Note on the Anthropocene

 

It turns out, geochronologically speaking, that we're still in the Holocene. Still, I have to think that it is overwhelming that the start of the Anthropocene, where humans are the dominant force of change in Earth's ecosphere, occurred mid-20th century.  Time will tell if that's true, and I likely won't be here to find out when it gets officially stamped into existence, but it sure seems obvious.

But officially, it didn't happen yet.

Are We in the ‘Anthropocene,’ the Human Age? Nope, Scientists Say.

A panel of experts voted down a proposal to officially declare the start of a new interval of geologic time, one defined by humanity’s changes to the planet.

“This was a narrow, technical matter for geologists, for the most part,” said one of those skeptics, Erle C. Ellis, an environmental scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “This has nothing to do with the evidence that people are changing the planet,” Dr. Ellis said. “The evidence just keeps growing.”

Francine M.G. McCarthy, a micropaleontologist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, is the opposite of a skeptic: She helped lead some of the research to support ratifying the new epoch.

“We are in the Anthropocene, irrespective of a line on the time scale,” Dr. McCarthy said. “And behaving accordingly is our only path forward.”