By Jim Clifford
Paul Crutzen, who proposed the Anthropocene epoch in 2002, wasn’t a geologist. He was an atmospheric chemist. This fact might explain the decision to reject his proposed new epoch. He wasn’t thinking like a geologist when he suggested the Anthropocene. I’m not a geologist either and have no opinion on whether they got this decision right or wrong within their field. But I do know we live in a world under intense pressure from humans. Humans are changing the climate, contributing to the mass extinction of thousands of species, moving sand at a scale equal to all the rivers on the planet, spreading plastic pollution to most corners of the earth, and overloading waterways and aquatic ecosystems with nutrients. The evidence amassed by the proponents of the Anthropocene epoch confirms we live on a very different planet than our ancestors did a few generations ago.
The problem is fitting a deeply interdisciplinary concept into a geological paradigm. This was evident as the process played out, and they searched for “golden spikes” in the geological record. This is very important for geologists if they want to build a case for a new epoch. It made little sense to historians or historical geographers, who see humanity’s increased influence in shaping the global environment as a centuries-long process, not a singular event. The search for a golden spike caused the Anthropocene working group to focus on the beginning of the nuclear age after 1945 because it left a clear record in the strata (if you have the right equipment and know where to look).
As a historian of industrialization, I would look elsewhere and identify thousands of sites that record the global-scale transformation of the past few hundred years. I would try to show how their number, scale and spread increased over time. I might start with the coal fields in Great Britain and note the evidence of the absence of vast quantities of coal extracted over the past four hundred years. From there, we could map all the other subsurface locations that supplied coal, oil and gas to fuel unending economic growth. However, I would not limit it to these sites as the changing energy regimes only tell part of the global story. So, we’d want to link the coal mines with the iron foundry at Coalbrookdale, where coke was first used in place of charcoal, and the sugar plantations in the Caribbean, where African slaves used iron tools made in Britain’s fledgling industry to produce a new source of food for the English working classes. Increased global connections are central to the transformative process. Continue reading