The International Chronostratigraphic Chart is the official framework for understanding geological time. Planetary events are defined by layers in rock formations, strata. So the proposal from Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist, to mark the arrival of humans as a planetary force through carbon emissions ‘was in essence upside down’ for geologists Williams and Zalasiewicz. There are many possible markers of anthropogenic global change, especially since ‘The Great Acceleration’ of the 1950s. The formal designation of the end of the Holocene is only part of the aggregating ideas about human impacts on the planet. The Anthropocene is bigger than climate change, mass extinctions, and even the anthropos (humans as a species). The book discusses each of these disruptions in turn, introducing the technical literature for the general reader in plain language, elucidating the magnitude of the Earth’s and humanity’s present predicament.

History, Thomas’s specialty, is helpful in understanding the layers of the Anthropocene. By blurring the line between history and natural history, humanity can be conceptualised as a planetary force and take ethical responsibility for its actions. It is a ‘predicament’ not a ‘problem’ – so there is no singular ‘solution’. Rather, there is only a choice between a ‘moderated’ Anthropocene and a truly apocalyptic ‘unmitigated’ Anthropocene. The chapter on economics and politics brings together planetary limits and models for society, exploring the role of putting nature on the markets and of decoupling the economy from nature, and what this means for justice.

The book’s final chapter on ‘existential challenges’ offers a controlled activism. What can be done, and what can’t be undone? It is impatient with tech-fixes and easy ‘green liberalism’ that changes lightbulbs rather than energy systems. Yet it suggests realistic trajectories away from ‘this civilization’ that is ‘already dead’. It explores ‘different hopes’ to reach beyond what Amitav Ghosh calls ‘the individual moral adventure’. It takes heart from the long evolution of human activities that work with nature. Humans can still ‘improve’, but not by depleting resources. A guiding light ‘through the bottleneck of the next few decades’ is ‘our capacity for reinvention’ through ‘multidisciplinary knowledge and multiscalar institutions’.

Diary of a Young Naturalist draws on the deep time of Irish landscapes and the Irish language itself. McAnulty is not writing about the Anthropocene. He writes his experience of living in Anthropocene times. He brings the special clarity of his youth and his autistic perceptions to express his profound pain when nature is treated badly. Outdoor life helps him cope with the stress of bright colours, loud sounds, and the pressure of school. His diary entries capture happy times in the wild world that counterbalance his anxious ‘normal’ daily life.

Nature is McAnulty’s solace. Noticing is his method. Writing is his gift. This is a coming-of-age book with a difference. McAnulty’s family share his passion for wild things; three of them live with autism too. Together they seek out unruly places, celebrating birdsong and seasonal shifts in the air. The diary is shaped by seasons, which are predictable, and by the family’s movements, which are not. McAnulty writes of special local places and holidays at Rathlin Island, home of wild seabirds, storing up memories of happiness to help him cope with difficult crises like moving house, changing schools, and the sheer effort of being ‘normal’. There is too little time to be wild. He raises his voice in defence of those last places where nature can be itself, where the goshawks keen, where the least beetle has a role to play and rich Irish stories bubble up from the landscape.

McAnulty’s pain is exquisite, yet it is written freshly, in ways that lift the spirit. The language is powerful, even uncanny at times. Solastalgia is a global neologism that conveys a homesickness for lost past places. The Irish have an ancient word, uaigneas (OO-ig-nuss), that poignantly conveys loneliness, even eeriness. Uaigneas is personal, rooted in Irish places. McAnulty’s inside-out intuition of the weight of humanity on nature complements the ‘outside in’ perspectives explored in The Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene poses a question for ‘everyone’, yet who are ‘we’? The pain is uneven, and those who suffer most seldom contribute to its cause. We, the human species, the anthropos, span generations. These books expose intergenerational differences in the way we live in our existential predicament.

Thomas, Williams, and Zalasiewicz, like most of the scientists who call for a new geological epoch, have lived much of the ‘single human lifetime’, the seventy-year span of the Great Acceleration. They have seen change with their own eyes. McAnulty was only born in 2004. Like Greta Thunberg and Year 8 Castlemaine student Milou Albrecht (co-founder of School Strike for Climate Australia), McAnulty leads the new planetary activism of ‘school strikes’. Under-age activists all accept the science. They have moved straight past ‘believing’ to challenging the orthodoxies of current approaches to ameliorating climate change and wildlife extinctions. McAnulty asks, ‘Will my generation see the rightful, rising?’ Being too young to vote doesn’t preclude him from demanding a safe operating system for life. Business-as-usual ‘solutions’ threaten the future of the young. They will not allow it to be ‘discounted’ through the tricks of mainstream economics.

The Anthropocene is a concept whose time has come. It captures our moment of unprecedented anthropogenic planetary changes and acknowledges the peculiar stress and responsibility these changes place on humans alive today. It is historical, biological and geological together. The ‘multidisciplinary approach’ creates, in the words of Thomas, Williams, and Zalasiewicz, ‘makeshift links between … understandings of anthropos, while acknowledging the irresolvable friction between them’. Critically, ‘the Earth System strongly delimits our choices, but it does not decide them’. Diary of a Young Naturalist explores the choices. McAnulty notices small human decisions that spell local disasters, and sometimes hope. The world is planetary and personal, wonderful at many scales. These books inspire moral concern and passionate activism and reflect implicitly on what makes a ‘good ancestor’, to invoke poet David Farrier’s useful term. In the Anthropocene, expertise no longer fits conventional categories, yet knowledge and innovation are the only ways humanity can grow safely. If we are to live within planetary limits with accelerating change all around, we need realistic options. Each of us can make better moral choices, but we also need a diversity of knowledge to mitigate the worst global eventualities.