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What must I do (and why me)? 1. The changing nature of human activity ‘The task of the archaeologists of the future will be difficult. When they start to dig to get to the so-called cultural layers, which preserve traces of bygone civilisations from the Stone Age to the Modern Age, first they will have to fight their way through the thick, mixed, impenetrable residue of the 20 and 21* centuries. The Waste Age; that is how we will be remembered. Or, in Latin: homo ignorans; we will be the ignorant man, who forced the species homo sapiens out of its habitat. Who thought that what he hides in the earth, pours away or burns, vanishes. Who believed that there can be limitless growth on a planet of limited size. Our civilisation is fleeting, but our waste is enduring; this is the biggest problem with us. Acidifying oceans with islands of PET-bottles in place of coral reefs; infertile, desiccated soil with the remains of poisonous chemicals, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the radioactive waste of nuclear power plants, the concrete of council estates, the shells of our machine monstrosities in the junkyards — all this will outlive us. This is our inheritance to posterity. They can no longer choose a way of life for themselves independently of ours. They cannot learn from our sorry case to seek their happiness in harmony with the benevolent forces of nature, for that nature already belongs to the past and they — like it or not — will have to adapt to the limited possibilities of life on a wounded planet. Never has the responsibility for the survival of humanity and the future of the planet weighed as heavily on a single generation as on us who live today. And never can an individual have felt it so impossible to measure up to this responsibility, to influence or even see clearly the processes of which they is a part. The functioning of industrial mass 65
