Sunday, March 28, 2010

The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises

Life after psychopaths
The fact that human extinction can only come about via choices made by segments of humanity, who do not care enough about their fellow sojourners on this planet to allow them to live on, is perplexing.

Obviously the notion that there are those who have caused the deaths of millions of people is not a fantasy; no, in fact it is well documented in history.

The notion that it is the result of criminally insane cognition has also been considered.

At any rate, there needs to be a term we can use to describe the times we live in.

Some serious scientists are petitioning their peers for an official term for our era of environmental devastation, requesting that it be called The Anthropocene Epoch:

The scientists propose that, in just two centuries, humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes to our world that we actually might be ushering in a new geological time interval, and alter the planet for millions of years.

Zalasiewicz, Williams, Steffen and Crutzen contend that recent human activity, including stunning population growth, sprawling megacities and increased use of fossil fuels, have changed the planet to such an extent that we are entering what they call the Anthropocene (New Man) Epoch.

First proposed by Crutzen more than a decade ago, the term Anthropocene has provoked controversy. However, as more potential consequences of human activity -- such as global climate change and sharp increases in plant and animal extinctions -- have emerged, Crutzen's term has gained support. Currently, the worldwide geological community is formally considering whether the Anthropocene should join the Jurassic, Cambrian and other more familiar units on the Geological Time Scale.

(Science Daily). The tenets of ecocosmology would have us take care of our environment, this planet's ecosystem, so that we have a chance to avoid extinction as a species.

These new revelations cast some doubt on that vision, and do support the notion that governments will probably resort to triage as a global policy.

The next post in this series is here.

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