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Top1. Anthropocene Era: Anthropic Impact, Health Of The Planet Earth And Pedagogical Perspectives
Deep environmental, social and economic imbalances are characterizing the current geological epoch.
Rapid urbanization and industrialization, climate change and an increasingly interconnected world have led to drastic environmental and psycho-social risks, resonating with the relationship of mutual interdependence between man and nature.
The Nobel Prize for Atmospheric Chemistry Paul J. Crutzen defines Anthropocene as today's Era of Man, characterized by the devastating action of the individual on the terrestrial ecosystem, by radical changes generated by the transition to a digital revolution that has invested all aspects of society, modifying culture and communication, coordinates and ways of being-in-the-world (anthropological mutation) (Schwägerl, Crutzen, & Renner Jones, 2014).
The spasmodic human impact on an international scale causes an ever-increasing number of environmental disasters: it is man who reshapes the Earth, alters the integrity of the biosphere and has a decisive influence on global ecology, with territorial, structural and climatic conditions such as to affect the geological processes and, consequently, on its own psycho-physical Well-being.
The United in Science (WMO, 2021) report, a summary of the scientific consensus on the state of climate change outlined by the ONU agencies (WMO, UNEP, WHO), the IPCC, the Global Carbon Project and the British Met Office, compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (2021) on behalf of the Secretary General of the United Nations, returns a devastating picture, summarized below:
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The emissions of the main greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CO4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) - continue to increase, despite a decline of 1.98 GtCO2 (5.6%) recorded in 2020 due to the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic. A comprehensive analysis of the three major greenhouse gases shows global mean atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 410.5 ± 0.2 ppm, CO4 at 1877 ± 2 parts per billion (ppb) and N2O at 332.0 ± 0.1 ppb (WMO, 2021). CO2 emissions - coal, oil, gas and cement - peaked at 36.6 GtCO2 in 2019.
According to the European Environment Agency (EAA) (2019), energy use is responsible for 77.1% of greenhouse gas emissions, about one third of which is attributable to transport. The remaining share of emissions comes for 10.55% from agriculture, for 9.10% from industrial processes and product use and for 3.32% from waste management. Some research studies show that digital technologies also generate global CO2 emissions (related to both the production and the operating energy of ICT devices) of around 4%, but it is estimated that by 2040 they will reach over 14% of the world level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Belkhir & Elmeligi, 2018). Furthermore, the energy-intensive warfare activity of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is further contributing to the release of huge amounts of pollutants, harmful emissions that add up to visible human, moral and material damage, which will expose ecosystems to damage for a long time, with incalculable environmental costs.