Sixty-six million years ago, a celestial body crashed into the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. With that, there was space for the rise of mammals and, eventually, the evolution of a tool-wielding, linguistically capable, bipedal ape with the power, some argue, to have almost as transformative an impact on the planet as that celestial body. As we enter the so-called Anthropocene epoch, in which human activity is a dominant influence on the climate and environment, we must take a hard – and nuanced – look at how we are using that power