350
J. M. Luetz and R. G. Leo
longer rule out irreversible and abrupt planetary-wide changes (Steffen et al. 2005;
Hinkel et al. 2018). The historian Paul Kennedy (1993) has described the situation
as follows:
The environmental crisis we confront [today] is quantitatively and qualitatively different
from anything before, simply because so many people have been inflicting damage on the
world’s ecosystem during the past century that the system as a whole—not simply its various
parts—may be in danger (p. 96)
Given the planetary changes caused by the Great Acceleration, since the turn of the
twenty-first century, the construct of the Anthropocene has come to hold increasing
importance in discussions about planetary and climate changes (Hamilton 2015,
2016). The term ‘Anthropocene’ is generally regarded as having originated with
Dutch climatologist Paul Crutzen who, whilst attending a conference in 2000, was
becoming more and more frustrated at claims that humans were still living in the
geological age of the Holocene. The story goes that his frustration boiled over to
the point that he blurted, “We’re no longer in the Holocene. We are in the Anthropocene!” (Christian 2008, p. 101). In 1993, environmental historian Robert Gottlieb
also observed that, if we focused only on ‘Nature’ and how it was managed or developed, then we would end up missing a crucial link. For him, it was imperative that
we learn to link the changes in material life after World War II—the rise of petrochemicals, the dawning of the nuclear age, the tendencies towards over-production
and over-consumption—to the rise of new social movements focused on issues of
quality of life (Gottlieb 1993, pp. 3–4). Or in the words of the philosopher-historian
Dipesh Chakrabarty,
… the wall between human and natural history has been breached. We may not see ourselves
as a geological agent, but we appear to have become one at the level of the species. And
without that knowledge that defies historical understanding there is no making sense of the
current crisis that affects us all (Chakrabarty 2009, p. 221)
Scientists claim that the human imprint on the global environment has become so
“large and active that [we] now rival some of the great forces of Nature in [our] impact
on the functioning of the Earth system” (Steffen et al. 2011, p. 843). These are bold
claims, that human activities and not natural processes are now the dominant driver
of change across the Earth, yet it is the crux of the argument for the Anthropocene.
In May 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) recommended that a
new geologic age starting in the post-war boom of the late 1940s and early 1950s
be accepted as the Anthropocene’s start date.
6 The group had spent several years
debating and researching an answer to a simple but key question: “When did human
6 Readers need to be aware that at the time of preparing this chapter the idea of ‘Anthropocene’ is
simultaneously a cultural and contested geologic reality, with neither the International Commission
on Stratigraphy (ICS) or the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) officially endorsing
the term. At the 35th International Geological Congress held in Cape Town, South Africa, August
2016, the AWG recommended that the term be adopted as a scientific reality, beginning in 1950. In
May 2019, the AWG voted to submit a formal proposal that the term be adopted as a geologic era
to the ICS by 2021.
J. M. Luetz and R. G. Leo
longer rule out irreversible and abrupt planetary-wide changes (Steffen et al. 2005;
Hinkel et al. 2018). The historian Paul Kennedy (1993) has described the situation
as follows:
The environmental crisis we confront [today] is quantitatively and qualitatively different
from anything before, simply because so many people have been inflicting damage on the
world’s ecosystem during the past century that the system as a whole—not simply its various
parts—may be in danger (p. 96)
Given the planetary changes caused by the Great Acceleration, since the turn of the
twenty-first century, the construct of the Anthropocene has come to hold increasing
importance in discussions about planetary and climate changes (Hamilton 2015,
2016). The term ‘Anthropocene’ is generally regarded as having originated with
Dutch climatologist Paul Crutzen who, whilst attending a conference in 2000, was
becoming more and more frustrated at claims that humans were still living in the
geological age of the Holocene. The story goes that his frustration boiled over to
the point that he blurted, “We’re no longer in the Holocene. We are in the Anthropocene!” (Christian 2008, p. 101). In 1993, environmental historian Robert Gottlieb
also observed that, if we focused only on ‘Nature’ and how it was managed or developed, then we would end up missing a crucial link. For him, it was imperative that
we learn to link the changes in material life after World War II—the rise of petrochemicals, the dawning of the nuclear age, the tendencies towards over-production
and over-consumption—to the rise of new social movements focused on issues of
quality of life (Gottlieb 1993, pp. 3–4). Or in the words of the philosopher-historian
Dipesh Chakrabarty,
… the wall between human and natural history has been breached. We may not see ourselves
as a geological agent, but we appear to have become one at the level of the species. And
without that knowledge that defies historical understanding there is no making sense of the
current crisis that affects us all (Chakrabarty 2009, p. 221)
Scientists claim that the human imprint on the global environment has become so
“large and active that [we] now rival some of the great forces of Nature in [our] impact
on the functioning of the Earth system” (Steffen et al. 2011, p. 843). These are bold
claims, that human activities and not natural processes are now the dominant driver
of change across the Earth, yet it is the crux of the argument for the Anthropocene.
In May 2019, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) recommended that a
new geologic age starting in the post-war boom of the late 1940s and early 1950s
be accepted as the Anthropocene’s start date.
6 The group had spent several years
debating and researching an answer to a simple but key question: “When did human
6 Readers need to be aware that at the time of preparing this chapter the idea of ‘Anthropocene’ is
simultaneously a cultural and contested geologic reality, with neither the International Commission
on Stratigraphy (ICS) or the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) officially endorsing
the term. At the 35th International Geological Congress held in Cape Town, South Africa, August
2016, the AWG recommended that the term be adopted as a scientific reality, beginning in 1950. In
May 2019, the AWG voted to submit a formal proposal that the term be adopted as a geologic era
to the ICS by 2021.