The Age of Consequences

During the Anthropocene greenhouse gas forcing has risen by more than 2.0 W/m2, equivalent to more than >2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures, which constitutes an abrupt event over a period not much longer than a lifetime. As the climate stabilized from about 7000 years ago, the application by Neolithic civilizations of iron tools, production of excess grain and animal husbandry, allowed human creativity, imagination, dreams, aggression, fear of death and worship of nature and of the gods to be expressed. This developed through the construction of monuments for immortality, death rituals and genocidal wars in the name of superior powers. A consequent progressive mass extinction of species is tracking towards levels commensurate with those of the past five great mass extinctions of species, constituting a geological event horizon in the history of planet Earth.