Art, science and the Anthropocene: tales of life on a warming planet

Image courtesy: iStock / Boonyachoat. Ian Randall reviews the book Tomorrow’s Parties: Life in the Anthropocene (edited by Jonathan Strahan). Physics World – September 19, 2022.

In Works and Days by the Ancient Greek poet Hesiod, a vengeful Zeus contrives to punish humanity for acquiring the gift of fire from Prometheus. He achieves this by delivering to them Pandora – a woman who comes with a jar full of “countless evils” that are promptly unleashed upon the Earth. While the story was perhaps intended as piece of theodicy, let us for a moment re-imagine it in the context of human-driven climate change. Having mastered the ability to burn fossil fuels, humanity now finds itself beset with plagues in the form of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, disease outbreaks, extreme weather, habitat loss and mass extinction. […]

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