8. Prometheus

The Anthropocene continues to be controversial across the many scholarly communities that study social and environmental change, including not only archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and environmental historians, but also ecologists and Earth scientists. Will creating a new unit of geologic time help to advance scientific efforts to understand Earth’s human transformation? ‘Prometheus’ considers the new challenges faced by Earth System science: the anthroposphere, geoengineering, and the need to guide efforts to adapt to an increasingly dynamic human planet. Given the overwhelming scale, rate, and diversity of harmful global environmental changes produced by human societies, it is hard not to view the Anthropocene as an unmitigated disaster, but could a better Anthropocene be a possibility?