Humans have become so powerful that we have disrupted the functioning of the Earth System as a whole, bringing on a new geological epoch - the Anthropocene - one in which the serene and clement conditions that allowed civilisation to flourish are disappearing and we quail before ''the wakened giant''.
The emergence of a conscious creature capable of using technology to bring about a rupture in the Earth''s geochronology is an event of monumental significance, on a par with the arrival of civilisation itself.
What does it mean to have arrived at this point, where human history and Earth history collide? Some interpret the Anthropocene as no more than a development of what they already know, obscuring and deflating its profound significance. But the Anthropocene demands that we rethink everything. The modern belief in the free, reflexive being making its own future by taking control of its environment - even to the point of geoengineering - is now impossible because we hav
