The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

What does the term “Anthropocene” refer to? What issues does this name attempt to foreground?

Teaching Suggestion: Depending on students’ backgrounds, they may know the definition of this term, may be able to guess at its meaning, or have no idea what the term refers to. For students who are struggling, you might hint that part of the word is also found in terms like “Paleocene,” “Eocene,” “Pleistocene,” and “Holocene,” and ask what they associate with these words and how “anthro” probably contributes to the term’s meaning. Before they answer the second section of this question, you might offer students one or both of the resources below, which will offer more in-depth information about the term and its origin.

• The “Anthropocene” entry from the National Geographic encyclopedia defines the term.
• “Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction” by Earle C. Ellis provides a short video explaining the term’s origin and implications.
• “What Is the Anthropocene and Why Does It Matter?” by Katie Pavid is an in-depth article from the British Natural History Museum offering some historical context for the term.

Short Activity

Now you know that “Anthropocene” is an emerging term for the current geological epoch. This activity is intended to give you a better sense of the scale of geologic time, how much of that time humans occupy, and how human history is distributed over the Holocene and Anthropocene.

• Conduct research to find out how old the earth is and what eons, eras, periods, and epochs have come before our own.
• Create a timeline that accurately depicts the length of each, labeling the eras, periods, and epochs.
• Then, create a second timeline of just the Pleistocene, Holocene, and Anthropocene, labeling the following key events in human history:

○ Homo sapiens appear in the fossil record.

○ The “Great Leap Forward” in human culture

○ Settlement of Ain Mallaha

○ The First Agricultural Revolution

○ First evidence of writing

○ First evidence of the use of “zero”

○ Galileo and Kepler introduce modern astronomy.

○ Industrial Revolution begins

○ The first humans walk on the moon.

○ Internet is created.

Teaching Suggestion: This activity is intended to offer students some insight into the context of Green’s concerns in his essay collection: The accelerating pace of cultural and technological change in modern times has serious implications for human happiness and planetary survival—but at the same time, this rapid blossoming of human knowledge and creativity is a source of wonder. You might follow this activity with a brief discussion of what the timelines reveal about the capacities of modern humans.

An interesting question to ask students in this context is whether their first thought, upon completing the timeline, was awe at what modern humans have accomplished or fear of what modern humans have accomplished. What do they think their answers reveal about themselves? The resources listed below will allow students to construct their timelines, but they will need to do some additional research to plot the events in the bulleted list onto the second of their timelines.

• “Geologic Time Scale” is from the United States Geological Survey.
• “The History of Life on Earth” from Northern Arizona University offers two different models for conceptualizing geologic time.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with visual impairments may not be able to complete the activity as written. A reasonable alternative assignment would be to listen to this 3-minute explanation of the “clock model” or geographic time and write a summary of this model. Direct students to then look up the relevant dates for the bulleted events in human history and explain what these dates reveal about the rate of change in human culture and technology.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

What aspects of human culture and technology amaze you or make you feel hopeful about our collective future on this planet? What aspects of culture and technology disappoint you or make you worry about our survival?

Teaching Suggestion: This question asks students to consider both the positive and negative aspects of human culture and technology. You might find that some students tend to focus on one more than on the other: Urge them to really consider both sides of this question. A wider variety of ideas might be generated through discussion of this question than through written responses, so students could be broken out into small discussion groups, then come back together to share their answers. Even if you choose to have students write their answers first, you might consider allowing them time to share their responses with a partner, small group, or the class as a whole.