Forget what the world used to be like...

...instead we need to plan for how we want the world to be.

Welcome to the Anthropocene, the Age of Man. Our human actions have so much influence on the world that we might as well forget the idea of going back to some pristine environmental baseline.

So says Professor Ursula Heise, eco-critic in Stanford University’s English department, who is busy untangling the environmental stories we tell ourselves.

“We need to shift from thinking about what ecosystems used to be, and how we can get back to an [environmental] baseline,” she says. “The conversation needs to be about to what kind of world we want for the future and to work toward that.”

I think she's right. Even though I wish she was wrong.

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