The Anthropocene is a proposed new geological era, meant to signal the idea that we've changed the Earth's biosphere and climate so dramatically that we've left the Holocene, the interglacial period that began 12,000 years ago.
It's a catchy (if grim) concept, but one whose utility I find myself seriously questioning. I don't doubt the magnitude of human impact on the planet. Quite the opposite. I think we of disruption we've already caused by consistently underestimate the degree of disruption we've already caused by altering the raw biological function of nearly every corner of the Earth and changing the chemistry of its atmosphere, oceans and soils. Very little "wild" anything remains, and all that does remain exists at our sufferance and will endure only with our conscious commitment. None of this, it seems to me, is really a matter of much debate. It's just how the world is now.
I get the utility of using the idea of the Anthropocene to provoke recognition of the mind-bending reality that we are transforming the very planet on which we walk.
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