A panel of experts that is part of the International Union of Geological Sciences rejected this past Tuesday a proposal to officially declare the beginning of a new interval of geological time caused by the changes that humanity has introduced on the planet and that has occurred in call Anthropocene, according to the American media.
According to The New York Times and CNN television, the committee of the Quaternary Stratigraphy Subcommittee has rejected, by a large majority, a proposal to validate the beginning of the Anthropocene.
According to the current chronology of geologists, the Earth has about 4.6 billion years of history and humanity is immersed in the Holocene period, which began 11,700 years ago with the most recent retreat of the great glaciers.
The question of whether human activity has caused enough changes to conclude the Holocene era and have moved on to the Anthropocene is not only symbolic. In fact, it would have meant a deeper recognition than that of climate change itself and would have had repercussions in textbooks, research articles and museums around the world.
Another panel of experts debated the question of the emergence of the Anthropocene for a decade and a half and came to the conclusion that the changes caused by the human species would have triggered the new era in the mid-20th century, when nuclear bomb tests spread radioactive fallout. all over the world.
But for several members of the scientific committee, according to the New York Times, that definition was too limited and recent. However, scientists do not deny that our era stands out within that long history, especially since the mid-20th century with nuclear tests, plastics, industrial ashes, concrete and rapid warming due to the greenhouse effect.
