{"id":18606,"date":"2024-05-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/?p=18606"},"modified":"2024-04-02T13:41:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T12:41:10","slug":"sustainability-book-review-12-the-anthropocene-reviewed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/sustainability\/sustainability-book-review-12-the-anthropocene-reviewed\/","title":{"rendered":"Sustainability Book Review #12: The Anthropocene Reviewed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

John Green is famous for having written a number of bestselling YA novels \u2013 but it\u2019s in his first nonfiction offering that the reader gets to know him better than we ever could\u2019ve in The Fault in our Stars <\/em>or its ilk. The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centred Planet <\/em>is exactly what it says on the tin. Green writes of his favourite, least favourite, and the completely arbitrary aspects of the world and his life, and then rates them out of five stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diet Doctor Pepper: four stars. Sunsets: five stars. Our Capacity for Wonder: three-and-a-half stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch \u2013 or period of time. It sits alongside, but is more recent than, other well-known epochs, like the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and proposes that the Holocene \u2013 approximately 9,700 years ago to now, from the ice age to human development \u2013 actually stops when humans started having an impact on the planet. This human impact, human-caused climate change, defines the Anthropocene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book centres itself on humans and the things we have created, and the history that can effect and define a person\u2019s life, especially one growing up in America. From essays on Halley\u2019s Comet and the Lascaux Cave Paintings from seventeen thousand years ago, to Super Mario Kart and the performance of a specific Liverpool FC player on May 25th<\/sup>, 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Green writes in the introduction, \u201cI wanted to understand the contradiction of human power: We are at once far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough. We are powerful enough to radically reshape Earth\u2019s climate and biodiversity, but not powerful enough to choose how <\/em>we reshape them. We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet\u2019s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Anthropocene Reviewed <\/em>is occasionally funny, always informative and above all else a meaningful book that is just as much about the joy that humans have created as it is about the problems we made along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


By Bethany Climpson, Sustainability Engagement Assistant<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Green is famous for having written a number of bestselling YA novels \u2013 but it\u2019s in his first nonfiction offering that the reader gets to know him better than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331329,"featured_media":18610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4094,66],"tags":[4134,334,366,2014],"class_list":["post-18606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-sustainability-engagement","tag-book-review","tag-canterbury-christ-church-university","tag-cccusustainability","tag-sustainability"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t