Let us not be arrogant about this Anthropocene Epoch. Nature has not ended and never will.
Humans stave off natural forces, but the natural forces can and will return. In that sense, nature is forever lingering around. Given a chance, which will come sooner or later, natu- ral forces will flush out human effects. Even if the historic wildness does not return, nature having been by humans irreversibly knocked into some alternative condition, wildness will return to take what course it may. This ought not to serve as an excuse to continue our domi- nance; rather it should sober us into finding a more lasting fitness for humans on Earth.
If one is thinking of a geological epoch, one needs to think big. The Holocene covers 12,000 years; there is no prospect of our contemporary, escalating Anthropocene forcing of the planet lasting twelve millennia. If we humans were to vanish from the planet (a definite possibility in view of pandemic diseases, nuclear proliferation, or environmental collapse), future visitors from space 100,000 years hence would find traces of our activity in the fos- sil record, particularly in massive anthropogenic extinctions at that layer, like we now find traces of some ancient meteor impact that killed the dinosaurs. But in the deposited lay- ers above, these extra- terrestrial geologists- anthropologists, would find only the natural and have no need for the term “Anthropogenic Epoch.” Is there prospect of smart humans for- ever reinventing the Earth again and again in search of a new humanistic excellence? Rather, given such arrogance, bacteria have a more certain future on Earth than do we.
The Anthropocene! Beyond the Natural?? A better hope is for a tapestry of cultural and natural values, not a trajectory even further into the Anthropocene. Keep nature in sym- biosis with humans. Keep the urban, rural, and wild. Our future ought to be the Semi- Anthropocene, kept basically natural— with the natural basics— and entered carefully, full of cares for both humans and nature on this wonderland planet!
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