The rejection of the geological Anthropocene epoch has been big news recently. But what are the broader implications of the decision by the International Union of the Geological Sciences’ (IUGS) Subcommison on Quarternary Stratigraphy (SQS) to reject the 1954 golden spike proposed by the Anthropocene Working Group.
While there are multiple, differing and fairly technical arguments for the rejection, it is worth noting that none of thesearguments dispute that humans’ are indeed the major driving force of change on the planet. If anything, human impacts are so large that we may need to think much more deeply about how we go about defining the Anthropocene than through the standard geological avenue.
Hear Peter Søgaard Jørgensen comments on the implications of the decision by the SQS below (in Swedish):
