WE MIGHT be thrust into an entirely new epoch in 2024, as scientific bodies make an official decision about whether the impact of humans on the planet over the past few decades is enough to mark a new geochronologic unit.
First popularised by meteorologist Paul Crutzen in 2000, the term Anthropocene broadly refers to a time of significant planetary change as a result of human activities, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. Some experts believe that Earth has transformed so much that the Anthropocene may have already supplanted our current epoch, the Holocene, which began 11,700 years ago.
In July 2023, the team of scientists tasked with defining the potential new epoch, called the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), selected Crawford Lake in Canada as the site with the best geological evidence for this. Plutonium isotopes from nuclear weapons fallout at the bottom of the lake date the start of the Anthropocene to the early 1950s.
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The news came as a surprise to many, as sites chosen to mark new timescales are usually only publicised after they have been ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).
鈥淓stablishing it in the media before scientists are able to vote on [the proposal] might make it more difficult to reject,鈥� says , a former AWG member at the University of Maryland.
But at University College London, who is a current member of the AWG, says science should be an open process. 鈥淲e consider this of significant public and wider interest.鈥�
Some researchers disagree with the move to define the Anthropocene as a geological epoch. Ellis, who resigned from the AWG shortly after the selection of Crawford Lake was announced, believes the group鈥檚 definition of the Anthropocene diminishes the impact of humans before the middle of the 20th century. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not what the science tells us about the human age,鈥� he says.
at the University of Cambridge also opposes the proposal. 鈥淚f you have a boundary in 1950, that makes me Holocene because I was born in 1949,鈥� he says. Instead, Gibbard, Ellis and others suggest that the Anthropocene should be defined as an ongoing event.
In response to such concerns, AWG member Colin Waters at the University of Leicester, UK, says humans have been affecting the planet throughout the Holocene, but 鈥渂ig changes consistently happen around about 1950鈥�.
At the end of October 2023, the AWG submitted a formal proposal to its parent body, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), Turner told 麻豆传媒. If the SQS accepts the proposal, it must pass two further rounds of voting by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the IUGS before it is officially added to the geological timescale.
By August 2024, we may officially be living in the Anthropocene. 鈥淩ecognition of the rapidity of this global change within the last 70-odd years would be really significant,鈥� says Turner. 鈥淲e鈥檙e confronted by the fact that had we not burned all this fuel from the mid-20th century, we would be in a very different place.鈥�
If the proposal is rejected, however, it could appear as if we are overlooking the outsized influence of humans over the past few decades, says Waters. 鈥淚t鈥檚 almost akin to someone saying climate change doesn鈥檛 exist.鈥�
