13 Facts About Anthropocene

Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.

An early concept for the Anthropocene was the Noosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky, who in 1938 wrote of "scientific thought as a geological force".

Independent working groups of scientists from various geological societies have begun to determine whether the Anthropocene will be formally accepted into the Geological Time Scale.

Anthropocene Working Group met in Oslo in April 2016 to consolidate evidence supporting the argument for the Anthropocene as a true geologic epoch.

In November 2021, an alternative proposal that the Anthropocene is a geological event, not an epoch, was published and later expanded in 2022.

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Under this model, the Anthropocene would have many events marking human-induced impacts on the planet, including the mass extinction of large vertebrates, the development of early farming, land clearence in the Americas, global-scale industrial transformation during the Industrial Revolution, and the start of the Atomic Age.

Professor of Earth System Science Mark Maslin and Professor of Global Change Science Simon L Lewis argue that the start of the Anthropocene should be dated to the Orbis Spike, a trough in carbon dioxide levels associated with the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.

Lovelock proposes that the Anthropocene began with the first application of the Newcomen atmospheric engine in 1712.

Concept of the Anthropocene has been approached via humanities such as philosophy, literature and art.

Some scholars have posited that the realities of the Anthropocene, including "human-induced biodiversity loss, exponential increases in per-capita resource consumption, and global climate change, " have made the goal of environmental sustainability largely unattainable and obsolete.

In 2009, Dipesh Chakrabarty pointed to the dilemma that the Anthropocene poses for the practice of history: On the one hand, it spells "the collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history" yet, on the other, societies and individuals do not experience themselves as a "species".

Some scholars have posited that the realities of the Anthropocene, including "human-induced biodiversity loss, exponential increases in per-capita resource consumption, and global climate change, " have made the goal of environmental sustainability largely unattainable and obsolete.

The enormous temporal scale of the Anthropocene, Bould argues, potentially yields politically detrimental outcomes.