What Myths About the Anthropocene Get Wrong

The concept of the Anthropocene epoch was born in February 2000 out of a moment of spontaneity. Chemist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen had been listening to a narrative emerging at an international convening of scientists in Mexico.

All day, scientists had presented data that showed how the human-caused changes in climate, chemical cycles and biology of recent decades were jarringly different from the relative stability of the Holocene, the geological epoch that began 11,700 years prior. They kept referring to the remarkably rapid environmental changes of the late Holocene.

Exasperated, Crutzen finally broke into the discussion: “We aren’t in the Holocene anymore, we’re in … the Anthropocene!” The improvised term quickly caught fire as a foundational concept among earth scientists, and in the last decade the word has proliferated through other sciences, the arts, humanities and popular culture.

Along the way, “Anthropocene” gained many meanings and implications unrelated to—or even opposing—Crutzen’s original concept, blurring and sometimes wholly obscuring its original meaning. But what did Crutzen intend by the Anthropocene, a concept since enhanced and refined by years of scientific study?

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