The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Humans rank with the powerful forces of nature transforming Earth.Since the mid-20th century, population growth, industrialization, and globalization have had such deep and wide-ranging impacts that our planet no longer functions as it did during the previous eleven millennia.So distinctive is this collective human intervention that a new geological interval has been proposed; it is called the Anthropocene.The Anthropocene is intriguing scientifically, fascinating intellectually, and deeply disturbing politically, socially, economically, and ethically.We must learn how to co-exist sustainably with the rest of nature in what is emerging as a new planetary state.To do so, we must first understand what "Anthropocene" means in all its dimensions.This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach, starting with an exploration of the Anthropocene as a geological concept: ranging across the physical changes to the landscape, to the rapidly heating climate, to a biosphere undergoing transformation.