Humans are altering the physical composition of the world. I am reminded of this fact as I fly into Cacoal, a small city in the province of Rondonia Brazil I will call home for the coming months. From the window of my plane, destruction etches itself out in contrasts of light green farm pasture and dark green primary forest. The small patches of remaining forest marking the landscape seemed like scattered puzzle pieces, lacking reason and solution. The missing pieces are now long-lost — lost to both personal priorities, economic pressures, and misguided “development” policy.

One of the most fascinating debates of the 21st century centers on the question of the current power and reach of the human effect on our environment. I mean, goodness, you can see China’s air pollution from space. Have humans begun to so severely change our natural world that our current geological time period can…