The debate over the Anthropocene, explained
Humans have changed the planet. Should that go on the geologic calendar?
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The word “Anthropocene” has gained cultural resonance in recent years, as it’s become clearer that humans have made an indelible - and destructive - impact on our planet. But it’s also a term with a specific technical meaning: an epoch, or geologic unit of time, named for humans.
In 2009, geologists first started investigating whether the Anthropocene should be formally recognized as part of the way we record geologic time. This video explains what happened next: how a team of scientists looked for the evidence to make their case, and what it means to consider human time as part of the Earth’s 4.6 billion-year history.
Note: The title of this video has been updated.
Previous title: Should humans get their own geologic era?
Future Perfect’s Sigal Samuel has covered the Anthropocene debate for Vox.com:
www.vox.com/future-perfect/20...
www.vox.com/future-perfect/20...
This website gives a thorough overview of all the sites the Anthropocene Working Group investigated, including Crawford Lake: www.anthropocene-curriculum.o...
We don’t mention this in the video, but Phil Gibbard and Erle Ellis co-authored a paper proposing the Anthropocene as an “event” rather than an epoch: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/a...
For more reading:
The New York Times did a lot of great reporting on the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s process for considering the Anthropocene:
www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/cl...
The New Yorker covered some of the drama behind the Anthropocene decision:
www.newyorker.com/news/the-we...
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In the maps at 5:41 and at 6:25, the marker for Crawford Lake is incorrectly placed. Thanks to those who flagged it! But for more info on Crawford Lake check out this beautiful project that has a ton of detail about the field work there. If you scroll down you'll see the Anthropocene Working Group's study. www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/the-geological-anthropocene/site/crawford-lake
I love vox accountability. No other media source is this good
@@reviewchan9806 except for when they greenwash for airline companies
Also noticed Ediacaran is listed twice at 3:20, when it should be Cambrian
@@reviewchan9806 Objectively not true in a comment praising accuracy. Nice!
@@reviewchan9806 They are not great. I just found a short that REALLY BOTHERS ME, as a former music student...it is extremely culturally chauvinist, pretending that Western standards are universal. This isn't something new. I was taught about how uneducated this point of view is, twenty years ago, in Texas. Please, stop reversing progress.
My favorite name that I have heard for it is the "Plasticene" Era, playing on Pleistocene, because some people say there should now be enough plastic and microplastic in the current sedimentary layer that it should be obvious to potential future paleontologists that something significant happened around now.
Even if they don't want to claim it a new geological era. They should At least make it some kind of official sedimentary time zone. They can't deny the impact of plastic and the human impact on these sedimentary layers. They will be signs and markers for thousands of years into the future.
Y’all forget that wood is a type of plastic, it being [crushed] down into coal is how we power our world. So manmade/synthesized plastics is more descriptive. (I think defining the word plastic to include all the generally accepted plastics without including cellulose and lignin, to be like defining a chair, it’s very large group of materials, and that diversity in molecule types is why we thought of it as a miracle material in the first place)
That would be adequately described as a geologic event, rather than an epoch, as it has not been sustained over millions of years.
@@crayonburryIsn't plastic specifically synthetic or man made polymers?
@@PJ-oe6eu I am getting conflicting answers from google. As natural/bio based plastics are classed as plastics. And wood is made of polymers (cellulose, lignin). The major argument for wood not being a plastic, is that it biodegrades. Yet when wood first evolved, wood was not biodegradable, and that specific fact is why we have coal today. So I find it weird to separate wood from other plastics.
It's odd that we feel the need to have such a precise start date to what's clearly a new epoch for the planet. I mean, our uncertainty about the date of the asteroid impact is on the order of tens of thousands of years.
Pretty much what I was thinking as well. The change has been huge and for all intents and purposes permanent outside of some global cooperation on a scale never seen before.
I'm a paleontologist studying this extinction, and yes you are absolutely correct! It's madness!!
Hubris, they specifically want to put their mark somewhere now when we live. Instead of letting our ancestors take care of it when time comes.
Maybe it’s the fact that we can’t be so precise about things that far back, that makes them want to be as precise as possible now when we can be?
@@kierenmoore3236 and there is no chance that our ancestors will simply think "lol, why did they put it here? It was not until 2000 years later." The thing is, if you can't be "precise" even far back then it was probably not a big change. The ones we have put out show big changes.
Growing up visiting Crawford Lake and then studying under the professors from Brock University who took on this research in my undergrad, to now seeing both these encounters come together has been the coolest experience!
That is really cool!😎
Fellow Badger!
Cool and your name goes well
All I could think of is John Green’s Anthropocene Reviewed podcast/book. Maybe he’ll come back and review that lake.
Such a good bit of writing by him. 5 stars.
This video would have been 5 stars if it were called "The debate over the Anthopocene, Reviewed"
+
They already did. SciShow did a video about it a couple months ago.
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I love it when old school papers I wrote get verified in videos like this. I was asked to write a paper on whether or not the Anthropocene was real, and if so when did it start. And my conclusion was that if any point had any validity, it would be when nuclear testing began. But much more than that, I essentially claimed that picking a time and reason now and declaring that this was the start of a brand new geological era was was not only short sighted, but egotistical. As in, if humans do create an impact that later marks a new geological era, it might well be years off from now (for example, if a nuclear war happens, then that effect will make any before it null and void), and so declaring any point in time before we have the benefit of hindsight is useless. But additionally the idea that our current effects justify enough geological change is probably based on a view of artificially raised importance of humanity. I think the Anthropocene is a great description when used as a historical or a philosophical term. But as a geological term, it simply does not hold water yet.
"our current effects justify enough geological change is probably based on a view of artificially raised importance of humanity" I kindly disagree. One counter-example: If you have a look on the number of species on earth, reducing them by about 75% (until now) is indeed comparable to other massextinction events on the planet. Or the rise in temperature or CO2, we effectively avoided the upcoming ice age in the ~28k year cycle. These (and others too) are not founded in "artificially raised importance" but, from a geological viewpoint, indeed some pretty astonishing "achievements".
@@snygg1993 I could have been more clear, as I'm not at all saying we haven't had an impact. What I'm saying is that seeing our impact as grounds to declare a new epoc is probably too much. We have certainly had an effect within this epoc, and given time we might look back and say "indeed we were correct, that was the turning point". But I think claiming so while still being within that same time of change is an act of arrogance. Its like deciding that spring is here because you've had a warm day in january. Much more significant change may well be coming, and since we havent been through this spring before we can't say if this truly is the peak of change, or just the first warm day.
But isn't this culturally significant, despite geological certainty? As far as utility, it's pretty useful to define the Anthropocene epoch, even if it changes in the future. The lines we set aren't set in stone. (pardon the pun..)
@@evindrews For sure, like I said philosophically, historically, and as you say culturally, its a great term. Just not geologically. Saying "we're in the era of mankind" is very different from saying "geologically we're in the era of mankind and should name a new epoc after it"
Very much so. It's too soon to call it an era when it could very well just be a boundary event.
5:41 Graphics Error: Crawford Lake is in Southern Ontario, not Northwestern Quebec
Oh Canada
lol how did they get it that wrong
I saw that too, pretty egregious!
@@miloandash Probably because the map doesn't show Lake Ontario or Erie, and so the animator got confused and used Hudson Bay instead lol
Vox needs to do better
When you look back at the earth. We are all a bunch of worker ants.
The ascetic ideal strikes once more
Ants don’t pollute and irreparably destroy their environments though
We are more like cancer cells
When you look back at earth. We are all a bunch of humans who've done so much whether bad or good Stop with this constant villifying of humans if you hate being one go join the ants
@@bobbobby3085yeah and what exactly do you mean with good for earth? For humans yes of cause but for earth not really. We arent even able of equality around the globe mainly western countrys robbin the poore Afrika indonesia vietnam
I'm a bit surprised no mention was made of elevated Pb from leaded gasoline before it was removed, the lake should have a record of that in its sediments too since the dispersal is worldwide.
I was also thinking air travel/space travel. Along the same lines, but yours would be more obvious I think 🤔
My guess is using atomic testing is by far the easiest as it added elements that wouldn't be there in literally any other way so there'd never be an argument of where it came from or what it was. Clearer to all.
The whole idea of a golden spike, while I'm sure useful in some ways, is nevertheless trying to impose order on the chaos of knowledge; just like trying to impose strict boundaries on geologic time. But we construct these names and spikes and timelines because they are useful. The idea of the Anthropocene is useful-it helps jolt us out of thinking we can continue to act as if we were living in the relatively stable climate of the Holocene. The future will not be like the past. We are no longer humans of the Holocene.
Perfect portrait of the scientific community. Global cooperation and conflicts about definitions. It's beautifully broken, and I wouldn't want it any other way ❤
Idk makes sense to me to mark our era. Sure it's only been roughly a hundred years, but look all around us during that time. We've changed the climate, moved mountains, destroyed countless areas.
It makes sense to mark our era, but I'd say it makes less sense to choose a specific year or decade to be that mark. All the past ones are ranges of thousands of years, we can just say the date is the 1800s or 1900s and be done with it. Figure out which century started leaving behind things that'd last long enough to be seen in rock layers and say "yep, that's the starting point. The golden spike will be for geologists in thousands or millions of years to plant when they try to find good evidence of how long our era lasted. If we want to leave one now, just leave it anywhere on the ground and we've marked our era.
Not really, like they said, we can't see the wood for the trees. it'd be like trying to say how big the ocean is while we're swimming in it.
It's right to mark it, but we don't know how long the changed conditions will persist and it would need to be millions of years to justify calling it an era. We could be actually or functionally extinct long before then, and the Anthropocene could be a boundary event.
If all of humanity vanished tomorrow, all traces of us would be nearly gone within a couple hundred years, which is not even a blink in geologic time.
@@mariusvanc thats not at all true. There would be a thin layer in the geological timeline that shows our activity
not the grimes sneak 😭😭 8:13
Well, it does quite clearly exemplify how significant this little epoch is
I feel like we’re more akin to an extinction event than a geologic period
If I recall correctly, all 5 of the past great extinctions occurred at the boundaries of different geological "times."
It's an extinction event to people without children. Life will move on without them.
@@riversknowthis4900 Well of course, but that's not a coincidence - it's because the boundaries were caused by the same things as whatever caused the 5 mass extinctions. Something drastic happened to the Earth for each of those mass extinctions and changed the world forever, and the sudden change is visible in the rocks and the fossil record.
If that's the case, then we are at the very start of the extinction event. Even a quick look at the numbers will tell you that humans have caused no where near as much damage as the past 5 great extinctions. However, if technology and disregard for nature accelerates, then in 150 years we may have a case for that.
Cyanobacteria caused a mass extinction known as the great oxygenation event; and yet in that process they created the necessary environment for more complex life. The idea that we are separate from nature, and that the things we do are unnatural is absurd. We are not Gods, we are just another rung on the ladder of evolution.
This video was super engaging. More of this type of content pls
Hope the people who said 70 years was too short of time realize that when the Anthropocene ends, nobody is going to be stratigraphating anything
Love these types of videos thank you vox
It's only 70 years old but it is poised to last far longer than that. So perhaps determining geologic time periods shouldn't be based on how old a particular time period is and instead be based on how much the planet has changed from a particular demarcation point.
i loved this video so much omg thank you vox please never stop
Nuclear signal is the most obvious one to be sure. I heard that all steel we have produced anywhere on the globe after WW2 has a little bit of radiation because of all the nuclear explosions that it cannot be used for making Geiger counter. This is a good reference.
Yes, I saw something about that recently;- The German Navy Fleet from WW1 was scuttled in Scapa Flow, Orkney in 1919 . Those many kilo-tonnes of quality German steel now have a commercial value for just that reason.
Vox, vice, daily show, and last week tonight are my go to for informational videos. Good stuff
Vice is a little bit "meh" lately. But ye.
Me and all my homies stuck in the the cretaceuous period
Don't use Blk slang.
wow what an amazing work you've done!!! thank you
How about the "Catastrophic" era. Yes, certainly, a golden spike indeed. 🙄
Homotrophic ( yeah ) that's is sixth mass extinction event ongoing now
Depends on your definition of catastrophe. We live in an Era where millions of people have been able to get out of extreme poverty, and have a standard of living better than the kings in the past. But hey, to some people going back on time, and making everyone poor and miserable again is worth doing, for the sake of "saving the planet".
By the way, how good is a planet without humans and a conscience to behold it?
The Earth has seen darker days.
Excellent video, once again. The quality and storytelling is stellar!
Excellent accessible but not dumbed-down content. Kudos to Vox.
I loved how you closed out this story. Kudos to the writer(s)
This is the Capitalocene. An era where money and capitals reign supreme, above humans. Thank you for the video.
nothing to do with geology
I love that those scientists don't need to be in a hurry at all. They literally have millions of years to finish the work :)
One thing is certain Anthropocene would be the shortest period 😝😝😝😝
Fascinating with very helpful graphics
3:19 Ediacaran is shown twice, the second label should say Cambrian.
Vox makes a lot of great videos, but honestly their error checking is amateurish
i’ve been hiking crawford lake for 15+ years lol. so cool to see our little slice of the world hit the spotlight
Very helpful and knowledgeful
As a person who is majoring in geology in undergraduate studies... Vox videos make me feel like.. choosing science was not a bad decision. Thanks for these AMAZING videos. I hope to continue seeing these videos till my lifetime
8:28 What is that big scrolling map wall? I want a video on that. Maybe not by Vox. But that's a cool piece of tech.
very interesting video vox nicely done
It's worth Reviewing at least
fantastic video!, I live near Crawford lake and enjoy it very much there are many things there that make it special. I was so excited at the chance to have a golden spike i could go visit near me but alas we are too early for that. still warrants going back with a new perspective though!
Life would be better for humans if we all just got along
Can never get along with Muslims
conflict is in our genes
@@dbqp5211 couldn't have said it better
Power to the Workers
Genius
What a fantastic video. I learned a lot!
As a Canadian I have to give props for how you pronounced Newfoundland 👏🏻
I do believe that our actions in the next decades will dictate as to whether or not humanity will prosper and thrive OR go extinct. Unfortunately, as far as we can see now that there is a lot of inaction with regards to governments and heads of states in enacting policies for change. Record temperatures, droughts, stronger typhoons, unpredictable weather systems, famine, loss of biodiversity, and potential ecological collapse are too evident to ignore. In the end, our fate is in our hands.
The thing is. Humanity can survive a lot of these catastrophe’s. Yes many may not make it. But it takes a very big catastrophe to wipe us all out to extinction But overall humanity could survive. The issue is many other diverse ecosystems might not. So it’s going to be an extinction event for them.
Humans are the most adaptable animals on the planet, would take a lot more than a bit of bad weather to wipe us out.
@@ano_nymthis isn't "bad weather" it's literally the collapse of agriculture as we know it. It will lead to mass starvation, and potentially the end of modern humans. Agriculture requires a few things, pollenizers, temperature, and water.(Fertilization too but most fertilization is already human made" Pollinators are going extinct, which will make it on a mass scale difficult to produce food. Temperature is rising globally, certain crops cannot survive the increase, we will lose crops, for example cocca and vanilla will soon go extinct Water is mostly human controlled, but the rate we use it for agriculture is unsustainable, we will eventually be forced to reduce the amount we use, limiting the amount of crops we can grow. On top of agriculture powerhouses becoming more arid, we lose land to even grow crops in
@@declaringpond2276 that is still not extinction, which is what we are talking about here. A few millions could apparently survive as hunter gatherers today. With modern tech we could probably support quite a few even if we had to rely on indoor farming.
Appreciate ya. Thanks for sharing.
2:15 ah Jstor, I thought I wouldn't have to see you till the end of summer once more since I finished my end of semester papers, but here you are again, haunting me.
I thought for sure the detonation of the first nuclear bomb would mark the beginning of the era, as our steel and earth is now time stamped.
I don't understand how we are not in the "antropocene", instead of this specific lake imagine people hundreds of thousands of years from now digging up sediment and finding mass amounts of concrete, a substance that doesn't exist at any other point in time yet is all across the globe due to humans building cities.
Maybe, but I'm not sure that even Portland cement based concrete would not have degraded after even ten thousand years , let alone a hundred thousand. But anyway, concrete does exist as natural rock, for example Conglomerate and Breccia. even glass will likely be largely reduced to sand. What seems to be certain though is that plastics will endure, if even in the form of micro-plastics.
You had me at Guardians of the geological calendar
very important video well done guys
Super interesting to learn about the geological timeline - Eons, Eras, Epoch. Do you know some good books or recources to learn more?
Very nice window into the workings of global academic organizations. Thank you!
Nice video, thank you!
Great video! Shout out to the OER Project! Fre high quality teaching resources!
Loved to see the Bogotá pic 🖤
The first stage of the anthropocene scould be named "The Trinitian Age/Stage" after the Trinity bomb
what editing software are you guys using some tips.....
Great video thanks!
Loved the video despite not understanding a single word.
Made me think of Burtynsky and his project on the Anthropocene
Awesome video!
The reason that Anthropocene inclusion is significant is that the planet hasn't changed it's size, but HOW it is effected is exponential because of how life and thus humans have gained such power to alter the planet.
The question I always ask about the Anthropocene is whether it is necessary. Human activity, as you show, is evident at the very beginning of the Holocene (e.g. large mammal extinctions, agriculture).
The committee acknowledges that humans have changed the world but they say it is only just a blip in time. That is the entire reason why it should be shown as an epoch with the Anthropocene. It shows the enormity of the change that we have brought to the entire planet in such a short time. What took millions of years in past epochs was done by humans in only decades.
I think part of the problem is that there is a separate Holocene epoch. It's already so short and only marked by an unremarkable interglacial. Move it up or down, but the last 12,000 years don't have enough room for two epochs. I do agree that, wherever we start it, humanity's impact on the planet is obviously geologically relevant and should be reflected on the geologic time scale.
Can you do something like this on Pink Lake in Gatineau park of Quebec? Similar type lake
My dad was a close colleague of Paul Crutzen (the man who coined the term "Anthropocene")!
HEYYYY Bogota! In the first urban shot. I feel seen! hahaha. Love from Bogota!
Holy s***! Earl Ellis was my college professor! He taught my ecology class and my anthropogenic Biome class
Holocene (Taylor's Version)
Very interesting, mahalo for sharing
It feels sad how long we need to wait to define it as not just an anomaly, but imagine 1000 years in the future what they think about the early 21st century.
I like the content but please drop the typing noise effect during videos.
A good addition to the debate is Charles C Mann's book called 1491, this known as the great Columbian Exchange and it has impacted the global stratigraphy dramatically and rapidly and this is prior to the Industrial Revolution and it gave the trinity of ingredients for it: iron ore, fossil fuels, and rubber. 11,7000 is the Pleistocene/Holocene golden spike, then the Holocene is divided up into 3 stages, where the latest, the Meghalayan is based on a single speleothem from India. Maybe the Anthropocene is not a new epoch, but a new stage within the "Age of Man", the Holocene?
Nice video and presentation. Page 1:56 What make us think that by iridium debris littered found on earth constitutes an astroid hit? Why can’t this be a comment rich in iridium fly by and litter debris on earth? That extinction has a different course? Why are we so hungry for solution in science willing to give up the science methods and embrace anything in front of us?
Also it is a very nice book by John Green
The podcast episodes were even better, in my opinion. He already did a lot of good writing, but as he read them it took it to the next level. 5 stars.
Its literally like a timeline for our planet. What a great way for future humans to fix and solve problems that we may cause.
Highly recommend reading John Green's "The Anthropocene Reviewed" if anyone is interested on the ideologies and philosophies of the anthropocene.
We may not know exactly when it started yet, but I think it's undeniable that we are in the Anthropocene.
Considering we say things like the end if the non-avian Dino’s was 66 million years ago, there’s probably not a minute determining date for it. In ten thousand yrs, will we be saying it started in 1954?
@@ValeriePallaoro hard to say. We have much more precise and detailed records now. It's difficult to pinpoint an exact date millions of years ago based on how rocks look, but in thousands of years the rocks will indicate a change, and our detailed knowledge of history will inform us on a more precise start than any other era has had. Maybe not down to a single year, but we may be able to have the precision of a few decades.
The Anthropocene is real because John Green has reviewed it in an awesome podcast :D
Indeed. Have you read his resulting book? 2022.
@@michellevdheever7619 No, but now that you've reminded me I checked it and saw that it's available as an audiobook narrated by him on Audible, so I'll listen to it soon!
When I was a kid, I predicted the whole world would eventually be tiled in discarded bubblegum. It would have been the “gumocene” if it came to pass.
@VOX please! Do a Video about South Brazil! There is an environmental catastrophe happening right now!
Geologist here! I firmly believe that the Anthropocene is official.
So, geologists' current relationship status with the Anthropocene is, "it's complicated, but not official." Sounds like they want some more time to sort themselves out and make sure it's a good move long term.
In short, humanity is so insignificant to the history of earth. So much that we have decided that a line in history would be too great of a marker
Thanks for using civilized units of measurement.
These people despise humanity.
This video rocks!
Fascinating
There's a distinct irony in the way scientists can agree on epochs from millions of years ago and yet they can't agree on the epoch we live in today.
So... Oppenheimer hailed in the current modern epoch/age? Wow
I always thought plastic was an indicator of the anthropocene because it would take thousands of years to break down
Great video, but why is the dot for Crawford Lake on the map of candidate sites placed so incorrectly relative to its actual position XD
ha ha yeah
Yes, and at its end containing a world-wide layer with a lot of lead-207 and uranium-238.
Well, maybe to our point of view it would be useful to have this separated denomination. But we must not forger that we are really just a bunch of primates.
Human growth literally both looks and acts like cancerous tumours so if it’s having a large effect on the geologic record it should be marked so we know when the Earth began being killed🤷♂️.
But also the most successful species to ever inhabit the earth.
fFrom any point of view actually, theres no way you can take an objective look at the planet and see such massive change in such a short amount of time and just not acknowledge humanity. We are far more than bunch of primates, we are separate and above the rest of nature.
@@babyfaec bacteria are more successful
0:07 🌊 Crawford Lake is a rare meromictic lake near Toronto, Canada, with unique sediment preservation due to its deep, non-mixing water layers. 1:37 🕰 The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) decides on geologic time divisions, including the potential Anthropocene epoch. 4:11 🌍 Evidence of human impact on Earth, like changes in sediment layers, nitrogen cycles, and extinctions, supports the Anthropocene proposal. 5:31 🏞 Crawford Lake's sediment core, including plutonium from nuclear testing, was proposed as a golden spike for the Anthropocene epoch. 7:01 ⏳ The ICS rejected the Anthropocene proposal, deeming a 70-year epoch insignificant in geological history. 7:47 🌎 Despite rejection, the concept of the Anthropocene highlights human impact on the planet, resonating culturally. 9:02 📊 The story emphasizes scientific data interpretation, reflecting on the need for critical thinking skills, like those taught by Brilliant
Good vid but i think that the most important matter is how our effects can be mitigated, rather than whether it counts as it's own epoch
I think our effects should be maximised actually.
I was thinking about the album the entire video, but I was still jump scared by Grimes showing up near the end. Also, not to be too anthropocentric, but there is no doubt humans have left a considerable mark on the world, and I’m not gonna let a bunch of scientists debate that.
This is great. The visualisation of time periods is fantastic. Just a note that the word “enormity” is not used correctly, should be “enormousness”. Enormity means atrocious. 🤓
Enormally
They’ll still be debating this as the missiles fly in the inevitable war over disappearing resources.
I visited Crawford lake. The indigenous story is soooo important