The International Union of Geological Sciences’ Commission on Statigraphy, the ruling body that decides where a geological age begins is considering changing the name of the era we are living in. The past 12,000 years have been known as Holocene (Greek for “entirely recent”) but experts think that it should be renamed to “Anthropocene”. It is considered a more apt representation due to the fact that humans are changing earth with actions like global warming, ozone depletion, ocean acification, pollution, deforestration and a long list of other functions.
Renaming an era isn’t that simple. The last effort to name an era was the Ediacaran period that took place some 600 million years ago. Naming that era took 15 years of debate. At the heart of the debate lies the question when it was that the human age actually began with some arguing that it was the start of the agriculture that heralded the beginning, whereas others believe it was the Industrial Revolution or the use of the atomic bomb.
Only one thing is certain – humans are changing the world and profoundly affecting the environment.
“Never in its 4.6 billion-year history has the Earth been so affected by one species as it being affected now by humans,” said W. John Kress, the Smithosonian’s acting Undersecretary of Science.
Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen
Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen was the first to coin the term Anthropocene Era in 2000, and an Anthropocene Working Group was created to boost efforts to rename the era. Their efforts have been successful as more than 500 scientific studies this year refered to the current time period as Anthropocene.
Welcome to the Anthropocene from WelcomeAnthropocene on Vimeo.
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