There’s a word for this new era we live in: the Anthropocene. This term represents the idea that we have entered a new epoch in Earth’s geological history, one characterized by the arrival of the human species as a geological force. The Nobel-Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen coined the term in 2002, and it has steadily gained acceptance as evidence has increasingly mounted that the changes wrought by global warming will affect not just the world’s climate and biological diversity, but its very geology — and not just for a few centuries, but for millenniums. The geophysicist David Archer’s 2009 book, “The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate,” lays out a clear and concise argument for how huge concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and melting ice will radically transform the planet, beyond freak storms and warmer summers, beyond any foreseeable future (Roy Scranton, New York Times 11/12/2013).

The good news is this: according to knowledgeable sources, the OECD has for years been working on how to organise giant bubbles, under which people can live, unaffected by continuous storms and hurricanes. The weather in one of these bubbles will always be good, the air pure and the vegetables organic.

Of course, with a world population of 9 billion only a small fraction of that population will fit under the bubble. But be positive! One of them could be you!