[sandworm101]

>> because of the all the genius that came before us. We're just iterating.

I'd say the last couple hundred years has been a little different than the previous several thousand. We are smarter. Agricultural improvement mean that far more of our population is free to deal with scientific or technical problems, as opposed to laboring in the fields to meet basic needs. A greater percentage of our people are literate. life expectancy is up. Our perspective on the world is greater.

Why does this matter? I often hear climate deniers (and similar people) claim that humans have been on earth building cities for thousands of years, that what we are doing now is iterative and therefore any exponential changes cannot be attributed to our impact. But we are new. Current generations are exceptional in almost every way. We need to understand that while we are linked to the past, we are definitely not a mere iteration of it. To quote Lord Dracula in the new BBC miniseries: "You seem to be accelerating."