The Anthropocene: How Human Impacts

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For almost the past twelve thousand, humanity has been living in the Holocene epoch. Since the start of the epoch, the Earth has gotten warmer, humans have spread across the globe and grown in exponential numbers, and the geography, flora, fauna, and chemical signature of the planet has changed drastically. As a result, there’s been a movement to redefine the modern era to another epoch named the Anthropocene. People support this term in order to express the dramatic impacts that humanity has had on the planet. There is a plethora of data supporting the arguments archeologists and geologists have made, but there is a major weakness of the claim as well. Politicians and scientists are debating whether or not redefining this period in human …show more content…
This is incredibly important to environmentalists, among other groups, because it recognizes man’s “driving rapid and widespread changes to the Earth system that will variously persist and potentially intensify into the future” (Waters et al.). However, recognizing the Anthropocene as a legitimate epoch has other consequences that affect how people view the history of man. Depending on the accepted start of the Anthropocene, how scientists look at past human actions could change. The weight of humanity’s past actions increases as the scientists of today accept the scale of man’s impact. The planet and its conditions have changed an uncountable number of times, and for as long as humans have existed, they have adapted to their new environment (“The Age of Humans…”). Man can not change the fact that it is totally reliant on the Earth and its resources, however, accepting the Anthropocene as the new epoch could raise awareness of the ability mankind has to rectify their mistakes. That spells hope for present humans to change their actions towards those who have better long-term viability (“The Age of

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