How's this for the great cause of evolutionary environmentalism: Some geologists from the University of Leicester are proposing that the earth has entered a new epoch of terrestrial history, moving us from the Holocene to the Anthropocene. As the name might imply, this newly proposed epoch is characterized by the supposed marks of man--the altered erosion and deposition of sediment (that means dirt), an upset carbon cycle that is promoting global warming, and a new rate and pattern of extinction among the world's plants and animals.

In old-earth chronology, the modern epoch, the Holocene, is the most recent in a long list of time periods spanning the earth's alleged four-and-a-half billion years of existence. The Holocene is said to have begun about 11,500 years ago and to have marked the rise of human civilization. In an old-earth timeframe, 11 thousand years is the blink of an eye--so it makes sense that an old-earth geologist would be worried about the changes happening on the earth in the last few millennia.

In the young-earth view, however, a few millennia is a long time. Creationists believe the earth was intended to be inhabited, and has held up fairly well under the "impact" of civilization. Although we oppose pollution and support conservation, we're opposed to the view that mankind is inherently a devastator of the planet. Humans are in a privileged position among living things, and wildlife does well when people are living with it in mind.