Geologists are try­ing to rec­og­nize the mag­ni­tude of this change by giv­ing our epoch a spe­cial name: ​“the Anthropocene,” the age of humans. Some peo­ple find this depress­ing because they think that the Anthropocene is inevitably a bad thing. But it’s not. Because we aren’t bac­te­ria. Those brains that give us the abil­i­ty to har­ness ener­gy also give us the abil­i­ty to shape the way the plan­et is trans­formed. We can design our future.