Congratulations reader, you are a part of a civilization that has reached about 8 billion members. This civilization is the human race that started in around 10,000 BC and is still growing to this day. Many people have learned that more food equals more people, but that cannot be further from the truth. 

During the ice age, humans traveled the world, making it to new continents and lands. After a while, some thousand years, people learned how to farm and cut trees to make homes and sustain themselves, this did contribute to global warming, but it wasn’t harmful like it is now, it was still cold and the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere warmed up the planet, making it possible for more life to flourish. 

Many historians and scientists have created a model for this growth, a metaphorical engine called the Anthropocene engine. An example of this metaphorical engine working was the invention of farming, farming allowed many civilizations to appear out of nowhere. Farming, created by the knowledge of people tired of hunting, allowed more people to farm, making more food, creating more energy for the engine. The early forms of energy were wood, animals, and plants, providing warmth, food, and homes. Modern energy slowly turned into coal, oil, and gas, which we still use today, to power our homes, providing light, warmth, and safety.

Along with the Anthropocene engine, more equations have been created, to show the increasing relationship between the human population and the climate we live under. During the industrial revolution, the human population doubled in a couple decades, but it also tripled the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in a couple centuries.

In short, the human population has increased along with the environment around us with the little things like the farming and tree cutting in the BC’s to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas today. All of this to make energy for the Anthropocene engine, which keeps the human population going.