Was just reading some Latour. I'm surprised, really, at how many still think it is dubious that we could radically alter the earth.
Latour, Bruno (2011) Waiting for Gaia - Composing the Common World through Arts and Politics (p. 124)
Let us ponder a minute what is meant by the notion of “anthropocene ”, this amazing lexical invention proposed by geologists to put a label on our present period. We realize that the sublime has evaporated as soon as [] we are no longer taken as those puny humans overpowered by “nature” but, on the contrary, as a collective giant that, in terms of terawatts, has scaled up so much that it has become the main geological force shaping the Earth.
[] In his magnificent book Eating the Sun Oliver Morton provides us with an interesting energy scale. Our global civilization is powered by around thirteen terawatts (TW) while the flux of energy from the centre of the Earth is around forty TW. Yes, we now measure up with plate tectonics. Of course this energy expenditure is nothing compared to the 170,000 TW we receive from the sun, but it is already quite immense when compared with the primary production of the biosphere (130 TW). And if all humans were to be powered at the level of North Americans, we would operate at a hundred TW, that is, with twice the muscle of plate tectonics. That’s quite a feat.
[] we are asked to look again at the same Niagara Falls but now with the nagging feeling that they might stop falling flowing (too bad for Shelley’ Shelley’s waterfalls around it leap forever) ; we are asked to look again at the same everlasting ice , except that we are led to the sinking feeling that they might not last long after all; we are mobilized to look again at the same parched desert , except that we come to feel that it expands inexorably because of our disastrous use of the soil ! Only galaxies and the Milky Way might still be available for the old humbling game of wonder []