The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

In the American musical Carousel, a robber dies but gets a second chance to make things right when he returns briefly to Earth to visit his grown daughter. The famous song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” comforts the robber’s lover and, later, his daughter. Although the song is corny and “cheesy,” it’s effective, and its lyrics are catchy and uplifting. A British rock group made the song famous in England, and the sports team that Green roots for, the Liverpool Football Club, adopted the song as its anthem. (Many soccer clubs have musical numbers as anthems.)

The song also works well at graduations, funerals, and moments of great success. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is a song that can “en-courage” people during the COVID pandemic. Green gives it “four and a half stars” (12).

Humans have roamed the planet for about 250,000 years. This is their “temporal range.” Nothing lasts forever, though, and while humans have caused the end of many species, many in each generation believe that the end is near for humanity itself. For years, Green worried publicly about the possibility of a pandemic causing widespread destruction. When the COVID crisis arrived, though, he was woefully unprepared. His real fear is ecological catastrophe.

The earth already has suffered disasters that killed off most of life, as during the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, when nearly all creatures died, or when an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs and most other beings 66 million years ago. However, the earth has existed for billions of years, and if we compressed all that time into one year, the development of human agriculture would take place at one minute to midnight on December 31, and all the inventions of the past 200 years would happen during the final two seconds.

If humanity disappears, life will continue to flourish, but the most interesting part will be gone. Among other uniquely human qualities, Green points out, “We’re the only species that knows it has a temporal range” (19). Humans might be near the end of their time but have more knowledge and ability than ever. Also, humans are “dogged” and have a good chance to not only survive but reach the stars—and thereby extend their temporal range. Green gives our potential four stars.

Halley’s Comet is named for astronomer Edmond Halley, who figured out its orbit and correctly predicted its return in 1758. With Newton, Pascal, Hooke, and others, Halley was part of the scientific revolution powered by new discoveries, organized knowledge, and wealth from colonies and slaves. Halley, though, was particularly brilliant and developed many inventions that benefited humanity, including a diving bell, a magnetic compass, a data table on the moon, and an actuarial table that anticipated life insurance.

Most comets appear unexpectedly: They’re reminders that we can’t predict what will happen over extended periods. Halley’s Comet, however, is very predictable, and for that, Green gives it four and a half stars.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (published in 1925), which is about the vapid lives of the wealthy, sold poorly until World War II, when US soldiers overseas received a distribution of paperback copies. The book has been popular ever since, and many consider it one of the Great American Novels.

The book both lampoons and celebrates the excesses of rich people, and readers are either enthralled or stunned by these scenes. Late in the story, the narrator wonders if the immensity of New York’s harbor sufficiently awed the explorers who first discovered it; Green comments wryly that natives had witnessed such scenes countless times. Still, the capacity to wonder at the world is a boon to humankind, and Green awards it three and a half stars.

Hoping to find treasure, French teen Marcel Ravidat and three friends in 1940 explored a crack in the ground that led to a cave filled with hundreds of prehistoric paintings more than 17,000 years old. Most depict animals; a few are circles and other geometric forms. Little is known about their purpose or meaning.

There and elsewhere in the world are stencils of hands, the fingers splayed, going back 40,000 years in a tradition that evolved separately yet identically. Two of the boys who discovered the Lascaux cave returned after World War II, helped guide visitors, and later worked to protect the paintings from damage caused by the visits. To the paintings’ humanity and the acts of conservation that preserved them, Green gives four and a half stars.

While riding a VR roller coaster, Green traveled virtually through ocean spray and recalled a pleasing scent from his youth, a room deodorizer called “Spring Rain.” It smelled nothing at all like ocean mist or spring rain, and the aroma took him out of the experience. It’s hard to fool the human nose: “[N]othing in the real world ever smells quite like we imagine it should” (42).

During the 1980s, Scratch ’n’ Sniff stickers were popular in the US, though they rarely emitted odors that exactly mimicked the things they’re named for. As a child, Green relied on the intense aromas of the stickers to calm him on days when mean kids bullied him, which happened often.

Scratch ’n’ Sniff stickers have microcapsules filled with aromatic oils; the capsules burst when scratched. Time-release medicines, when dissolved, and carbonless copy paper, when pressed, use the same principle. Many aromas from the past no longer exist; others have changed, like rain, which for a time smelled more acidic due to pollution. Either way, Scratch ’n’ Sniff stickers get three and a half stars.

Dr Pepper is the only soda whose name doesn’t describe what it tastes like, as with orange, grape, or lemon-lime: “It was an artificial drink that didn’t taste like anything” (48). It, and its counterpart, Diet Dr Pepper, are so completely artificial that they appeal to Green’s need to have a vice. He used to chain-smoke cigarettes, and Diet Dr Pepper is his nod to the need for a little self-destruction. It’s “the soda that tastes more like the Anthropocene than any other” (50), and he gives it four stars.

The velociraptors that the film Jurassic Park depicts were six-foot tall, rapacious hunters based on the Deinonychus dinosaur. Real velociraptors were “feathered scavengers about the size of a swan” (54), but the filmmakers attached that name to the Deinonychus because it sounded better. Movie fiction aside, misinterpretation and ongoing arguments riddle the study of dinosaurs; for example, the brontosaurus spent decades sidelined as unreal only to make a comeback in the 2000s.

Dinosaur movies have become so realistic that they make us believe things that are logically impossible. Fictional velociraptors are more compelling than their real counterparts from the distant past; despite this, Green gives them three stars.

Humans once hunted Canada geese to near extinction. Hunters used live, disabled geese effectively as decoys until the ban of this practice. Since then, the geese have made a remarkable comeback, and their worldwide population now stands at four to six million. One cause is the growth of cities: “Heavily landscaped suburbs, riverside parks, and golf courses with water features are absolutely ideal living conditions for them” (56). Over the past century, human and goose populations have grown in tandem.

We now often consider the geese pests, as their poop pollutes lakes and streams. However, the geese have a certain romantic appeal given their V formations in the sky and the way they bring a bit of untamed nature to the suburbs. Their near disappearance and subsequent tremendous resurgence are reminders of the power of humanity to affect the natural world. Nonetheless, Canada geese also can be annoying, so they get only two stars.

Bears have frightened humans for ages. The name “bear” derives from “brown” and is part of a long tradition that uttering the true name of this beast might make it appear, like Voldemort in the Harry Potter stories. It’s ironic, then, that children often cuddle with a plush toy in the shape of a bear.

The Teddy Bear got its start when US president Teddy Roosevelt went hunting and refused to shoot a bear that his assistants had captured and tied down. In the press, the bear morphed into an “innocent cub,” and a stuffed-toy version became hugely popular. One producer’s success with the Teddy bear grew into the Ideal Toys company, maker of Rubik’s Cubes and the game Mouse Trap. Other cute bears followed, such as Winnie-the-Pooh, Paddington Bear, and Care Bears.

The population of humans so dominates that of animals that people’s combined weight is triple that of mammals and birds. Today, we think of bears less as frightening and more as threatened and in need of our protection. If a threatened species isn’t useful, its survival odds increase if it’s cute. Teddy bears get two and a half stars.

Green grew up in Orlando, Florida, home of the Walt Disney World theme park. As a young child, he loved visiting the park, but as a teen he developed a hatred of all things “plastic,” including Disney World.

When he was 14, his family won season tickets to the park, and he had to go all the time. Bored and weary of the summer heat, Green would escape to the wonderfully air-conditioned and uncrowded Hall of Presidents, where he’d sit through shows while drafting short stories on a pad of paper.

The Hall presents a short film on US history, followed by a display of animatronic replicas of all US presidents. Lincoln and the current president give short speeches. It’s all very patriotic and optimistic, conferring a sense of proud history. Nation-states such as the US and corporations like Disney World in fact often have checkered histories. They aren’t real things the way a river is real, and they can collapse and disappear. Most of them, though, go to great lengths to give an appearance of permanence. To Green, the Hall of Presidents will always feel plastic; he gives it two stars.