World domination

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made. By Gaia Vince. Chatto & Windus; 436 pages; £20. To be published in America by Milkweed Editions in November; $26. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

ONE of the grandest concepts in science fiction is the idea of terraforming, in which advanced civilisations reshape entire planets to suit their needs. Deliberate, large-scale terraforming remains the stuff of the far future. But an accidental sort is happening right now, on Earth. Human industrial civilisation is altering the entire planet. Its pollutants are changing the atmosphere; its greenhouse gases are warming the climate and expanding and acidifying the oceans. Humanity’s hunger is making forests vanish, deserts spread and rivers change their course. Meanwhile distinctive chemicals are being deposited in the rocks and the sixth great mass extinction in the planet’s history is under way.

For the past 12,000 years, Earth has been enjoying the Holocene, a geological epoch marked by a notably stable and clement climate. But so great has humanity’s impact become that scientists are now giving serious consideration to the idea that the Holocene is over, and that a new geological age, the Anthropocene, has begun. Popularised by Paul Crutzen, a respected chemist, the term (roughly meaning “recent age of humans”) is an attempt to drive home the point that people are now a planetary force on a par with plate tectonics, asteroid strikes and volcanism.

It is an arresting concept, but one that also tends to be talked about in scientific journals stuffed with technical discussions of the nitrogen cycle or ocean acidity. Gaia Vince’s book is an attempt to humanise the concept. To that end, she has spent two years travelling the world to see what a planet that is falling more and more under human control looks like.

Ms Vince’s focus on individuals and places helps ground the science in reality. So when she travels to the Maldives to study the impact of rising oceans, she points out that the islands could be mostly underwater by the end of the 21st century, and that flooding and storms could make them practically uninhabitable well before then. An interview with Mohamed Nasheed, a former president, covers responses that range from building artificial islands to negotiating with other countries for a new homeland for Maldivians. She visits Himalayan villages where artificial glaciers are being built to replace dwindling natural ones, and a New Jersey lab where scientists are working on artificial trees that could be hundreds of times more efficient than the natural sort at sucking carbon dioxide from the air.

The book is an engaging travelogue and Ms Vince’s case studies are fascinating. She is level-headed and analytical, and does not over-romanticise the natural world. But the book’s great strength—humanising the science by focusing on individual examples—can, at times, get in the way of the bigger picture.

To come to terms with the idea of the Anthropocene requires a big change in the way that people think about their connection with the world. The future of the planet is, for the first time, at least partly under the control of conscious, reasoning beings. Humans now have both the power and at least some of the knowledge to choose what sort of planet they want to live on, rather than simply accept the climate they are given. They are, like it or not, the owners and wardens of Earth. A bit more discussion of this change in humanity’s relationship to its home would have made an engaging book even better.