Scientists Propose a Research Agenda Aimed at Fostering Sustainable Human Progress →

Since 2002, when The Times ran a special Science Times issue called “Managing Planet Earth,” I’ve been exploring how that might happen — or even if it’s possible. After all, I often find myself agreeing with what Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, a close adviser to Pope Francis, said at the 2014 Vatican meeting on “sustainable humanity” that went on to underpin much of Francis’s encyclical: “Nowadays man finds himself to be a technical giant and an ethical child.”

One thing is clear. If societies are to improve their relationship with Earth’s vital systems in ways that work for the long haul, science has to be involved (including the sciences that reveal more about how humans perceive and respond to risks).

But that leads to questions. Science has helped demonstrate that we have entered the Anthropocene, an age in which humans, through our “great acceleration,” have become a planetary force and left a signature — in fallout, carbon, plastic and more — that could mark the dawn of a geological age of our own making (if not yet our own design).

But what does science do now?