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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Mohd Adnan*
*Asian School of Business, Noida, e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: Time is divided by scientists and geologists according to marked

shifts in Earth’s state. The notion of suggesting the term "Anthropocene" as a
defined unit of geological time has gained a lot of interest both among scientists
and in the popular literature on the subject. At the same time, a vast majority of
the publications on the Anthropocene tend to misunderstand the essence of the
International Chronostratigraphic Chart issued by the International Commission
on Stratigraphy (ICS), which forms the framework of the geological time scale.
There is little if any stratigraphic evidence of the Anthropocene, especially if
one assumes its limits from 1945; it is but the span of an individual's life, and
that definition places a significant amount of environmental modification within
a ‘pre-Anthropocene’ period. The Anthropocene should have its distinct users
but it is not that simple. The usage of the term is rather in a different order from
the chronostratigraphic units which the ICS creates, for it extends the poles of
interest to include humanity where the focus is largely on the impact of
mankind to the planetary dynamics rather than the geologic deposits. Rather, the
push for the incorporation of this Anthropocene in the chronology of geological
time may be dominantly political. Humans have created such a profound impact
on our planet that it had created a new phase in geological time. And according
to some theories of geologists, marine biologists, we are now living in what
some they call the “Anthropocene”. This paper not only scrutinizes the diverse
perspective surrounding the debate around the Anthropocene but also
underscores the urgent need for a consensus that can guide future geological and
environmental policies.
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Keywords – Anthropocene, Epochs, International Commission on Stratigraphy,

Human impact, Geological record.

1. ICS & EPOCHS

One of the lakes out of many is outside of Toronto, in Canada is the tiny Crawford
lake, it’s a rare body of water known as a “meromictic lake”. For its small size, at
roughly 270 meters across, it is deep, at 23 meters. It means the sides slope
dramatically downwards and the water at the bottom doesn’t mix with the water at the
top, making the sediment/deposit underneath bizarrely well preserved. In 2023, it
concerned scientists to dig up a sediment sample from the lake, this core sample
contained clues to centuries of human history.

Figure 1(i). the extracted sediment from tiny Crawford lake, Toronto, Canada
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

This eighty-nine-centimeter-long sediment core was one of several collected from the
deepest point of Crawford Lake in February 2019, using the coring method, which
allows the varved succession to be recovered intact.

Figure 1(ii). the extracted sediment from tiny Crawford lake, Toronto, Canada

Source: Records and Readings of the Anthropocene – Park Beom Soon (via anthropocenestudies.com)

There is an official body of scientists in the world whose job it is to decide the
questions related to the matter discussed above, they are International Commission on
Stratigraphy (ICS). Phil Gibbard, a member of ICS has told in an interview that “our
remit is to actually control the stratigraphy of the entire planet really, that means the
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

whole geological column starting with the formation of the earth, right up to the
present day”. They are the guardian of geologic time scale of the earth’s 4.6-billion-
year history. Geologic time has different types of divisions; these are:

1. Eons
2. Eras
3. Periods
4. Epochs
5. Stages

Eons span hundreds of millions to billions of years, then there are Eras which span
tens to hundreds of millions of years. Periods vary exactly tens of millions of years.
Epochs are generally under a million years, smaller subdivisions of periods, often
marking specific climatic or environmental shifts and Stages means hundreds to
thousands to a few million years. Each of these divisions helps us define major events
in the earth’s history, like mass extinctions, climate changes or the emergence of
dominant species. We are living in the 12000 year Holocene epoch. This is exactly
where the Anthropocene would start, not as an era but an epoch.

This system of organization is based in part on the fossil record, which tells the story
of huge changes on earth, like the explosions of animal fossils that marked the start of
the Cambrian period (541 million years ago). The chemical makeup of rocks can give
signals too like the iridium left behind by the asteroid that wiped out non avian
dinosaurs, which marked the start of the Paleogene period, or the way the earth’s
magnetism is recorded inn rock layers that signal major events like the large volcanic
eruption that started the Chattian stage, roughly 27.82 million years ago

2. The Anthropocene
It was in the year 2000 that an academic essay from Yale University Press proposed
the idea of formalizing the Anthropocene.

The name or term ‘Anthropocene’ was coined by a Dutch chemist Paul H. Crutzen
about a decade ago, it has two components to it: “Anthropos” and “cene”, the
“Anthropos” is obviously the human part of it and the “cene” relates to the fact that it
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

would be an epoch of the Cenozoic, which is the last 66 million years since the
asteroid impact wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. The very first epoch that earth saw
or spent was the Holocene epoch. The name Holocene (“Recent Whole”) for the post
glacial geological epoch of the past ten to twelve thousand years seem to have been
proposed for the first time by Sir Charles Lyell in 1833, and adopted by the
international Geological Congress in Bologna in 1885. During the Holocene
mankind’s activities gradually grew into a significant, morphological force, as
recognized early on by a number of scientists.

Although global scale human influence on the environment has been recognized since
the 1800s, the term Anthropocene, introduced about a decade ago has only become
widely but informally, used in the global change research community. However, the
term has yet to be known worldwide as an epoch in earth history. The beginning of the
era of huge human influence on this planet. (Anthropocene era) is still controversial.
The industrial approach assumes that the most significant impacts occurred from the
early industrial era (∼1850), while the early human approach recognizes large-scale
impacts thousands of years ago. This review focuses on three indices of global human
impact: deforestation; Systematic and reliable surveys of land use before 1950 are
rare, and most reconstructions of the early industrial century and earlier millennium
were retrospective, assuming that humans The same amount of land was used per
person for 7,000 years, but this assumption is incorrect. New historical data and
archaeological databases reveal more land use per capita in the pre-industrial era than
in past centuries. This early deforestation caused more pre-industrial greenhouse gas
emissions and global temperature changes than suggested within industrial models.

The great Russian Geologist V. I. Vernadsky in 1926 recognized the increasing power
of mankind as a part as a part of the biosphere with the following excerpt “. . . the
direction in which the processes of evolution must proceed. Namely towards
increasing consciousness and thought, and forms having greater and greater impact on
their surroundings.” He, the French Jesuit P. Teilhard de Chardin and E. le Roy in
1924 coined the term “noösphere”, the world of thought, to mark the growing role
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

played by mankind’s brainpower and technological talents in shaping its own future
and environment.

The expansion of mankind, both in number and per capita exploitation of Earth’s
resources has been astounding. To give a few examples: during the past 3 centuries,
human population has increased tenfold to 6000 million, accompanied by a growth in
cattle population to 1400 million. Urbanization has even increased tenfold in the past
century. In a few generations mankind is exhausting the fossil fuels that were
generated over several hundred million years. The release of SO 2, globally about 160
Tg/ year to the atmosphere by coal and oil burning, is at least two times larger than the
sum of all natural emissions, occurring mainly as marine dimethyl sulfide from the
oceans. About 30% to 50% of the land surface has been transformed by human action,
more nitrogen is now fixed synthetically and applied as fertilizers in agriculture than
fixed naturally in al terrestrial ecosystems; the escape into the atmosphere of NO from
fossil fuel and biomass combustion likewise is larger than the natural inputs, giving
rise to photochemical ozone (“smog”) formation in extensive regions of the world;
more than half of all accessible fresh water is used by human beings, human activities
has increased the species extinction rate by thousand to ten thousand fold in the
tropical rain forests and several climatically important greenhouse gases have
substantially increased in the atmosphere: CO 2 by more than 30% and CH4 by even
more than 100% . furthermore, mankind releases many toxic substances in the
environment and even some, the chlorofluorocarbon gases, which are not toxic at all,
but which nevertheless have led to the Antarctic “ozone hole” and which would have
destroyed much of the ozone layer if no intentional regulatory measures to end their
production had been taken. Coastal wetlands are also affected by humans, having
resulted in the loss of 50% of the world’s mangroves. Finally, mechanized human
predation (“fisheries”) removes more than 25% of the primary production of the
oceans in the upwelling regions 35% in the temperate continental shelf regions. The
effects of anthropogenic also are well documented in the lake sediments biotic
community’s history that gives them away. The observed changes include the
modification of the geochemical cycle in the large freshwater system and occur in the
systems remote from the primary sources.
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Considering these and many other major and still growing impacts of human activities
on earth and atmosphere, and at all, including global and scales, it seems to us more
than appropriate to emphasize the central role of mankind in geology and ecology by
proposing to use the term "Anthropocene” for the current geological epoch. The
effects of present human activities will have a significant impact over long periods.
The scientific report by Berger and Loutre mentions that due to the anthropogenic
emissions of CO2., the weather might change significantly in the next 50,000 years
from the normal.

Figure 2. the growing human imprint on the earth system from 1750 to 2000. Further details and
references for individual data sets are given in Steffen et al. 2004
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Source: Springer Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005 (via Yale university press)

3. The Human Driven Change

Phil Gibbard further said in the interview that “the view that we’d moved away from
what might be deemed to be the normal condition of Holocene interglacial, which is
the warm period in the ice age which began 12000 years ago and we’ve moved away
from that because of the consequence of the human activity”

The best rock evidence that exists anywhere in the world to mark a division in time is
called a “golden spike”. And scientists stick an actual golden color spike in the ground
where they find it

Figure 3. Golden Spike

Source: International Commission of Stratigraphy (via ICS.com)

That means that while there are numerous fossils for an extinct species called a
conodont around the world, from the Ordovician period, a single exceptional one from
new Finland officially marks the starts of the period. If there’s a question over a
boundary, the ICS deploys one of their 15 subcommittees, each of which specializes
in a single time period. These subcommittees will set up a working group of scientists
from around the world to identify a golden spike.
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Erle Ellis, who’s an environmental scientist, university of Maryland, Baltimore county

has told in an interview about Phil Gibbard that “he set up the Anthropocene working
group, so it was set up within the quaternary sub commission to assess the possibility
of an Anthropocene epoch”. Erle Ellis joined the Anthropocene working group in
2009. Two years later Colin Waters joined in, he’s a geologist and chairperson of the
Anthropocene working group. Colin once issued a statement that “the first goal we
had was to plow through lots and lots of datasets, publications, by many other research
groups, to see if there was an evidence in the geological strata such as lakes, in the
ponds and oceans, in the peat successions, corals, even cave deposits, where you could
record the Anthropocene, and increasingly we saw that there was an evidence of
changes happening.”

This statement implies that the problem is, the evidence of human impact on earth is
spread over hundreds if not thousands of years, and the working group needed to
decide when the Anthropocene started. The authors of the 2000 Yale University Press
had suggested it start at the industrial revolution, which many people do not agree
with. But the events like emergence of agriculture took place slowly, and more
importantly, regionally.

Figure 4. Emergence of Agriculture

Source: The History of Agriculture (via growlink.com)

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The Debate over the Anthropocene

but agriculture was off the table pretty quickly and that’s also why the industrial
revolution came off the list (Erle Ellis. 2024. Vox).

The group decided they would have the best chance of convincing their committee
ICS if they focused on the most dramatic moment of the change possible.

So they chose the great acceleration of mid-20th century because it was considered to
be the equivalent of this kind of instantaneous global change. Phil stated that “the
great acceleration greatly increased industrialization which followed upon the second
world war”. Appearance of novel materials, plastics is probably the most famous of
those going into production and processing and then dispersed across the planet.
Geochemical signals to do with burning of fossil fuels. Introduction of artificial
fertilizers for agriculture, changing the nitrogen cycle, how humans have increased the
rate of extinctions, how we’ve managed to move so many species of plants and
animals across the planet.

Next the group had to search for their golden spike, the physical sample that best
showed a change had occurred, ICS researched 12 different sites around the world,
from coral reefs to peat bogs to ice sheets, which brought them to Crawford lake, yes
the one mentioned above. Because of the unique qualities of the Crawford lake, the
sample sediment has a clear annual rings of sediment layers dating back to 1300s,
where the corn dust shows evidence of indigenous agricultural activity

Figure 5. Corn Dust evidence

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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Source: Vox (via Vox)

Then, thick nitrogen rich layers show the arrival of European settlers who logged and
farmed the surrounding area.

Figure 6. European impact

Source: Vox (via Vox)

in the 1930s, there’s an evidence of the Dust Bowl

Figure 7. Dust Bowl

Source: Vox (via Vox)

And around 1950, they found what they were looking for, Plutonium from the first
hydrogen bomb test or the trinity test/ Manhattan project that was conducted by the
famous and renowned scientist and theoretical physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer on
July 16, 1945.
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Figure 8. 1950 evidence

Source: Vox (via Vox)

Collin further said “One of those points of time that you can correlate very precisely is
the onset of detonations of these nuclear weapons, because they produce a global
signal. So you can correlate those across the planet”.

All but one of the 12 samples the working group found throughout the world had the
evidence of nuclear fallout from bomb testing of that era, nuclear weapons testing
isn’t necessarily the best evidence for how humans have changed the planet but it is
the clearest, most universal signal they could find. it’s not strange that they chose the
nuclear signal because it’s a very good signal for the current time, in that lake. In
2023, the Anthropocene working group submitted the 12 sites with the Crawford lake
proposal as the golden spike, to the quaternary subcommittee for a vote and the voting
members rejected it.

4. Challenges in Defining the Anthropocene

The ICS decision doesn’t deny the fact that humans have impacted the earth, just that
it doesn’t yet have a place in the geologic time, for now it’s still a term that’s found
cultural resonance as we grapple with our mark on earth
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Many ICS members and scientists, thought the addition of a roughly 70-year epoch at
the end of the Holocene was too insignificant relative to the enormity of the earth’s
geologic history. In geological terms, something that lasted less than a century would
just be a blip, a blink of an eye in the geological record.

Erle Ellis resigned from the working group prior to the vote of Crawford lake proposal
as the golden spike, to the quaternary subcommittee. Partly because he disagreed that
there had to be a “single narrow definition of the Anthropocene”.

“The idea that the insignificant transformation of the planet occurred with the onset of
the Anthropocene, and not before, that was one of my reasons for resigning, the
Anthropocene is about understanding that humans are transforming this planet and
that should be the focus. Not 1952 or Crawford lake” (Erle Ellis. 2024. Vox).

Figure 9. Outcomes of the human impact

Source: NASA (via www.nasa.gov)

It is absolutely amazing how humans have managed to modify the earth so profoundly
in less than 70 years and probably the only equivalent one can think of is the asteroid
impact at the end of the cretaceous that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs If humans
are still around in hundreds or thousands of years, maybe the upcoming generation
will have the perspective to identify our species’ golden spike. The field of geologic
stratigraphy is meant for deciphering the earth’s deep history, millions if not billions
of years ago, through the only means available to us: decoding the signs of rock
fragments around the world. It’s an awkward fit for litigating our modern history.
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Because after all, we don’t have to look to the rock record to show us the impact
humans have had. The evidence for that is abundant.

Figure 10. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry defining yet another contribution of humans

Source: Our World in Data - CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry (via ourworldindata.org)

“It speaks for itself, we don’t need to create a break in time to understand that this is a
time when humans are transforming the planet” (Inge Lehmann. 2024. Vox). So it is
clear and obvious that humans do have a profound impact, whether it is on the earth,
ozone, agriculture or even the rock sediments deep down the most ancient lakes
around the world.

5. Corporate & Domiciliary responsibility

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The Debate over the Anthropocene

In the current era known as the Anthropocene, all businesses and homes are seen as
custodians of the environment. Changes in companies’ value propositions from a
profit-centered focus to a more socially responsible approach include processes of
cutting down on emissions, cutting down waste, and ethical sourcing of the supply
chain. One more reason why corporations should do anything they can to integrate
sustainability is that those companies that ignore it risk of facing reputational damage,
regulatory sanctions, and criticism from customers. Sustainability management can
result in cost reduction, general innovation, and loyalty from the brand.

One such approach is Risk Management with climate change, depletion of natural
resources, and disruption of ecosystems fast becoming common. The Anthropocene
period has its challenges such as exposure to unexpected factors including but not
limited to environmental factors like water constants, availability of raw materials, etc.
and new market requirements such as coupons for eco-friendly products and new
laws. Risky situations such as these are best handled if companies take an aggressive
stance by employing scenario planning, resource conservation strategies, and other
adaptation measures that will limit the damages incurred through environmental
instability as well as achieve resiliency in the future.

Another approach is Innovation and Opportunities because the risks emanating from
the Anthropocene are likely to create windows of opportunities for the emerging of
the green business technology and its operational framework. Firms dealing with the
invention of new energy sources, technologies for capturing carbon, or ecological
production in the near future will be in the right place.

6. Mitigation

Now that there are many hazards that are spread by humans on the earth, so it
becomes necessary to discuss some of the solutions and strategies mitigating the
consequences of the Anthropocene.

ICS has issued a statement on how we can do it, beginning it with sustainable
development, it implies to the fulfillment of the present needs without having to
compromise the ability of the future generation to meet their own, it integrates
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

economic growth with environmental protection and social equity. It also includes
Green infrastructure which includes projects like energy efficient buildings which are
designed to use less energy while still providing comfort and functionality for
occupants.

Though under the head of sustainability there’s an initiative called “Sustainable

Agriculture”, which in the past decade has been really an eminent topic between
geologists and agro scientists, sustainable agriculture includes practices like organic
farming, crop rotation and reduced pesticide use to ensure long-term productivity and
minimal fertility & environmental damage.

Next is Green technology, it consists a really focal point as Sustainable

Manufacturing, Over the past few hundred years, mass production has invariably been
accompanied by environmental degradation. The issue of sustainable manufacturing
aims at mitigating these concerns by fostering cleaner production standards.

Figure 11. Sustainable manufacturing

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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Source: Sustainable manufacturing process (via flatworldknowledge.lardbucket.org)

Among these are reducing the volume of resources exploited or waste and pollution
created during a specific type of production – ‘eco’ and resource minimization and
efficiency concepts. Implementation of circular economy helps to grow economy
without harming the environment at the same time making industries stronger and
eco-friendly. It has been found that such measures conserve and do not add to
environmental and geological pressure that is conducive to the goals of sustainability
which are essential in alleviating on the pressure humans impose on the environment.

Further we have Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), The position that appears to be
the most practical although not such popular is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
CO2 can be taken from power and industrial processes, transported and geologically
stored in appropriate locations or utilized. Wherever carbon is prevented from entering
the environment, it helps to solve one of the factors of climate change. Especially in
the situation of the Anthropocene where the stroke of humanity is warming the earth
at an intensive range, CCS could help in controlling emissions while implementing a
gradual shift to cleaner technologies.

Geoengineering can be understood as an innovative approach to climate change that is

prone to its own controversies and intricacies, as it comprises large scale technological
applications that are on hand to modify the processes that dictate the climates of the
planet as a reaction to the threatening effects of anthropogenic climate change in the
Anthroposphere. The Anthropocene is characterized by extensive and even adverse

Figure 12. Geoengineering

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The Debate over the Anthropocene

Source: What is geoengineering? (tatsatchronicle.com)

impacts on the ecosystems and atmospheric and climatic processes of the planet by
humans requiring radical or even extreme interventions for prevention of further
impacts. Geoengineering therefore offers varieties of the processes which make it
possible either to abolish or alleviate the negative consequences of global warming
that have been natural buffer systems. On the opposite spectrum, however, it is still
mainly theoretical and there are some ethical dilemmas associated with it presents a
possible way to address climate change as conventional approaches may not enough.
Solar Radiation Management (SRM) is one such geoengineering technique that
focuses on artificially cooling the planet by proposing to send a portion of solar
radiation back to space instead of allowing it to be absorbed by the Earth.

Conclusion
To sum up, the current struggle concerning the Anthropocene is indicative of how
critical and complicated the intersection between human endeavor and Earth’s natural
processes is. In such context, the efforts of the International Commission on
Stratigraphy (ICS) aimed at providing a definitive characterization of the
Anthropocene era, demonstrate the task of outlining an epoch of Earth’s history, not
defined by geochemical events, but solely by anthropogenic activity. Cases in point
include upheavals as plasma engagements to the extent of historic friction whereby
geological timescales witness elements such as construction dirt with breathable air
refuges of other ending circumstances encircling human hyper-activities alongside
exemplified growth of climatology changes, biological diversity as well the life zones
of the planet.

Society has both formed and constructed the world for positive and negative purposes.
After the starting time of extension irruption running to late era showers and
immeasurable social and improved development explosion well ever seen on this
earth, that is the increasing industrialization absorbing factors internally. In this
process, however, the role of corporations has been contradictory: being major
stakeholders in the exploitation of ecological resources and contributors to the
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The Debate over the Anthropocene

increase of the risk of global warming, they are also the most effective agents of
change. The issue now revolves around how businesses, governments, and society
should change from a path where destruction dominates towards a direction that is
more pleasing to all. The Anthropocene epoch is a time for both contemplation as well
as action. It is clear that the practices adopted today to alleviate environmental strain,
including cutting carbon emissions, conserving biodiversity, encouraging low wastage
economy, and developing green energy will not only take the world into the future,
but will also turn over to posterity a record in the earth crust. People such as scientists,
politicians, and businessmen will have to combine their efforts to find the answer to
these serious questions, to allow society to progress while keeping the earth healthy.

When we think of what lies ahead, it should be understood straight away that the term
Anthropocene is not just some time and place layered in the geological map rather it
acts as a discourse which is passed on to the next generations. These decisions will lay
the foundation for how much of a mark we leave on the planet as historians of
dominant species. Are we going to be listed among those who brought the planet tips
overboard or are we going to be the people who stood up for their responsibilities and
knew what had to be done to balance out the planet’s development and environment?
This comes as a relief to know that this period is not doom alone, neither is it blighted
with cyclical disaster – both catastrophe and change are possible in the Anthropocene.

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The Debate over the Anthropocene

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