In the first of a two-part series, we go head-to-head on the Anthropocene, after the status of ‘Anthropocene’ was rejected for the world by an international panel last month. Part two of the series can be read here.

Have we entered a new planetary epoch, the “Anthropocene”? As scientists and environmentalists bitterly debate this question, Sophie Chao argues that we need to move beyond reductive “official” labels. We must instead develop a plurality of concepts for our epoch, recognizing that it is experienced differently by different beings, human and non-human.

It’s official: we don’t live in the Anthropocene. Or so the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) ruled last month (March 2024) in a controversial vote. Jan Zalasiewicz, a geologist and chair of the Anthropocene Working Group, is calling for the result to be annulled, and Timothy Morton, a leading proponent of the idea of the Anthropocene, criticizes the IUGS decision in an article that will appear tomorrow in IAI News.

Coined in 2000 by biologist Eugene Stoermer and chemist Paul Crutzen, the word “Anthropocene” describes a new planetary epoch wherein the human species has become the dominant force shaping Earth’s bio-geophysics. Among the countless examples of human impact are climate change-induced rising oceans, species extinction, and extreme weather events, as well as the environmental consequences of extractive mining, deforestation, air and water pollution, soil erosion, and microplastics proliferation. Although the term is now widely used in academic and public discourse, the IUGS decision means that the Anthropocene remains an unofficial geological epoch: officially, we remain in the Holocene, which began around 11,700 years ago at the end of the last glacial period.