The Anthropocene is currently defined as a period of time during which human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change. The K-T extinction opened up several niches that allowed mammals to dominate the earth. Humans then evolved and dispersed around the world starting their journey on manipulating the environment making our ancestors very successful. Early humans interacted with the environment through fire regimes, fishing, hunting large mammals, selecting plant species, deforestation, and eutrophication of waterways.
The modern anthropogenic environment comes from the industrial revolution giving us textiles, the steam engine, advancements in iron making, machine tools, gas lighting before electricity, and transportation such as railroads, rods, and canal/waterways. In the long run this all lead to an increased GDP, increases in greenhouse gasses (which chips away that the ozone layer that’s there to deflect the harsh radiation rays from the sun), The greenhouse effect is where visible light emitted from the sun passes through our atmosphere and heats the earth. Infrared radiation coming off earth's surface gets absorbed by certain molecules and our atmosphere. He energy gets trapped instead of being released into space, so our planet remains warm.
The Anthropocene is now considered the 6th mass extinction event — the extinction of the species Homo sapiens. It is enviable due to how much damage humans have caused to the plant, however there are major, and minor, steps everyone, or even a few people, can take that’ll stretch out the length of the final extinction. The beginning of the pandemic has showed the humans how much pollution they put into the planet and how harmful it really is. People were seeing clear skies fo the first time and dolphins were returning to the canals of Italy. The earth is beautiful and magical and humans need to step up their game if they want to continue basking in its glory.
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