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Anthropocene – the first human-driven geological age?
Image by Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC (source NASA Goddard Photo and Video/Flickr)
A new report, which will become available today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, argues that human activity has affected the planet in such consequential and lasting ways that a new geological age should be declared: the Anthropocene.
Officially the planet is still in the Holocene age, an interglacial period within the current ice age, which includes the entire span of human civilization up to the present time. The Holocene began some 12,000 years ago.
From an article in the Toronto Star:
Scientists behind the report say that in just two centuries, humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes that we actually might be ushering in a new geological time interval, and altering the planet for millions of years.
When this ‘new era’ began isn’t universally agreed upon among scientists, nor is the Anthropocene era yet an official geological age. Some consider it to have begun with the spread of agriculture, others with the industrial revolution. Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, one of the authors of the report, coined the term in 2000.
The report warns that the Anthropocene age will be characterized by massive extinction driven by ‘urbanization, pollution, travel, population growth, mining and use of fossil fuels’, according to the Star article.
A piece in the Telegraph further explains:
The Anthropocene represents a new phase in the history of both humankind and of the Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate of the other. Geologically, this is a remarkable episode in the history of this planet.
The report will be available online today and in print form on Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology.
by Graham Land
Tags: age, Anthropocene, Environmental Science & Technology, era, geological, Holocene, human, planet, scientists
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