by When people talk about the ‘anthropocene’, they usually imagine that the enormous impact that human societies have on the planet have, from rapid falls from biodiversity to an increase in the temperature of the earth by burning fossil fuels.
Such massive planetary changes did not start at the same time in a single place or time.
That is why it was then controversial, after more than a decade of study and debate, an international committee of scientists – the anthropocene working group – proposed to mark the anthropocene as an era in the geological time scale that started exactly in 1952. The Marker was radioactive fall -out of hydrogen bomb tests.
On March 4, 2024, the committee that is responsible for recognizing time units within our most recent period of geological time – the subcommittee on Quarernary Stratigraphy – rejected that proposal, with 12 of the 18 members that are the most expert in reconstructing the history of the earth from the evidence in rocks. They stipulated that adding an Anthropocene era – and the termination of the Holocene era – was not supported by the standards used to define periods.
For the sake of clarity, this mood has no influence on the overwhelming evidence that human societies indeed transform this planet.
As an ecologist who studies global change, I served from the beginning of 2009 to 2023 to the Anthropocene working group.
By binding the beginning of human times to such a recent and devastating event – nuclear fall –out – this proposal drove the sowing of confusion about the deep history of how people transform the earth, from climate change and biodiversity losses to pollution by artificial and tropical deforestation.
The original idea of the anthropocene
In the years since the term Anthropocene was conceived by Nobel Prize -winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000, our time has increasingly defined our time as an age of man -caused planetary transformation, from climate change to biodiversity, Megafires, Megafires.
Crutzen originally suggested that the Anthropocene started in the last part of the 18th century, as a product of the industrial era. He also noted that setting a more precise start date would be ‘random’.
According to geologists, we humans have been living in the Holocene era for about 11,700 years since the end of the last ice age.
Human societies began to influence biodiversity and climate of the earth through agriculture thousands of years ago. These changes started to accelerate about five centuries ago with the colonial collision of the old and new worlds. And, as Crutzen noted, the climate of the earth really started to change with the increasing use of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution that started at the end of 1700.
The anthropocene as an era
The reason for proposing to define an anthropocene era that started around 1950 was the result of overwhelming evidence that much of the most consistent changes of human time around that time dramatically shifted into a so-called “large acceleration” that climate scientist stones and others.
Radio -Isotopes such as plutonium of hydrogen bomb tests performed around this time left clear traces in the soil, sediments, trees, corals and other potential geological records about the planet. The plutonium peak in the sediments of Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada – chosen as the “golden peak” for determining the start of the Anthropocene era – is well marked in the exceptionally clear sediment record of the multbed.
The Anthropocene era is dead; Long live the anthropocene
So why was the Anthropocene era rejected? And what is happening now?
The proposal to add an Anthropocene era to the geological time scale was rejected for various reasons, none of them relate to the fact that human societies change this planet. In fact, the opposite is true.
If there is an important reason why geologists have rejected this proposal, this is because the recent date and shallow depth are too narrow to include the deeper proof of humans caused by humans. As geologist Bill Ruddiman and others wrote in Science Magazine in 2015: “Is it really logical to define the beginning of a human -dominated era after most of the forests were cut in arable areas for agriculture?”
Discussions about an Anthropocene era are not over yet. But it is very unlikely that there will soon be an official Anthropocene epoch statement.
The lack of a formal definition of an Anthropocene era will not be a problem for science.
A scientific definition of the anthropocene is already available on a large scale in the form of the anthropocene event, which in fact defines Anthropocene in simple geological terms such as “a complex, transforming and current event analogue to the large oxidation event and others in the geological file.”
So, despite the ‘no’ voice about the Anthropocene era, the Anthropocene will remain just as useful as it has been for more than 20 years in stimulating discussions and research into the nature of the human transformation of this planet.
This article has been updated to clarify that a new attempt at an official statement by Antropocene era is unlikely.
This article is re -published of the conversation, a non -profit, independent news organization that gives you facts and reliable analysis to help you understand our complex world. It is written by: honor C. Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Erle C. Ellis is a former member of the Anthropocene Working Group of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. He is a member of the American Association of Geographers.
