Does human activity require an anthropomorphic name for the present geological epoch?
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0222
Last winter a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A appeared entitled “The Anthropocene: A new epoch of geological time?” The first of its 13 articles cited “global change consistent with the suggestion that an epoch-scale boundary has been crossed within the last two centuries.” The article reported, “Anthropogenic changes to the Earth’s climate, land, oceans and biosphere are now so great and so rapid that the concept of a new geological epoch defined by the action of humans, the Anthropocene, is widely and seriously debated.” For the second time since then, that debate has spilled onto the opinion page of the New York Times.
As reported here in early March , a 28 February Times editorial promoted the new name for the present geological epoch, declaring that “the true meaning of the Anthropocene is that we have affected nearly every aspect of our environment—from a warming atmosphere to the bottom of an acidifying ocean.” As reported here in May , Nature’s editors sought to intensify the technopolitics of the prospective name. Their editorial argued, “Official recognition for the Anthropocene would focus minds on the challenges to come.” It was a classic case of framing—of reaching for practical influence by choosing the very words with which a discussion proceeds. Much more overtly than the Times‘s editors, Nature‘s editors advocated the name Anthropocene in hopes that it would reframe environmental issues, leading to political action.
On 7 October, Science magazine outlined the debate in five pages of coverage, but it was objections to the proposed epoch name in an October article in Conservation Biology that inspired the 8 December Times op-ed “Hope in the Age of Man” by four authors with various environmental science affiliations.
The Times identifies the four this way: “Emma Marris is the author of Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. Peter Kareiva is the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy. Joseph Mascaro is a postdoctoral associate at the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Erle C. Ellis is an associate professor of geography and environmental systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.”
“Scientists interested in drawing attention to the human transformation of planet Earth,” they begin, “have begun calling the current geological epoch the Anthropocene—the age of man. Naming an epoch is serious business—and in this case the new name is well deserved, given humanity’s enormous alteration of the Earth.” Besides the acidified oceans and the changed climate, they adduce dams so numerous “that half of the world’s river flow is regulated, stored or impeded by human-made structures” and the transport of “plants and animals hither and yon as crops and livestock and as accidental stowaways.”
They charge that “even scientists are still misled by the idea of an untouched, natural paradise.” They note that the Conservation Biology paper “criticizes the idea of the Anthropocene because it leaves ‘the impression that nowhere on earth is natural’ and because ‘the concept of pervasive human-caused change may cultivate hopelessness in those dedicated to conservation and may even be an impetus for accelerated changes in land use motivated by profit.’”
They close with this appeal for optimism:
We can accept the reality of humanity’s reshaping of the environment without giving up in despair. We can, and we should, consider actively moving species at risk of extinction from climate change. We can design ecosystems to maintain wildlife, filter water and sequester carbon. We can restore once magnificent ecosystems like Yellowstone and the Gulf of Mexico to new glories—but glories that still contain a heavy hand of man. We can fight sprawl and mindless development even as we cherish the exuberant nature that can increasingly be found in our own cities, from native gardens to green roofs. And we can do this even as we continue to fight for international agreements on limiting the greenhouses gases that are warming the planet.
The Anthropocene does not represent the failure of environmentalism. It is the stage on which a new, more positive and forward-looking environmentalism can be built. This is the Earth we have created, and we have a duty, as a species, to protect it and manage it with love and intelligence. It is not ruined. It is beautiful still, and can be even more beautiful, if we work together and care for it.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for Science and the Media . He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.