The push to declare the Anthropocene an official geological epoch has descended into an epic row, after the validity of a leaked vote that appeared to kill the proposal was called into question.
Supporters of the idea have been working on the proposal for 15 years. They say it will formalize the undeniable and irreversible changes that human activity has caused on the planet. This would mark the end of the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable global environment in which all of human civilization evolved.
Opponents argue that designating the beginning of the human age at a specific date fails to recognize the long history of anthropogenic changes, for example through farming.
The proposal sets the start date of the Anthropocene in 1952, marked by the global fallout of plutonium from nuclear weapons tests. A new epoch also requires a specific place to represent the change and the sediments collected in a collection sinkhole lake in canada was selected in July.
However, a geological committee – the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) – which voted in February, defeated the proposal by 12 votes to four, according to a reported by the New York Times. Afterwards, the chairman of the SQS said the “alleged” vote was in “contrary to the statutory rules” and requested an investigation into the matter.
The chances of the Anthropocene being formally adopted appear slim, with the chairman of the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which oversees the SQS told Nature magazine that the proposal “cannot be progressed any further”.
If the vote is confirmed, a new proposal can be submitted. Either way, the concept of the Anthropocene is already widely used to describe the planet-changing impact of humanity.
An alternative proposal could be to declare the Anthropocene a geological “event”. It takes place over time, is not part of the official geologic time scale, and does not need committee approval. Mass extinctions and the oxygenation of the atmosphere 2 billion years ago are called events.
“Human impact goes much deeper into geological time,” said Prof Mike Walker, SQS member and at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David. “If we ignore that, we’re ignoring the real impact, the real impact, that people have on our planet.”
However, SQS chairman Prof Jan Zalasiewicz, from the University of Leicester, said: “The alleged vote was carried out in breach of ICS statutes. Violation of the statutory rules included those on the right to vote and other essential rules to ensure a proper scientific process. The [leak] exposed the SQS, and by default its parent scientific bodies, to a significant potential for reputational damage.”
Zalasiewicz, supported by one of the SQS vice-chairmen, said he had requested an investigation “including the establishment of a procedure to annul the alleged vote”.
Philip Gibbard, an SQS member from the University of Cambridge, told Nature that the heart of the annulment challenge was an objection to the voting process kicking off on February 1, when the rest of the committee wanted to move forward: “There is a lot of sour grapes going on here.”
Prof Colin Waters, chair of the Anthropocene Working Group which developed the proposal, told the Guardian: “Regardless of the vote, the AWG stands fully behind its proposal, which has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the Earth System is now clearly outside the relatively stable lay. interglacial conditions of the Holocene [and] that the changes are irreversible.”
Waters said: “Anthropocene layers are also different from Holocene layers. They can be characterized using more than 100 durable sedimentary signals, including anthropogenic radionuclides, microplastics, fly ash and pesticide residues, most of which show sharp increases in the mid-20th century.
“The Anthropocene, although currently short, is of sufficient scale and importance to be represented on the geological time scale,” he said. “We will continue to argue the case and I would not be surprised if there is a future call for a proposal to be reconsidered.”
