The term Anthropocene was coined by Nobel Lauret Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 AD to highlight how human activity had changed many facets of the earth. The Anthropocene refers to the period in Earth’s history when human activities began to have a significant impact on the state of the planet’s ecology.
Crutzen proposed that the Anthropocene period, which is currently underway began during the latter period of the 19th century when Scottish inventor James Watt invented the steam engine. It is marked by increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. These greenhouse gases has had a substantial impact on global climate.
Officially humans will continue to live in the Holocene epoch for a couple of more years before the Anthropocene epoch is finally ratified by the International Union of Geological Science.
The Holocene epoch started 11,700 years ago. The start of the Holocene epoch makes the end of the transition from the last glacial phase to a period of warming and a rise in sea level. The era in which we live is now officially described as an atomic Anthropocene or the’ age of humans ‘. One of the most distinctive features of our era is nuclear radiation. The fallout from international nuclear weapons testing, nuclear energy, and nuclear disaster are embedded in our environment.
To conclude, since the beginning of humankind, our planet’s global ecology has never been in such a critical state as it is today. But we have also never been better equipped with the tools to understand what is happening and what needs to be done.
