Efforts to put the Anthropocene on the geological timescale have fallen at the first hurdle, shocking members of the consulting scientific body who only learned of the official decision when it was publicised. The deciding group of academics voted down the proposal 12 to 4, declining to define a new epoch based on the planetary changes brought about by humans – though it appears there may be an effort underway to annul the result.
Earth’s current epoch is the Holocene, which began about 11,700 years ago and is marked by a time of progress and prosperity for humanity. However, some academics argue that the substantial changes to the planet due to human activity, particularly from nuclear weapons beginning in the middle of the 20th century, are enough to herald a new epoch: the Anthropocene.
Last July, a team of scientists called the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) decided that Crawford Lake in Canada was the site that presented the best geological evidence for the new potential epoch. Radioactive isotopes dated to the 1950s have been preserved in the lake bed, which is in a protected area and has been undisturbed. In October, the AWG submitted a formal proposal to its parent body, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), for the first round of voting.
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Now, after a few of months of discussion and voting, the results are in. According to a report in , published on 5 March, 12 of the SQS voting members voted against the proposal, four voted in favour and two abstained.
“The [New York Times] article was unexpected coming out this morning, as we had not received official confirmation directly from the Secretary of SQS,” said AWG members at University College London and at the University of Leicester, UK, in an email to żěè¶ĚĘÓƵ on 5 March.
On the result, Turner and Waters said: “Clearly this is very disappointing given the huge contribution by AWG to develop our case.”
On March 6, the SQS released a statement stating that the details reported by the New York Times were “unverified” and that the vote took place in breach of the official processes set by its parent body, the International Commission on Stratigraphy. “Violation of the statutory rules included those about the eligibility to vote and other vital rules for securing a due scientific process, in a neglect of requirements for a democratic decision-making.”
As a result, the chair of the SQS, at the University of Leicester, UK, has requested an inquiry to begin the procedure to annul the “putative” vote. “The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy adheres to a rule-based decision-making process in its scientific deliberations and will undertake all the necessary steps to ameliorate the consequences of this voluntary conduct,” concludes the statement.
There are a few reasons that the proposal was rejected, says at the University of Wales, Lampeter, UK, who is a voting member of the SQS. Human impacts extend far back beyond the proposed start data of the Anthropocene, including the colonisation of the Americas and Australia, as well as the industrial revolution.
“The time span of the proposed Anthropocene is no more than 75 years – a single human lifetime,” says Walker. “This does not fit comfortably into the geological time scale, where units typically span thousands, tens of thousands or millions of years.”
Turner and Waters disagree with the decision, arguing that there is ample evidence for the Anthropocene: “All these lines of evidence indicate that the Anthropocene, though currently brief, is – we emphasise – of sufficient scale and importance to be represented on the Geological Time Scale.”
While the current proposal may have been stopped in its tracks, Turner, Waters and their colleagues will continue to compile evidence for a human-led epoch, adding that they “would not be surprised if there is a future call for a proposal to be reconsidered”.
“It was a shock to some, but it is very much life goes on for others,” says at Utrecht University, Netherlands, who was also part of the SQS voting committee. “It just means is that it will not be on the geological charts.”
But it is not a forbidden word, he says. “It will very much still be used across the natural sciences, social sciences and in the humanities and politics. The concept of the Anthropocene will continue to be useful and significant.”
