What is "Anthropocene"?

“We are living in a time many people refer to as the Anthropocene. Humans have become the single most influential species on the planet, causing significant global warming and other changes to land, environment, water, organisms and the atmosphere.

The word Anthropocene comes from the Greek terms for human ('anthropo') and new ('cene'), but its definition is controversial. It was coined in the 1980s, then popularised in 2000 by atmospheric chemist Paul J Crutzen and diatom researcher Eugene F Stoermer. The duo suggested that we are living in a new geological epoch.

It is widely accepted that our species, Homo sapiens, has had such a significant impact on Earth and its inhabitants that we will have a lasting - and potentially irreversible - influence on its systems, environment, processes and biodiversity.

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and modern humans have been around for around a mere 200,000 years. Yet in that time we have fundamentally altered the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet on which we and all other organisms depend.

In the past 60 years in particular, these human impacts have unfolded at an unprecedented rate and scale. This period is sometimes known as the Great Acceleration. Carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, ocean acidification, habitat destruction, extinction and widescale natural resource extraction are all signs that we have significantly modified our planet.

Not everyone agrees that these changes represent enough evidence to declare a new formal geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Scientists all over the world are still debating…

To make matters more complicated, the word Anthropocene is used in a variety of cultural and scientific contexts. Researchers, conservationists, poets, philosophers, politicians and activists are all using it, and often they mean quite different things.

The Anthropocene is sometimes used to simply describe the time during which humans have had a substantial impact on our planet. Whether or not we are in a new geological age, we are part of a complex, global system and the evidence of our impact on it has become clear.”

(Click here for the entire article from The Natural History Museum.)

There have been catastrophic events in the past that have dramatically altered earth’s environment and caused the death of life forms and the destruction/alteration of earth’s physical structure.

Those events have been purely natural.

What makes the current “age” different is that many of the changes are caused by us, humans, and we are aware of the changes we are causing.

Andrew Revkin, one of those working to establish whether we really are in a new age (a new age requires concrete geologic evidence in the rock strata) or not, comments:

“We’re the first species that’s become a planet-scale influence and is aware of that reality. That’s what distinguishes us.”

Of course, there is plenty of evidence that not all of us are aware – or want to be aware – of this reality. Our current president-elect denies climate change, as do many right-wing media hosts and commentators. Or, if they admit that fundamental changes to our environment are happening, they will not admit that these changes are caused by humans.

Combine that with the thirst of Empire for wealth earned on the backs of the poor and from the exploitation of earth’s resources and there does not appear to be much hope that fundamental change will happen before catastrophe does.