I had the opportunity to introduce Alice Major’s new collection of poems entitled ‘Welcome to the Anthropocene’ at the UofA Observatory. I gave a short presentation on the science of the Anthropocene to a very a very literate crowd. It was great fun- and an excerpt from Alice’s book:
This home. Clouds, oceans, life forms span it
from pole to pole, within a peel of air
as thin as lace lapped round an apple. Fair
and fragile bounded sphere, yet strangely tough—
this world that life could never love enough.
And yet its loving-care has been entrusted
to a feckless species, more invested
in the partial, while the total goes unnoticed.
— from “Welcome to the Anthropocene”