The problem of the Anthropocene has hit the academy like a wave, as scholars far beyond the hard sciences are coming to grips with the implications that humanity is not just leaving a polluting mark on the earth but altering the very workings of the earth system. Davies has written an excellent commentary, which will serve both committed scholars and early undergraduates equally well.
The Anthropocene, defined by the point at which the agency of humanity began to irretrievably intervene in the dynamics of planetary atmosphere, geosphere, and biosphere, was first advanced in 2000, and is now under consideration by an international committee for adoption as a formal period in geological time. The presumption is that the committee will establish a formal date, a “golden spike,” for the beginning of the Anthropocene at 1945, with the detonation of the atomic bomb or, more broadly, with the radioactive chemistry embedded...