Push to officiate the Anthropocene

 

“The proliferation of this concept can mainly

be traced back to the fact that, under the guise of

scientific neutrality, it conveys a message of almost

unparalleled moral-political urgency,”

– Peter Sloterdijk, German Philosopher.

First steps towards change

The Anthropocene may be the first step toward solutions by officially acknowledging that people caused the problem. It challenges humans to rethink out relationship with the environment and begin to take responsibility of our actions. By encapsulating all the planetary damages done by humans in a single word we are now able to convey the message of doom of our planet based on the current trajectory. The term “Anthropocene” is wildly used by everyone, from natural scientist to politicians to musician, it is used to remind us of our damages on earth. Although this term is not recognized officially, it is a cultural icon and with the increasing urgency to call or radical change institutional change for the environment, popularity of this term is never coming down (Fig 4).  

Figure 4: Increasing popularity of “Anthropocene” (Malhi, 2017)

 Click here to find out about the problems faced while defining an epoch.

Header credit: Photo by Henry & Co. on Unsplash