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By Root 711 0

highly variable) levels of wealth and material consumption, human beings have so far been an evolutionary success story unprecedented in the entire history of planet Earth. But there is a dark side to this momentous achievement. For the biosphere as a whole the Age of Humans has been a catastrophe. Our domestication of the planet’s surface to provide crops and animals for ourselves has displaced all competing species to the margins. The Earth is now in the throes of its sixth mass extinction, the worst since the ecological calamity that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Evolution is about competition—and we have outcompeted them all. No other species can control our numbers and return balance to the system (though extremely virulent microbes are likely to come closest). Whenever we have appeared on the verge of shortages, either in food production or fuel for our ever-rising energy demands, we have saved ourselves through brainpower and the judicious application of technology. The worst plague, flood, or world war—which may singly or combined cause horrifying loss of life—is just a blip in this relentless upward trend.

But most amazing of all perhaps is how blissfully unaware of this colossal transformation we remain. We are phenomenally, stupendously, ignorant. As if God were blind, deaf, and dumb, we blunder on without any apparent understanding of either our power or our potential. Even most Greens—ever hopeful that vanished wild nature can one day be restored—still recoil from the real truth about our role. Climate change deniers are successful not just because of the moneyed vested interests they serve, but because they tap into a powerful cultural undercurrent that insists we are small and the planet is big, ergo nothing we do—not even in our collective billions —can have a planet-scale impact. The world’s major religions, founded as they were in an earlier, more innocent age, share this insistence, as if the Book of Genesis could still be anything more than a historical metaphor in an era of Earth science and biochemistry. Our culture and politics languish decades behind our science.

To most people my contention that humans are now running the show smacks of hubris. Consequently everyone loves a good disaster, because it makes us feel small. After the 2004 Asian tsunami there were honest discussions over the benevolence or otherwise of God. Those in the path of hurricanes often speak about the anger of Mother Nature. When the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted in April 2010, news reports reminded us of “nature’s awesome power over humans,” as if a few grounded aircraft in Europe had humbled us helpless clumsy apes. The Japanese earthquake and resulting tsunami disaster in March 2011 showed nature’s force at its most powerful and destructive, but many lives were saved because of warning systems and strict building codes. We may not be able to stop earthquakes, but the idea of perennial human victimhood is now somewhat out of date. I suspect there is a reason why most of us cannot bear to let go of it, however, for admitting that we hold the levers of power over the Earth’s major cycles would mean having to make conscious decisions about how the planet should be managed. This is an idea so difficult to contemplate that most people simply prefer denial, relieving themselves of any inconvenient burden of responsibility. What you don’t know can’t hurt you, right?

This see-no-evil approach is particularly convenient for politically motivated climate-change deniers. Take Newt Gingrich, the U.S. Republican firebrand who almost single-handedly destroyed the Clinton Presidency and is now taking aim at Obama too. He told the American environment website Grist.org in June 2010: “It’s an act of egotism for humans to think we’re a primary source of climate change. Look at what happened recently with the Icelandic volcano. The natural systems are so much bigger than manmade systems.”1 QED, as I think they say.2

Gingrich and his ilk may be an extreme case, but this degree of ignorance and denial cannot go