Earl Ellis, professor of geography and ecological systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, synthesizes interdisciplinary research to show how human societies evolved from using fire to cook food and manage vegetation to developing global supply chains and urbanized civilizations that could transform the planet and the world. be successful in this process.

Ellis pioneered this concept anthropoceneModern geological epoch marked by human transformation of the planet. He argues that portraying the Anthropocene as an ecological crisis ignores the most important point: When people work together, they can truly change the world for the better.

A study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society BIt considers the limits of natural science in predicting and managing the unprecedented changes in societies, environments, and interactions that characterize the Anthropocene. Instead, Ellis emphasizes the need for human societies to use their social and cultural capacities, such as cooperation, institutions, and narratives, to promote the common good and extend it to the rest of nature.

Ellis suggests a variety of ways to rethink and emphasize the kinship between all living things, including remote sensing, webcams, nature apps, public nature reserves, corridor networks, and ecotourism. It also advocates the restoration of indigenous and traditional sovereignty over lands and waters and reconciliation with the past.

Ellis concludes that societal opportunities to shape a much better future than the future they are currently shaping have existed for decades. The key to making these work is to motivate their implementation by raising public awareness that these opportunities not only exist, but can be successfully realized thanks to the unprecedented planetary power of our common human desires to live in a better world.