The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

In 2007, Green got an eye infection from Staphylococcus Aureus—the dreaded Staph germ. These bacteria invade some people more than others. Before antibiotics and antiseptics, Staph infections were usually lethal and made surgeries into probable death sentences.

In the late 1800s, Alexander Ogston identified Staph as the main culprit in infections. It’s harmless on the skin but can be deadly if it gets inside the body. Despite “the use of carbolic acid and other sterilization techniques” (80), Staph infections remained dangerous until Alexander Fleming in 1928 discovered that a fungus called penicillium had accidentally killed one of his lab cultures of Staph.

Not until the 1940s, though, was penicillin usefully mass-produced. Within a few years, however, doctors noticed that Staph bacteria were evolving to resist penicillin, and today, only two percent of Staph germs respond to penicillin. Green’s bout with Staph persisted through three courses of advanced antibiotics; the fourth drug finally cured him. Staphylococcus Aureus still causes 50,000 US deaths each year.

Staph doesn’t want to kill us. It doesn’t even know we’re there. It simply wants to live and reproduce. Still, Green gives it only one star.

Early in the internet era, Green joined the CompuServe Teen Forum, where he chatted with other teens who didn’t know that he was an awkward, bullied kid. He could admit his fears, and others wouldn’t judge him: “[P]aradoxically, because they didn’t know me, they knew me far better than anyone in my real life” (86). Kids online talked about nearly everything; they could only type, but they used text characters to create ASCII art. Green became a moderator, which gave him a free phone line and free Internet access, and he spent an entire summer online.

Today, the internet enables many of the same good and bad things as it did during the 1990s, and Green—whose life and work now rely heavily on computers—has mixed feelings about the effects of the digital world. Nevertheless, he gives it three stars.

During 10th-grade boarding school, Green’s roommate was his best friend, Todd. After lights-out, Green would talk like “a stream-of-consciousness novel” (89), reporting on every detail of his day until Todd would gently call a halt.

Todd got a perfect SAT score, while Green was a mediocre student. Still, Todd invited him to join the Academic Decathlon team. Together, they studied a wide variety of subjects, and in 1994 Green won seven medals, including four gold, in the 10 events of the C-student competition. The team went on to win the state championship. Green’s grades improved, so he “tanked” physics to stay in his division.

At the national tournament, their team placed sixth, and Green won two medals. One was for his speech about how rivers meander. Todd said that he liked rivers because they “keep going,” and this inspired Green’s speech. Today, he sometimes writes while sitting on the shore of a nearby river, as its persistence soothes him. He’s grateful for Todd’s friendship, despite time and distance, and how its effects still benefit him.

After the national Decathlon, Green, Todd, and two other teammates went to the roof of their hotel and drank Zimas, an alcoholic beverage. The academics, the friendship, and that night atop the hotel still echo pleasingly. Green gives the Academic Decathlon four and a half stars.

For Green, sunsets are intensely beautiful, to the point that they often look fake. By day, though, the sun is so brilliant that, like some powerful god, it destroys the eyes if we look directly at it.

Talking about sunsets tends to sound mawkish, revealing our vulnerability to beauty. Maybe stopping to gaze at beautiful things in a world filled with so much pain is wrong, and maybe cynicism is safer. Only by being vulnerable to beauty, though, can people truly see it. For this, Green awards sunsets five stars.

The son of a Polish miner, 10-year-old Jerzy Dudek helped his local soccer team win during a tie-breaking shoot-out by walking wobbly-legged in front of the goal, which spooked the opponents. Two decades later, as the Liverpool Football Club’s goalie when that team played in the European Champion’s League final, Jerzy again did the “spaghetti legs” wobble, and his underdog team won the shoot-out and the championship. Fans have replayed that moment on their screens ever since.

Jerzy’s first days at Liverpool were the worst of his life: He was alone in a foreign country whose language he didn’t understand. Ten years later, he was on top of the football world, basking in the blazing light of success. Though we can’t foretell the future, wonderful times often follow bad ones. During the COVID pandemic, we may feel lost and desperate, but “this will end, and the light-soaked days are coming” (106). Green awards Jerzy Dudek’s performance five stars.

The 1958 Disney documentary White Wilderness depicts lemmings jumping off a cliff to their death, in keeping with the myth about them following each other without question. In fact, the film crew simply threw them off the cliff. Likewise, in the opening to the 2014 animated film Penguins of Madagascar, documentary filmmakers were eager to get some good footage and shoved three young penguins off a cliff. The penguins survived, but the filmmakers’ tactic is a reminder that penguins—and most other creatures—find themselves increasingly at the arbitrary whim of humans: “In that respect, we are a kind of god—and not a particularly benevolent one” (109).

Other penguins in Penguins of Madagascar follow one another unthinkingly in a long, straight line. Like them, Green is a rule follower, and so are most people—even in the face of growing dangers like climate change. The lemming myth persists because it reminds people of themselves. Despite the filmmakers’ tactic, Green considers the opening sequence of Penguins of Madagascar one of the best scenes in all of cinema, and he gives it four and a half stars.

In 1916, Clarence Saunders opened the first self-service grocery store. Instead of handing a list to a grocer who then measured and bagged the items, customers themselves picked items off shelves. Saunders called his new store chain Piggly Wiggly (giving various answers as to where the name came from), and it grew quickly. Saunders’s ads sometimes had a messianic tone: “Piggly Wigglies shall multiply and replenish the Earth” (114). Indeed, the concept caught on, ushering in an era of plainly priced, low-cost processed and packaged foods from name-brand companies along with extensive newspaper advertising.

Saunders lost control of the company and went broke but developed a new store, the supermarket, which included bakeries and butchers, and quickly regained his fortune. He went broke a second time during the Great Depression.

A brilliant but a cruel employer, Saunders was convicted of securities fraud. However, his stores changed the US and much of the world. Piggly Wiggly survived and continues today. A side effect of those innovations is that US citizens now get 60% of their calories from processed food; another is that giant corporations like Walmart are swallowing the likes of Piggly Wiggly the way it once swallowed small grocers. Piggly Wiggly gets two and a half stars.

Every year on July 4, New York’s beachside amusement park Coney Island celebrates Independence Day with an exercise in sheer gluttony, a hot dog eating contest. It’s sponsored by Nathan’s, a restaurant known since 1916 for its frankfurters. The contest began in 1967, but it really took off in 1991, when Coney Island huckster and carney barker George Shea took over the duties of emcee: His grandiose, humorous, and downright goofy opening introductions brought the competition national attention.

The rules require contestants to consume both hot dog and bun, and vomiting is cause for disqualification. Recent winners usually eat more than 70 of the wiener sandwiches within the 10-minute limit. Most sports have moments of blissful elegance, but hot dog eating...not so much.

Japanese contestant Takeru Kobayashi revolutionized the sport in 2001, winning six consecutive Nathan’s titles with innovations like cutting dogs in half and dipping the buns in warm water. When he lost in 2007 to Joey Chestnut, Shea made a callous comment about the US emerging from the previous six dark years, and spectators began to boo Kobayashi. For that bigotry—and for the gluttony—Green gives the Nathan’s contest two stars.

Since CNN first went on the air in 1980, the look of its studio sets and visuals has grown much more sophisticated, but it feels the same, “from breaking news story to breaking news story, from fires to shootings to emergency plane landings” (128).

CNN also does in-depth reporting, though usually about recent events and less about important long-term problems like poverty or child mortality. During the COVID pandemic, CNN reported each “grim milestone” as deaths piled up but failed to show, for example, that 500,000 deaths—a number that needs perspective—caused life expectancy to drop more steeply than at any time since World War II. This problem isn’t unique to CNN.

In 2003, Green and a friend, Hassan, watched CNN a lot during the Iraq invasion. Hassan had family in Iraq and was nervous about the war. The news poured out of that area quickly, and CNN reported it, but time didn’t allow for much perspective—the history of the conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, for example. One video showed a bombed-out house wall covered over in plywood, on which was graffito. The reporter described it as an example of anger in the streets, but Hassan laughed and explained that the writing really said, “Happy birthday, sir, despite the circumstances” (132). CNN’s failure to bring perspective and correct misperceptions in the news earn it only two stars.

Green had a severe bout of depression in 2001. He quit his job, moved back to Florida to live with his parents, entered therapy, and took medicines. The process was slow, but he improved.

Chief among the things that helped was the movie Harvey, about a man whose best friend is an imaginary six-foot-tall rabbit. The man, Elwood P. Dowd, played by Jimmy Stewart, has a sister who wants to commit him to a psychiatric institution. Elwood says his mother told him that in life you must be either very smart or very pleasant. “Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant” (137). Those words had a profound effect on Green, who needed to hear that someone could be “crazy” yet still lovable.

His depression sometimes recurs, but Green feels more hope these days. To him, hope is a touchstone, and for that he gives Harvey five stars.