The Anthropocene

Will Steffen, Paul J. Crutzen, and John R. McNeill. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?"

The growing awareness of human influence on the Earth System has been aided by:

i) rapid advances in research and understanding, the most innovative of which is interdisciplinary work on human-environment systems;

ii) the enormous power of the internet as a global, self-organizing information system;

iii) the spread of more free and open societies, supporting independent media; and

iv) the growth of democratic political systems, narrowing the scope for the exercise of arbitrary state power and strengthening the role of civil society.

Humanity is, in one way or another, becoming a self-conscious, active agent in the operation of its own life support system.

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