Scientists propose changing the rules of history to avoid environmental collapse

For the first time in our planet's 4.5 billion-year history a single species, humans, is increasingly dictating its future, according to a new book by UCL scientists. The new epoch known as the Anthropocene - assessed in 2015 by Professors Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin in a report published in Nature - marks the period when human impacts on our home planet have become global and sustained. In their new book, The Human Planet, the authors have now gathered new evidence which reveals the basic rules governing human societies from the earliest hunter-gatherers to those of the present day. They warn that this evidence points to today's globally interconnected mega-civilisation moving in one of two directions; one of continued rapid global growth and an eventual catastrophic collapse, or the emergence of a new mode of living that replaces the latest type of society, consumer capitalism. The two scientists show that in all of human history there have been just five successive types of society that spread worldwide. Each of these societies relied on the greater use of energy, and a greater generation and flow of information and knowledge. This resulted in more people, increased productivity, and rising collective human agency, but also led to ever-greater global environmental consequences.  "How the human story fits within Earth's history is obviously complex, but one role of scientists is to pick away at difficult problems to understand them in simpler and more fundamental ways," said Simon Lewis, Professor of Global Change Science (UCL Geography).