The Anthropocene, as regarded by Kareiva et al, is the time period during which humans dominate the Earth. There were times when sea life ruled the planet during the Paleozoic Era, there were times when the dinosaurs ruled the earth during the Mesozoic Era, and now it’s safe to safe that this is the era of the human. Time periods are usually regarded by the organisms that are at the top of the food chain or in command of the era; humans may be considered the most feared, most intellectual and most industrial species that the Earth has ever seen. There has never been an organism that can alter its environment in both positive and negative ways as much as humans can.
The human species is a rapidly increasing race that is up to over 7 billion. This influx in population means that more land is needed to sustain that life. This results in the cutting down of other organism’s habitats to expand he livable land for humans. Along with that, the industrial age has brought upon the Earth many hazardous such as rising Co2 levels as well as greenhouse gases that harm the planet. The recent BP oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico thousands of animals and millions of fish. Global warming has also become a rising issue. With recent temperatures rising to amounts that the planet has never seen, there have been questions as to how long life on Earth can live on. All these problems are exponentially worse considering the increasing human population and chemicals that we release into the atmosphere as well as unexpected catastrophic events that are amplified in probability with the number of humans.
Ecologists and conservatives have argued that the fragility of nature is exceptionally overstated. They argue that one even if one ecosystem is removed, it doesn’t put the entire ecosystem in as much danger as advertised. Nature is described as resilient that it can recover rapidly from even the most powerful destructions that humans bring upon it. As previously mentioned, even the large BP oil spill was degraded and consumed by bacteria at an incredibly fast rate, even though it did kill off a substantial amount of organisms. It was even resilient enough to survive the Chernobyl crisis.
What cannot be argued though, is that humans have the most say on with what happens to the Earth right now. They hold all the power either to expand to areas that are occupied by other animals or even kill off an entire species at will. Nature may be able to regenerate itself, but the potential harm that the human race can cause is second to none. With recent development of nuclear and chemical weapons at their disposal, the fate of the Earth is often described as on the tip of the finger. Therefore, there is no choice but to call this the era of the human, or the Anthropocene.
