Humans are a remarkable species, and the society they have created is even more remarkable. Over the last 40,000 years or so, their impact on other species and life on Earth slowly and then rapidly increased. Before the Industrial Revolution some 250 years ago, the impact was local, or at most regional, rather than global. But now the impact is indeed global.
The idea may be hard to accept, but in its long history with all its environmental variants the Earth has never been in this situation before. In the words of the title of a recent book by John McNeill, we confront “something new under the ...
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