Living in the Anthropocene

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">“Anthropocene”—the name for a geologic age of our own making—is a term that might yet prove decisive in crystallizing the stakes of climate change. What began as a theory (humans are a predominant force shaping nature) is now the defining feature of an era of the earth’s history. Popularized over the past decade by the atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, the term is gaining traction in mainstream media. Its identification is, after all, a news event: we’re living in a timeframe that is not the one we had previously thought. Technically, the geologic timescale remains to be formally revised by the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society, which is now reviewing the case. The commission has, however, acknowledged the merits of the basic proposition that human activity has driven change at a planetary level.</span></p> <p class="p1"><span class="s1">There’s something oddly moving about an appeal on behalf of a planet in crisis to a branch of earth science that deals firmly in the <em>longue durée</em>. The naming of a new geologic era is a provocative rhetorical move, given the longevity of phases in the geologic timescale. The Holocene has lasted a mere 10,000–12,000 years, while the Pleistocene that came before it extended a further 1.8 million years. To propose a new period coextensive with industrial civilization, itself a mere 250 years in the making, is by the conventions of stratigraphy (the study of rock layers) both precipitous and extremely pointed. Crutzen has even linked the putative origins of the Anthropocene to a single formative event: the invention of the steam engine in 1784. Such precision makes the point: if we have left behind the long period of environmental stability that was the Holocene, the stakes have changed—in a very short span of time…</span></p>