The ‘Age of Man’ | What is the ‘Anthropocene’?
By Indranil Enkhtuvshin
Until the start of the 21st century, we did not think the human race would be influential enough to change the earth’s ecology. Earth is changing because humans’ activities have become strong enough to be impactful to the environment; scientists are trying to define this phenomenon by coming up with novel terms and by challenging the older perspectives to come up with a better solution. The current geological epoch of the earth is the Holocene and it started around 11,650 ‘cal years’ ago ending the last glacial period (Walker and Mike). However, currently, some intellects and scientists claim that the planet earth has entered a new geological epoch and calling it an ‘Anthropocene’. It was first coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 (Carey 1). ‘Anthropocene’ overlooks the insight that ‘humans are profoundly changing the ecology of the planet, and that they are doing so on a global scale’ (Horn and Bergthaller 2). Regarding defining the term, Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) was founded by the Geological Society of London in 2009 and they seek to examine the Anthropocene as a geological time (chronostratigraphic) unit and potential addition to the Geological Time Scale’ (Anthropocene Working Group). It is our only gateway term that will help us question the current changes happening to the earth.
Anthropocene as a geological epoch
Well-known quaternary geologist Phil Gibbard explains the reason why ‘Anthropocene’ getting suggested as a new epoch term as this way, “Interglacials are temporary and eventually it would come to an end but human activities might prolong the current interglacial artificially. Scientists are recognizing this human activity-induced warm period prolonging and want to name it ‘Anthropocene’”. For the past 1 million years our planet earth ‘experienced cold periods (or “ice ages”) and warm periods (“interglacials”) on roughly 100,000-year cycles’ (Herring and Lindsey). According to the first graph, the earth is in a constant cycle of temperature ups and downs and they change once in 100,000 years. Nonetheless, what Gibbard says is that humans are unnaturally raising the current warm period’s temperature and risking it to last much longer than it should be, and imposing the danger of earth staying in this constant state of rising temperature without being able to go back. Gibbard’s claim, that humans are artificially prolonging the current interglacial, can be proven by the ecological changes that are accelerating the earth’s temperature such as global warming and the sea-level rising, changes in the land and the sea’s biospheres, perturbations caused by humanity, and the ‘proliferation and global dispersion of many new minerals and rocks and the myriad ichnofossils produced from these and other materials’. As claimed by the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), many of the anthropogenic perturbations made to the earth’s ecology ‘will persist for millennia or longer, and are altering the trajectory of the Earth System, some with permanent effect.’ (Anthropocene Working Group).
Profound changes that are made by humanity are very visible. Humans are rising the average temperature by a great amount that the land and ocean temperature combined has risen at an average rate of 0.07° C (0.13° F) per decade since 1880 according to the NOAA’s (National Centers for Environmental Information) 2019 Global Climate Summary data; however, the average rate of temperature increase since 1981 (0.18 ° C / 0.32 ° F) is more than twice as great (Lindsey and Dahlman). Global warming is caused by the heat-trapping gases that power humanity’s lives.’ Greenhouse gases’ levels are at their highest than at any time in the last 800,000 years (the United States Environmental Protection Agency).
A proposal to formalize the Anthropocene as a formally defined geological unit within the Geological Time Scale by the AWG that was made in 2016 follows as: “1) Anthropocene is considered at ‘series/epoch’ level; 2) Defining the Anthropocene (colloquially known as a ‘golden spike’) by the standard means for a unit of the Geological Time Scale, via a Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP); 3) The start date of the Anthropocene would be optimally placed in the mid-20th century, coinciding with the array of geological proxy signals preserved within recently accumulated strata and resulting from the ‘Great Acceleration‘ of population growth, industrialization, and globalization; and 4) Due to the artificial radionuclides spread worldwide by the thermonuclear bomb tests from the early 1950s the synchronous signals of the Great accelerations are occurring” (Anthropocene Working Group).
Start date of the Anthropocene
One of the most prominent questions revolving around the debate of the Anthropocene is “When has the earth entered the Anthropocene epoch?” and according to Zalasiewicz, ‘Great Acceleration has been a leading candidate in the debate around the proposed start date for the Anthropocene’. Declaring the start of Anthropocene is around the mid-20th century through the ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs is the most convincing theory for the start date for the Anthropocene because after the 1950s there are fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities’ (Stefen et al. 1). ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs show socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750–2010 from which the graphs comprehensively exhibit the changes of structure and function in the Earth System from the post-1950 through the lenses of socio-economic and biophysical spheres of the planet earth (Stefen et al. 3–4). Elaborate more on ‘Great Acceleration’.
There are other suggestions for the start date of the Anthropocene and one of them is the theory that the earth entered the Anthropocene epoch at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution about 1750 C.E. There are people who tie the start date of the Anthropocene to ‘megafaunal extinctions, claiming that the megafauna had little “appreciable impact on the functioning of the Earth system as a whole’’ (Balter 261). Geologists like Stan Finney however, are claiming that the Anthropocene ‘is used as a cultural term, like Neolithic, rather than as a geological one’ (Carey 3908). Or there are theorists who ‘support considering the Anthropocene and the Holocene as a single geologic time span’ (Certini and Scalenghe 246). On the other end of the debate, William F. Ruddiman et al. suggests the term Anthropocene ‘should remain deliberately undefined and ambiguous’ (Ruddiman 38–39). Yet, Ruddiman is one of the main advocates of 1945 being the start date of the Anthropocene. Certain and Scalenghe explain Ruddiman et al.’s claim as ‘they chose the date of the first nuclear weapon detonation, which created no stratigraphic evidence in 1945. Given that Global Stratotype Section and Points (GSSP) are the preferred methods of marking geological time units’ (Certini and Scalenghe 246). Certain and Scalenghe stand on the opposite claim that of Ruddimen’s. They support that the Holocene and Anthropocene are in the ‘single geologic time span’. According to them, the geological epoch must be based on the millions of years and existence of stratigraphic evidence and they argued Ruddiman’s choice of date for the Anthropocene’s start, 1945, is not valid because stratigraphic changes cannot be made under a century, therefore, the start date should be defined by the GSSP. However, a social historian and now secretary of the AWG Colin N. Waters believes that “So many different signatures have changed so widely and in a short period of time that we suddenly have a different planet” (Water et al. 3909). He believes that the “Anthropocene is a strong concept because just as the official boundary between the Pliocene and Pleistocene Epochs 2.6 million years ago it will be defined by changes in the fossil record, the start of the Anthropocene would be marked by enormous numbers of bones from humans and domesticated animals, which now make up more than 90% of the mass of all vertebrates’’ (Carey 3909).
Despite having numerous debates revolving around its start date, ‘Anthropocene’ itself is not an official geological epoch term yet and the suggestions for the start date have not been set into an agreement. Eva Horn and Hannes Bergthaller put the dilemma of the start date for the Anthropocene into a very effective statement by suggesting that the best way to understand the Anthropocene is “regarding it not as a concept but as a problem, not as an accomplished theory but an open question, a research program rather than a research result” (Horn and Bergthaller 27).
Along with the Anthropocene, a call of appeal is made to reconsider what humanity is doing to the earth’s ecology. Even if the Anthropocene is going to be made an official geological term or not, the earth is in constant rise of destruction. If we do not take action to minimize our bad deeds done to the earth, once our friend earth would become a foe to us. Ecologist, geologist and biologist Anthony David Barnosky explains the threat we are getting as the following, “we are living through a transition in planetary life with the “potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience” (Moore et al. 1).
One of the most prominent questions revolving around the debate of the Anthropocene is “When has the earth entered the Anthropocene epoch?” and according to Zalasiewicz, ‘Great Acceleration has been a leading candidate in the debate around the proposed start date for the Anthropocene’. Declaring the start of Anthropocene is around the mid-20th century through the ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs is the most convincing theory for the start date for the Anthropocene because after the 1950s there are fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities’ (Stefen et al. 1). ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs show socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750–2010 from which the graphs comprehensively exhibit the changes of structure and function in the Earth System from the post-1950 through the lenses of socio-economic and biophysical spheres of the planet earth (Stefen et al. 3–4). Elaborate more on ‘Great Acceleration’.
There are other suggestions for the start date of the Anthropocene and one of them is the theory that the earth entered the Anthropocene epoch at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution about 1750 C.E. There are people who tie the start date of the Anthropocene to ‘megafaunal extinctions, claiming that the megafauna had little “appreciable impact on the functioning of the Earth system as a whole’’ (Balter 261). Geologists like Stan Finney however, are claiming that the Anthropocene ‘is used as a cultural term, like Neolithic, rather than as a geological one’ (Carey 3908). Or there are theorists who ‘support considering the Anthropocene and the Holocene as a single geologic time span’ (Certini and Scalenghe 246). On the other end of the debate, William F. Ruddiman et al. suggests the term Anthropocene ‘should remain deliberately undefined and ambiguous’ (Ruddiman 38–39). Yet, Ruddiman is one of the main advocates of 1945 being the start date of the Anthropocene. Certain and Scalenghe explain Ruddiman et al.’s claim as ‘they chose the date of the first nuclear weapon detonation, which created no stratigraphic evidence in 1945. Given that Global Stratotype Section and Points (GSSP) are the preferred methods of marking geological time units’ (Certini and Scalenghe 246). Certain and Scalenghe stand on the opposite claim that of Ruddimen’s. They support that the Holocene and Anthropocene are in the ‘single geologic time span’. According to them, the geological epoch must be based on the millions of years and existence of stratigraphic evidence and they argued Ruddiman’s choice of date for the Anthropocene’s start, 1945, is not valid because stratigraphic changes cannot be made under a century, therefore, the start date should be defined by the GSSP. However, a social historian and now secretary of the AWG Colin N. Waters believes that “So many different signatures have changed so widely and in a short period of time that we suddenly have a different planet” (Water et al. 3909). He believes that the “Anthropocene is a strong concept because just as the official boundary between the Pliocene and Pleistocene Epochs 2.6 million years ago it will be defined by changes in the fossil record, the start of the Anthropocene would be marked by enormous numbers of bones from humans and domesticated animals, which now make up more than 90% of the mass of all vertebrates’’ (Carey 3909).
Despite having numerous debates revolving around its start date, ‘Anthropocene’ itself is not an official geological epoch term yet and the suggestions for the start date have not been set into an agreement. Eva Horn and Hannes Bergthaller put the dilemma of the start date for the Anthropocene into a very effective statement by suggesting that the best way to understand the Anthropocene is “regarding it not as a concept but as a problem, not as an accomplished theory but an open question, a research program rather than a research result” (Horn and Bergthaller 27).
Along with the Anthropocene, a call of appeal is made to reconsider what humanity is doing to the earth’s ecology. Even if the Anthropocene is going to be made an official geological term or not, the earth is in constant rise of destruction. If we do not take action to minimize our bad deeds done to the earth, once our friend earth would become a foe to us. Ecologist, geologist and biologist Anthony David Barnosky explains the threat we are getting as the following, “we are living through a transition in planetary life with the “potential to transform Earth rapidly and irreversibly into a state unknown in human experience” (Moore et al. 1).
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