Another cause of concern for the Anthropocene is the conflicting opinions that individuals have regarding climate change. Individuals have a huge impact each day on climate change, whether it be their choice of transport, the amount of electricity they use, or how they heat their house. The daily choices they make may seem insignificant, however, what is at stake is the very existence of many human institutions and the safety and well-being of masses of humans themselves. This is because humans are dependent upon both human systems and ecosystems for their livelihoods at the local, national and global level. Humans have slipped into...
Another cause of concern for the Anthropocene is the conflicting opinions that individuals have regarding climate change. Individuals have a huge impact each day on climate change, whether it be their choice of transport, the amount of electricity they use, or how they heat their house. The daily choices they make may seem insignificant, however, what is at stake is the very existence of many human institutions and the safety and well-being of masses of humans themselves. This is because humans are dependent upon both human systems and ecosystems for their livelihoods at the local, national and global level.
Humans have slipped into comfortable lives that revolve around improving businesses, industries, infrastructures and concrete jungles, meanwhile, blissfully ignoring the knock-on effects of these activities. Why? Because it is much easier for a person to ignore the consequences of what their actions may, or may not, have upon the future. If humans stripped away the rhetoric and naive technological optimism surrounding climate policy, hope could exist to respond appropriately to the scale of the climate change problem. Although this may seem like a very harsh reality of the Anthropocene, the lack of willingness and honesty about how bad the situation is getting is why there has been no progress in mitigating the issue of climate change. Now, at the beginning of the 21st Century, humans are facing several critical challenges as a result of climate change, including food and water security, coping with pandemics, the slow decline of biodiversity, and the mitigation and adaption of these challenges.
The challenges faced by humans in the Anthropocene have differed in the last few decades. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, water pollution, acid rain and waste problems where the height of concern for humans then, and unlike the 1990’s and 2000’s, where climate change is the main issue, those issues could be solved easily using cleaner technologies.
