A panel of scientists rejected the term “Anthropocene” to describe a period in which humans have profoundly impacted the environment — but others keep using it.
Well, the way I see it, the current mass extinction cuts off the food chain that we sit on. I doubt, we’re going completely extinct, but I don’t think many humans will still be around in 500 years. In that case, calling the epoch that follows the mass extinction as anything with “human” in the name, isn’t very fitting.
And I’m not saying that the Holocene is currently defined as being about humans. I’m rather saying if people feel like there should be an epoch declared, in which humans altered geology, then I would declare the Holocene as such.
It only started 11,700 years ago. Since then, we’ve been dropping tools and treasures onto the ground, cultivated farmlands, built pyramids and castles, dug mines and quarries, dammed off rivers and oceans, and so on.
But ultimately, I rather think the post-industrialization time frame is a geological event, not an epoch.
Well, the way I see it, the current mass extinction cuts off the food chain that we sit on. I doubt, we’re going completely extinct, but I don’t think many humans will still be around in 500 years. In that case, calling the epoch that follows the mass extinction as anything with “human” in the name, isn’t very fitting.
And I’m not saying that the Holocene is currently defined as being about humans. I’m rather saying if people feel like there should be an epoch declared, in which humans altered geology, then I would declare the Holocene as such.
It only started 11,700 years ago. Since then, we’ve been dropping tools and treasures onto the ground, cultivated farmlands, built pyramids and castles, dug mines and quarries, dammed off rivers and oceans, and so on.
But ultimately, I rather think the post-industrialization time frame is a geological event, not an epoch.