Welcome
to the
Anthropocene
As in all things, the bacteria got there first.
David Biello

Feature Articles

Radiant Wildlands

The forests near Fukushima and Chernobyl likely have been changed forever.

Winifred Bird Jane Braxton Little

Return of the Wild

Will humans make way for the greatest conservation experiment in centuries?

Adam Federman

Reports

Extremely Loud
We have drowned out the natural soundscape
Maureen Nandini Mitra
And Incredibly Bright
We have blotted out the night sky
Holly Haworth
A Hitchhiker's Guide
to Planet Earth
Where humans go, so go our dependents and hangers-on.
Nate Seltenrich
City Life
Our urban environs have become ecosystems all their own
Juliet Kemp
Running Dry
We are sucking the world’s ancient freshwater stores faster than they can be replenished
Jessica C. Kraft
Chemically Altered
Synthetic chemicals permeate the environment to such an extent that they have changed the chemistry of our planet.
Elizabeth Grossman

Reflections

Welcome
to the
Anthropocene

As in all things, the bacteria got there first.

David Biello

Anthropocene is the Wrong Word

Has the human impact on Earth “cut to the very bone” of deep time, as some have claimed, effectively ending the Holocene Epoch and ushering in what should be called the Anthropocene? Yes – an...

Kathleen Dean Moore

Misanthropocene?

My first earthquake happened at four in the morning, when some small god picked up my apartment building and shook it lightly before setting it down like a Christmas box that would, soon enough, be to...

Raj Patel

Living Through the Anthropocene Storm

“It’s too late, isn’t it?” That was the subject line of an email I received the other day. The sender was a mother in Brooklyn who, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, was terrified of what cli...

Mark Hertsgaard

Beware the Rainmakers

In 1838, James Pollard Espy, the first meteorologist to be employed by the US government, made an odd request to the Senate: He proposed they pay him for burning huge swaths of the nation’s forests....

Ginger Strand

Will Branding Help?

For Paul Crutzen, the Nobel laureate who has contributed enormously to our understanding of our beleaguered planet, the idea of the Anthropocene might be a way for us to recommit to safeguarding the p...

Gus Speth

Age of the Sociopath

The term Anthropocene not only doesn’t help us stop this culture from killing the planet – it contributes directly to the problems it purports to address. First, it’s grossly misleading. Huma...

Derrick Jensen

Anthropocenic Creation Tale

There’s a discussion that my wife, Beckie Kravetz, and I have periodically about the nature of our respective lines of work. Beckie is a figurative sculptor: She renders the human form in bronze and...

Alan Weisman

Earth Island Reports

Food Shift

Making Food Recovery a Valued Service

Dana Frasz

Best Ethical Destinations for 2013

Ethical Traveler

Jeff Greenwald, Christy Hoover And Natalie Lefevre

1000 Words

A One-Trick Shiva

Photographer J. Henry Fair

Journal Staff

Conversation

Alex Steffen

On the list of best job titles ever – explorer, inventor, superstar architect – “planetary futurist” must surely be near the top of the pile. Writer Alex Steffen has earned that enviable monik...

Jason Mark

In Review

End Times

Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth
By Sasha Lilley, David McNally, Eddie Yuen, James Davis, with a foreword by Doug Henwood
PM Press, 2012, 192 pages

Tom Athanasiou

Wild Kingdom USA

Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds
By Jim Sterba
Random House, 2012, 336 pages

Jason Mark

Voices

Eco-Politics 2.0

On one level, the green movement won the game a long time ago: It convinced the majority of Americans that ecosystem destruction is a serious problem. Today 73 percent of Americans say they are worrie...

Nathanael Johnson

+/-

Hack the Sky?

Since the scale of the climate change crisis became clear, our response has focused on trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to maintain the climate at something like the pre-industrial status quo...

Journal Staff

We need some Symptomatic Relief

Ken Caldeira is an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. When thinking about the ethics of solar geoengineering, I ...

Ken Caldeira

The New Sorcerer’s Apprentices

Clive Hamilton is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, Australia. He is the author of Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change. His new book, ...

Clive Hamilton

Talking Points

Weather Forecast: A Cloudy Future for Nukes

In the 1950s, when the first nuclear reactors were conceived, there were few computers. Engineers created blueprints using lead pencils and slide rules. Back then the atmosphere’s carbon content was...

Gar Smith

Local News from All Over: Spring 2013

Africa Eyes in the SkyDrone warfare is coming to the African savannah. The aerial surveillance technology – pioneered by the US military to locate and then bomb suspected terrorists – is poise...

Journal Staff

Notes from a Warming World: Spring 2013

New Hot ColorsIn January the mercury soared so high Down Under that Australia’s meteorology department added two new colors to its weather map – incandescent purple and pink. Red simply wasn’t h...

Journal Staff

Digging Deeper

Old Fashioned Map App

Thong Trees

James Card