2024-03-29 11:37:30
Representative geologists of the profession have decided the fate of the Anthropocene. For them, humanity has not (yet) caused the passage of a new geological epoch. A decision that does not have the support of all scientists.
If humanity continues to impose its mark on Earth, the idea of discussing it as a new geological epoch the Anthropocene seems (for the moment) to be over. On March 4, after a month of debate, around twenty scientists voted against the identification of the Anthropocene as a geological epoch succeeding the Holocene, which began at the end of the last great glaciation, ago approximately 12,000 years old.
The end of the Anthropocne file?
This rejection, shared by 66% of voters, was formally confirmed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), which governs this type of work, then ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), which represents the profession, on March 19. In fact, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), which was formed in 2009 to formulate a proposal likely to resolve the issue, was closed. A vote and a decision that several researchers, members of the ICS, disapprove of.
The vote was carried out on the basis of a proposal presented by AWG researchers in July 2023. This focused on the candidate location to serve as a necessary reference point for the characterization of the Anthropocene. This was Crawford Lake, near Toronto in Canada, whose sedimentary layers would contain the marker of the entry into this new geological epoch first shaped by humanity. These sediments indeed contain significant traces of plutonium, the only witness to the American nuclear tests carried out at the beginning of the 1950s. An indelible imprint on the geological scale for which only humanity is responsible.
A multifaceted scientific controversy
This proposition and, in this case, the very existence of the Anthropocene at the geological level was not accepted for several reasons. First, some researchers do not consider this marker to be the only one that can indicate the entry into a new era. What happened at the dawn of agriculture? And what about the industrial revolution, or even the colonization of the Americas or Australia?, argued one of the members of the AWG, the Danish geologist Jan Piotrowski, to the American newspaper The New York Times.
“The Anthropocene remains an invaluable common denominator of humanity’s impact on the Earth system” IUGSDOthers believe that the relative youth of the Anthropocene, whatever its starting point, cannot allow it to claim period (which generally spans several tens of thousands of years) and prefer the status of event. This reflects a short moment of transition, like the five mass extinctions (like that including the disappearance of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago) or the great oxygenation of the oceans, more than two billion years ago. of years.
Finally, there are those who refuse to admit the possibility of a new anthropogenic epoch and those who even go so far as to call the procedure into question. In the first camp, the secretary general of the IUGS, the American geologist Stanley Finney, maintains, in the magazine Science, that the desire to formally formalize the existence of the Anthropocene was only an advertising campaign since the start. An observation shared by his British counterpart, Philip Gibbard, head of the ICS, who declares that the case is closed.
In the opposing camp, Jan Zalasiewicz and Martin Head, the two British scientists at the head of the ICS subcommittee supervising the work of the AWG, affirm, in an article for The Conversation, that they did not want to vote because of the controversy surrounding the procedure. They also mention the declaration in the press of the results of the vote, before their formal ratification, and ask that an investigation be carried out to cancel the vote, further maintaining that too much evidence is sufficient to confirm the geological relevance of the Anthropocene. Less than a century ago, the gears that began to turn during the industrial revolution accelerated and continued to radically, irremediably modify the geology of our planet, underline the two researchers. They are the markers of a new era. It is better for all of us to admit it, if we want to digest the consequences.
Semantics does not end the debate
As is the way the ICS operates, a ten-year break has been instituted during which the case of the Anthropocene will unfortunately not be able to be formally debated again. That said, the community of geologists in no way refuses the informal use of the term, whether within their profession or in the political, economic and civic spheres. The Anthropocene remains an invaluable common denominator of humanity’s impact on the Earth system. Especially since, during this time, human activities continue, tirelessly, to cross planetary limits.
Article published on March 29, 2024
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