An important and timely book that addresses the new reality of the Anthropocene and what we should be doing about it.

In what is now being heralded as the Second Copernican Revolution, Earth scientists have discovered that our self-regulating planetary life support system is a single, dynamic integrated system, and not a collection of ecosystems as we once thought. The view that the planet needs to be understood as a unified, complex, evolving system that is more than the sum of its parts has led in turn to three linked breakthroughs in Earth system science: the first is the concept of the Anthropocene, which suggests we have entered a new geological epoch defined by human influence on Earth system function; the second is the concept of The Great Acceleration, the extraordinary increase in human impacts on Earth system function since the end of the Second World War; and finally the concept of Planetary Boundaries, limits within which we need to stay if we are to create a safe and viable planet for humanity to survive.

This latest RMB Manifesto addresses some of the most challenging questions of our time as humanity continues to march past the dawn of a new, human-influenced epoch.

Robert William Sandford is the EPCOR Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative in support of the United Nations "Water for Life" Decade and also sits on the Advisory Committee for the prestigious Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy. He is a director of the Western Watersheds Climate Research Collaborative, an associate of the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan and a fellow of the Biogeoscience Institute at the University of Calgary. As well, he sits on the advisory board of Living Lakes Canada and is co-chair of the Forum for Leadership on Water and a member of the Advisory Panel for the RBC Blue Water Project. In 2011 he was invited to be an advisor on water issues by the InterAction Council, a global public policy think tank composed of more than 20 former national leaders, including Jean Chrétien, Bill Clinton and Vicente Fox.

Robert is the author of some 20 books on the history, heritage and landscape of the Canadian Rockies, including Water, Weather and the Mountain West (RMB, 2007), The Weekender Effect: Hyperdevelopment in Mountain Towns (RMB, 2008), Restoring the Flow: Confronting the World's Water Woes (RMB, 2009), Ethical Water: Learning to Value What Matters Most (RMB, 2011), Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Fresh Water (RMB, 2012), Saving Lake Winnipeg (RMB, 2013), Flood Forecast: Climate Risk and Resiliency in Canada (RMB, 2014), and Storm Warning: Water and Climate Security in a Changing World (RMB, 2015). He is also the co-author of The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer (RMB, 2015) and The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity (RMB, 2015). Robert lives in Canmore, Alberta.

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"Readers new to the subject will find here useful...accounts of how the term Anthropocene came to be, the stratigraphic justification for it, and the evolution of the concept." - Ormsby Review

"Sandford’s second book of 2019, The Anthropocene Disruption, is something of a sequel to his North America in the Anthropocene, published in 2016, both of which expose the depth and substance of his professional work." - Rocky Mountain Outlook