Writing History in the Anthropocene

At an international scientific meeting held in 2000, the NobelPrize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen became increasingly frustrated by the repeated use of the term “Holocene” to describe the earth’s most recent geological epoch. “After the term Holocene was mentioned yet again,” one observer recounts, Crutzen became “visibly agitated” and then “interrupted” the session. “‘Stop using the word Holocene,’” he exclaimed. “‘We’re not in the Holo cene any more. We’re in the. . .the. . .the. . .[searching for the right word]. . . the Anthropocene!’” Writing in Nature two years later, Crutzen argued that Homo sapiens had acquired geological agency: humans have become a geophysical force and are now making inscriptions into the fossil record that will be legible for millions of years. These geologic-scale impacts include massive transformations of the planet’s land surface, the damming and diversion of major rivers, the mass extinction of species, and ongoing alterations to the atmosphere that have led to the accelerating crisis of climate change. For these reasons, Crutzen declared the end of the Holocene, which began approximately 11,700 years ago, and christened the Anthropocene as its “human-dominated” successor. Since Crutzen’s announcement, the “Age of Humans” has been widely debated by scientists and environmentalists, profiled in major media outlets such as National Geographic and the Economist, and even become the main subject for three new scientific journals. At this point, the concept is still slippery and imprecise. Its proponents