The cover of the May 26th Economist read "Welcome to the Anthropocene: Humans have changed the way the world works. Now they have to change the way they think about it, too." The article is about how quickly, and dramatically, humans are changing the earth (hence Anthropocene: The Age of Man).
The premise is that we have sped up both the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle, too. And "a host of other previously natural processes." We have "refashioned" and "accelerated" them. As a result, geologists say we are no longer living in the Holocene, a "peculiarly stable era that began only around 10,000 years ago" but rather in a new era they call the Anthropocene.
"What geologists choose to call a period of history normally matters little to the rest of mankind; tussles at the International Commission on Stratigraphy over the boundaries of the Ordovician era do not normally capture headlines. The Anthropocene is different. It is one of those moments where a scientific realisation, like Copernicus grasping that the Earth goes round the sun, could fundamentally change people's view of things far beyond science. It means more than rewriting some textbooks. It means thinking afresh about the relationship between people and their world and acting accordingly."
Then in addition to the contributions that our combustion of fossil fuels like coal and natural gas make to carbon and nitrogen cycle changes, the fact is too that these are finite resources. True, there is probably enough coal and natural gas in the U.S. to fuel our needs for the next century, but they are - undeniably - finite resources.
Yet despite the very clear need (for less pollution and resource supply reasons) we still get a relatively small percentage of our energy from renewable sources.
Indeed, last week BP released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy, which shows more of the same in 2010. Some highlights:
- "Globally, energy consumption grew more rapidly than the economy, meaning that the energy intensity of economic activity increased for a second consecutive year. The data implies that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel consumption will also have grown strongly last year."
- "All forms of energy grew strongly, with growth in fossil fuels suggesting that global CO2 emissions from energy use grew at the fastest rate since 1969."
- "World primary energy consumption - which this year includes for the first time a time series for commercial renewable energy - grew by 5.6% in 2010, the largest increase (in percentage terms) since 1973."
- "Chinese energy consumption grew by 11.2%, and China surpassed the US as the world's largest energy consumer."
It's reinforcement for the concept that we've got to start "thinking afresh about the relationship between people and their world and acting accordingly." It's (past) high time to get serious about innovative ways to produce and consume energy. (That innovation has an added benefit: in addition to keeping the planet livable, it might just fuel our next economic boom.)
