Anthropocene

Second Edition If we are unable to limit, in a humane and intelligent way, the world's human populations we will not escape our history of growth and collapse. And the next collapse will be like no other. It will not be restricted to the remote Easter Island. It will not give us the chance to expand to another area as with the collapse of the Samarian civilization. The next collapse will be a worldwide one, epic in proportion, and perhaps the final one for the human race. However, if some of us do make it through this global downfall what will our descendants find in the geological record. Surely they will discover that the Anthropocene was a time of human dominance of the world, a time where humans held all the cards, a time when we could have stopped the cycle of growth and collapse, but a time that proved the human species was not intelligent enough to do so. Perhaps, in the future our descendants will look back at the Anthropocene and rename it from: "the age of man" to: "the age of very, very, stupid men".