Humanity now finds itself at a point where our industrial and agricultural development has rendered crucial terrestrial life support systems unable to maintain the climatic balance of the Holocene, by altering nine global processes in the Gaian operational system. These are biodiversity loss, interruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, land use changes, chemical pollution, freshwater misappropriation, atmospheric and aerosol loading, and climate change. Our current industrial civilization is accelerating systemic imbalances, changing the biosphere from the user-friendly Holocene to an unknown Anthropocene. Ushering in this new epoch, our species is upsetting Gaia's natural process and possibly destroying the biosphere.We have within our power, should we choose to exercise it, the ability to repair and stabilize the physical and biological aspects of the biosphere, bringing equilibrium to the crucial terrestrial ecosystems which have fragmented, allowing the thermodynamics of matter and energy flow to dissipate chemical and thermal gradients across global ecosystems reestablishing their function. If we awaken and take this step, we can extend the climatic/biological homeostasis of our current epoch.
Over time, natural geological processes would bring the Holocene to an end. We as a species are creating a premature epoch change. It is during epoch transitions that extensive mass extinctions occur. Isn't it time for the best and brightest minds from the fields of sociology, psychology and political science to begin working on uniting our species to confront this issue?It would take changing the sociological and psychological outlook of our species via a epistemology of environmental ethos, creating a new global polity, which would have to be force fed to the masses and would take at least a generation or two to instill within the population of the globe.In my opinion we have neither the time nor the political will to accomplish such a herculean task.This, however, does not excuse us from the obligation of trying. I am skeptical though, so I offer the best of luck to the next apex species to arise on this little blue marble.