Christopher Oscarson

CHRISTOPHER OSCARSON {[email protected]} received his PhD from the University of Califormia, Berkeley (2006) in Scandinavian Languages and Literatures with a Designated Emphasis in Film. He joined the faculty at Brigham Young University in 2005 with the repsponsibility of directing the BYU Scandinavian Studies progam. More recently he has worded as co-director of BYU’s International Cinema. His research interests are in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Scandinavian literature, silent film, and the relationship between literature, film, art, and the environment.

Dominion in the Anthropocene

Articles/Essays – Volume 52, No. 4

In the year 2000, Nobel Prize–winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen together with Eugene Stoermer published a short article in a professional newsletter cataloging the manifold ways that humans as a species have affected the geology and atmosphere of the planet. They wrote, “The expansion of mankind, both in numbers and per capita exploitation of resources has been astounding” and then proceeded to list ways that humans have impacted the chemistry and functioning of local and planetary systems including the widespread transformation of the land surface, the synthetic fixing of nitrogen, the escape of gases into the atmosphere (including, importantly, greenhouse gases) by the burning of fossil fuels, the use of fresh water, increased rates of species extinction, the erosion of the ozone layer in the atmosphere, overfishing of the world’s oceans, and the destruction of wetlands.