Living In A New Age

For 10,000 years (about 8000 BC) at the end of the last major ice age, the earth has been in what geologists have called the Holocene (“entirely recent) epoch.  Many scientists are suggesting that we are now living in a new age labeled the “Anthropocene epoch:  from anthropo, for “man,” and cene, for “new”—because human-kind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans and altered the atmosphere. Can anyone say that we have not?  There is overwhelming global evidence that “atmospheric, geologic, hydrologic, biospheric and other earth system processes” have been altered by us—human-kind.  

Climate change can be a result of earth’s natural processes.  But the present climate change (global warming) is not part of that natural process—it is unnatural.  It is our doing.  The evidence is overwhelming. The direct consequences:  rising temperatures, rising sea-levels, higher ocean temperatures, an increase in heavy participation, shrinking glaciers, and thawing permafrost.  All of these things are happening now in all parts of the world; a result of our polluting ways.

Enter Greta Thunberg, a 16-old from Sweden, who is passionate about climate change and about getting us motivated to do something about it.  On September 20th, Greta inspired and led “the largest climate strike in history which included an estimated 4 million people across 161 countries.” On Monday she addressed world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit.

Do not mock the voice of a young prophet.  Do not ignore the message—for it is out of the mouths of babes that truth is often revealed.  Do not ignore the melting permafrost or the melting glaciers, the burning rain forests of the Amazon and the forests in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, or what is happening weather-wise in your own back yard.