Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is a now rejected proposal for the name of a geological epoch that would follow the Holocene, dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth up to the present day.
Twelve candidate sites were selected for the GSSP; the sediments of Crawford Lake, Canada were finally proposed, in July 2023, to mark the lower boundary of the Anthropocene, starting with the Crawfordian stage/age in 1950.
[16][17] The ICS and the IUGS later formally confirmed, by a near unanimous vote, the rejection of the AWG's Anthropocene Epoch proposal for inclusion in the Geologic Time Scale.
[35] In January 2015, 26 of the 38 members of the International Anthropocene Working Group published a paper suggesting the Trinity test on 16 July 1945 as the starting point of the proposed new epoch.
[37] Other scholars pointed to the diachronous character of the physical strata of the Anthropocene, arguing that onset and impact are spread out over time, not reducible to a single instant or date of start.
[38] A January 2016 report on the climatic, biological, and geochemical signatures of human activity in sediments and ice cores suggested the era since the mid-20th century should be recognised as a geological epoch distinct from the Holocene.
[9] In April 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) announced that they would vote on a formal proposal to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, to continue the process started at the 2016 meeting.
[44] This challenged the assumption underlying the case for the Anthropocene epoch – the idea that it is possible to accurately assign a precise date of start to highly diachronous processes of human-influenced Earth system change.
This has occurred in part as a result of changing climate, but also in response to farming and fishing, and to the accidental introduction of non-native species to new areas through global travel.
[3] The ecosystem of the entire Black Sea may have changed during the last 2000 years as a result of nutrient and silica input from eroding deforested lands along the Danube River.
[115] Calthemites grow on or under man-made structures (including mines and tunnels) and mimic the shapes and forms of cave speleothems, such as stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone etc.
Litter and debris thrown from boats or carried by rivers and creeks will accumulate in the marine environment, particularly in coastal areas, but also in mid-ocean garbage patches.
[124] Human burning of fossil fuels has also left distinctly elevated concentrations of black carbon, inorganic ash, and spherical carbonaceous particles in recent sediments across the world.
[3] A marker that accounts for a substantial global impact of humans on the total environment, comparable in scale to those associated with significant perturbations of the geological past, is needed in place of minor changes in atmosphere composition.
Anthropogenic soils are recalcitrant repositories of artefacts and properties that testify to the dominance of the human impact, and hence appear to be reliable markers for the Anthropocene.
Some anthropogenic soils may be viewed as the 'golden spikes' of geologists (Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point), which are locations where there are strata successions with clear evidences of a worldwide event, including the appearance of distinctive fossils.
[131] The astrobiologist David Grinspoon has proposed that the site of the Apollo 11 Lunar landing, with the disturbances and artifacts that are so uniquely characteristic of our species' technological activity and which will survive over geological time spans could be considered as the 'golden spike' of the Anthropocene.
[132] An October 2020 study coordinated by University of Colorado at Boulder found that distinct physical, chemical and biological changes to Earth's rock layers began around the year 1950.
The research revealed that since about 1950, humans have doubled the amount of fixed nitrogen on the planet through industrial production for agriculture, created a hole in the ozone layer through the industrial scale release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), released enough greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels to cause planetary level climate change, created tens of thousands of synthetic mineral-like compounds that do not naturally occur on Earth, and caused almost one-fifth of river sediment worldwide to no longer reach the ocean due to dams, reservoirs and diversions.
"[134] A December 2020 study published in Nature found that the total anthropogenic mass, or human-made materials, outweighs all the biomass on earth, and highlighted that "this quantification of the human enterprise gives a mass-based quantitative and symbolic characterization of the human-induced epoch of the Anthropocene.
The anthropologist John Hartigan has argued that due to its status as a charismatic meta-category, the term Anthropocene marginalizes competing, but less visible, concepts such as that of "multispecies.
"[151][152][153][154] In a similar vein, Indigenous studies scholars such as Métis geographer Zoe Todd have argued that the Epoch must be dated back to the colonization of the Americas, as this "names the problem of colonialism as responsible for contemporary environmental crisis.
[160] To that end, Todd makes the case that the concept of Anthropocene must be indigenized and decolonized if it is to become a vehicle of justice as opposed to white thought and domination.
The scholar Daniel Wildcat, a Yuchi member of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, for example, has emphasized spiritual connection to the land as a crucial tenet for any ecological movement.
[161] Similarly, in her study of the Ladakhi people in northern India, the anthropologist Karine Gagné, detailed their understanding of the relation between nonhuman and human agency as one that is deeply intimate and mutual.
[168] Ruddiman also claims that the greenhouse gas emissions in-part responsible for the Anthropocene began 8,000 years ago when ancient farmers cleared forests to grow crops.
"[175] The term was used again by John L. Curnutt in the year 2000 in Ecology, in a short list titled "A Guide to the Homogenocene",[176] which reviewed Alien species in North America and Hawaii: impacts on natural ecosystems by George Cox.
Charles C. Mann, in his acclaimed book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, gives a bird's-eye view of the mechanisms and ongoing implications of the homogenocene.
[185] 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 2000, the same year that Paul Crutzen coined the term, world historian John McNeill published Something New Under the Sun,[187] tracing the rise of human societies' unprecedented impact on the planet in the twentieth century.
