And on our shoulders lies the entire world.

„This past year – if you’d have tried, you’d have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people.
“A thousand years ago this wouldn’t have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids stand. One hundred years ago – or even fifty years ago – the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. The only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That’s why the world has seemed so large in the past years, and at times so screwy. It’s because Earth is now totally ours.”
[…]
The New World isn’t new anymore. The New World, the Americas – it’s over. People don’t have dominion over Nature. It’s gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing. The future and whatever happens to you after you die – it’s all melted together. Death isn’t an escape hatch the way it used to be.”

Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma, p 265f