The Anthropocene Era
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In August 2016, an official expert group of scientists presented the declaration of the dawn of a new human-influenced age to the International Geological Congress in Cape Town.
“Humanity’s impact on the Earth is now so profound that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared. (…) The new epoch should begin about 1950, the experts said, and was likely to be defined by the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now under consideration.
The current epoch, the Holocene, is the 12,000 years of stable climate since the last ice age during which all human civilisation developed, But the striking acceleration since the mid-20th century of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the global mass extinction of species, and the transformation of land by deforestation and development mark the end of that slice of geological time, the experts argue. The Earth is so profoundly changed that the Holocene must give way to the Anthropocene.”














































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































