Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Abstract

Today we confront a critical environmental challenge: how to protect the human environment for ourselves and future generations in the face of our unprecedented capacity to alter fundamental physical cycles with global and longrange implications for the robustness of our planet.

Scientists observe that we are leaving the stable Holocene Epoch, embarking on a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans are the major force for change to the planet. There is evidence that the fundamental carbon and nitrogen cycles are accelerating significantly, and that the hydrological cycle is speeding up. The latter can lead to devastating impacts from more frequent and intense storms, floods and severe droughts. These developments inherently raise issues of intergenerational equity.

Publication Citation

44 Envtl. Policy & Law 83 (2014)

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