The beautiful anthropocene

From The Age of Man is not a Disaster (Dec. 2011), well worth quoting and also read this bit on the fallacy of overpopulation:

We defend the term “Anthropocene,” and we do not accept the argument that the concept opens the floodgates of unrestricted development. To assert that without the ideal of pristine wilderness, humanity will inevitably go on ruining our best-loved landscapes is analogous to Dostoyevsky’s dictum that without God, everything is permitted. 

Yes, we live in the Anthropocene — but that does not mean we inhabit an ecological hell. Our management and care of natural places and the millions of other species with which we share the planet could and should be improved. But we must do far more than just hold back the tide of change and build higher and stronger fences around the Arctic, the Himalayas and the other “relatively intact ecosystems,” as the scientists put it in their article. 

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The Anthropocene does not represent the failure of environmentalism. It is the stage on which a new, more positive and forward-looking environmentalism can be built. This is the Earth we have created, and we have a duty, as a species, to protect it and manage it with love and intelligence. It is not ruined. It is beautiful still, and can be even more beautiful, if we work together and care for it.