The word Anthropocene comes from the Greek words ‘anthropo’ meaning human and ‘cene’ meaning recent.

What is Anthropocene?

Our species, Homo sapiens has been widely accepted that we have had such a significant impact on Earth and its inhabitants that we will have a lasting and potentially irreversible influence on its systems, environment, processes and biodiversity. Humans have only been on the Earth for 200,000 years of this 4.5 billion year old planet and yet we have altered the physical, chemical and biological systems of the planet that we and all other organisms depend on.

The human race has effected the planet dramatically with carbon dioxide emissions, global warming, ocean acidification, habitat destruction, extinction and widescale natural resource extraction. In the past 60 years the rate and scale of human impacts has reached a scale never done before also know as the Great Acceleration. Not everyone agrees that these changes represent enough evidence to declare a new formal geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Scientists all over the world are still debating.

Warning Signs

The climate of planet Earth is no longer stable and is beginning to heat up rapidly. Scientists now agree that human activity, rather than any natural progress, is the primary cause of the accelerated global warming. Some examples such as agriculture, urbanisation, deforestation and pollution are reasons why the planet has been showing signs of global warming.

There has been a disagreement over whether humans will have a lasting and meaningful impact on the chemical composition of the rocks and fossils beneath our feet. This is what needs to be proven to declare a new epoch. As humans have been around for such a short period of time that it’s too soon to tell whether our impact will be visible in the fossil record millions of years from now.

They are still debating the proof for the Anthropocene and are looking for what’s known as a ‘golden spike’ – a marker in the fossil record which could demarcate the Holocene from the Anthropocene.

Industrial Revolution

There are some suggestions that the Anthropocene began at the start of Britain’s Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, which created the world’s first fossil fuel economy. With he burning of organic carbon in fossil fuels enable large-scale production and drove the growth of mines, factories and mills. Ever since then, other countries have been following with the increased demand in coal, with the increase of carbon dioxide emission.

Others argue that the Anthropocene began far earlier, when humans began farming. There are even more suggestions that it started in 1950, when nuclear weapons cast radioactive elements across the globe. From the nuclear bombs there were radioactive debris that made its way into rocks, trees and the atmosphere. This may represent the golden spike that scientists are looking for but there are no set conclusions.

Plastic Pollution

Plastic could become a key marker of the Anthropocene as millions of tons of plastic is produced every year which is then washed up onto the beaches but plastic isn’t biodegradable so it ends up  littering soils and ocean beds. There was a 2019 study of sediments off the Californian coast found that plastic waste has be rising since the 1940s. The study of scientists are trying to find out whether plastic pollution could be another marker for the golden strike.