the first scientific conference on the proposition that we have entered a geological epoch of our own making, the Anthropocene, Room for Debate has assembled a great cast of characters to discuss whether this is a good, bad or indifferent thing.

Weighing in are Emma Marris, the author of “Rambunctious Garden“; Jon Foley, the director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota; Brad Allenby, a professor of engineering and ethics at Arizona State University; Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine; Erle C. Ellis, a geologist at the University of Maryland (who spoke at the London meeting); and Ruth DeFries, an ecologist at Columbia University.

In many ways, this discussion, and the meeting at the Geological Society of London a week ago, all grow out of the shift that Stewart Brand made in the 40 years between the “Whole Earth Catalog” and his latest book, “Whole Earth Discipline.”

Those years took him from the relatively relaxed dictum, “We are as gods; we might as well get good at it,” to a more urgent one, “We are as gods and have to get good at it.” (Read this Edge.org essay by Brand for his explanation of that change.)

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http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/embracing-the-anthropocene/