The Anthropocene is dead. Long live the Anthropocene

For now, we're still in the Holocene. Science has confirmed that a panel of two dozen geologists has voted down a proposal to end the Holocene—our current span of geologic time, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age—and inaugurate a new epoch, the Anthropocene. Starting in the 1950s, it would have marked a time when humanity’s influence on the planet became overwhelming. The vote, first reported by The New York Times , is a stunning—though not unexpected—rebuke for the proposal, which has been working its way through a formal approval process for more than a decade . “The decision is definitive,” says Philip Gibbard, a geologist at the University of Cambridge who is on the panel and serves as secretary-general of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the body that governs the geologic timescale. “There are no outstanding issues to be resolved. Case closed.” The leaders of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), which developed the proposal for consideration by ICS’s Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, are not yet ready to admit defeat. They note that the online tally, in which 12 out of 18 subcommission members voted against the proposal, was leaked to the press without approval of the panel’s chair. “There remain several issues that need to be resolved about the validity of the vote and the circumstances surrounding it,” says Colin Waters, a...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news