Assuming “Responsibility for Your Rose”

Abstract

Humans were once a tiny part of nature, no more consequential than any of the other flora and fauna of Earth and substantially less numerous or powerful than most. However, over the millennia, and especially over the last several hundred years, and most especially the last few decades, humans have become the dominant species on Earth (Turner 1990; Willis 1998; Smil 2002; Williams 2003). We have transformed what was once a “natural” environment of which we were only a small part, into a largely and increasingly “artificial” environment of our own creation.