From a sociological and psychoanalytic point of view, and even with regard to the history of science, the question is very pertinent. The scientific field in general has a very conservative habitus.

You might find some comments on that in my long read on the case (esp. in Chap. 6/7): Article Anthropocene - Anatomy of a Fall/Case

To add to the discussion: Here is an OpEd by Jan Zalasiewicz , Scott L Wing and the Anthropocene Working Group, just published today in Smithsonian Magazine:

What Myths About the Anthropocene Get Wrong: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-myths-about-the-anthropocene-get-wrong-180984181/

At last some common sense has prevailed. The Anthropocene is not a geological era with a defined chronostratigraphic unit in time.

The name might be relevant to other forms of science; related to the effect of 'man'on this planet but not to Geology.

I think there were good arguments against the name, the concept and its formalisation through a stratigraphic commission, the necessity, the supposed duration and the heuristic and/or popularization value of the Anthropocene and, while the list in the OpEd covers essentiential points, it is certainly not a serious (scientific) way of discourse to call them "myths" and the counter-arguments are rather short and feeble and not differentiating much concerning the points that have been criticised - e.g.: Why is it unreasonable to think that the "Anthropocene" might be good as an informal term used for popularization but not as a formal unit of rare use (apart from agendas outside the field of stratigraphy)?

not geological term

Just additional information on the case: The weekend essay of The New Yorker, by Elizabeth Kolbert (from Apr. 20th, 2024):

The “Epic Row” Over a New Epoch. Scientists, journalists, and artists often say that we live in the Anthropocene, a new age in which humans shape the Earth. Why do some leading geologists reject the term?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/the-epic-row-over-a-new-epoch

It’s very important to question what members of the former AWG have been saying to the media in recent weeks. The narrative put out seems to be that hardline ultra-conservative geologists have somehow rejected the whole idea of human-influenced Earth system transformation outright.

Is that really so? The reality of the planetary changes that human activities are causing has never been disputed. And that was not what was rejected in the recent vote. What was soundly dismissed was the specific proposal that a new epoch should be taken to start in 1950 or 1952, and that this should be marked by thin layers of sediment at the bottom of a lake in Canada.

We can all agree we are in the Anthropocene – in the sense of a time of unprecedented and rapidly increasing planetary transformation caused in large part by humans. The evidence for that is not in question. But the idea that the Earth somehow suddenly transitioned from a natural stable state to an unstable human age in a single year? That has always seemed unrealistic to me, and was the main reason I resigned from the Anthropocene Working Group. I imagine the relevant geological commissions also found it hard to accept.

To Matt Edgeworth, Dear Matt, many thanks for your comment. Please understand that as to the "hardline geologists" I won't discuss here ;-) But there is much more to answer: as you know we (the AWG) always considered, discussed and published also on the earlier human impacts and developments. We discussed, e.g., Ruddiman's and others'work, wrote papers like "A formal Anthropocene is compatible with but distinct from its diachronous anthropogenic counterparts", and focussed also on what we then tentatively named "The Anthropogenic Modification Episode" (AME) (incl. the Anthropocene sensu stricto on top). By the way, I also wouldn't mind calling the episode before the Anthropocene Epoch 'Pre-Anthropocene' or 'Proto-Anthropocene'. We wrote papers on the early development of human action, like our production and consumption paper (Zalasiewicz, Williams et al 2016, with those great figs 1-6, and with you as a co-author) etc., and of course our Technosphere paper (again with you) and then the 'Energy use through time-paper' (Syvitski et al. 2020). So that also always was part of our studies and discussions. And no, the AME or the Anthropocene is not an event (for me this is the most puzzling wrong use of the "event"-term and one really cannot name the Great Oxygenation 'Event', which took about 400 million years, an event but rather the Great Oxygenation Episode (the abbreviaton remains the same GOE). And once more, we wrote papers about the proper use of event, epoch, episode in stratigraphy (e.g. Waters et al. 2022).

Yes it was a long human development on the way to the Anthropocene (with a lot of milestones there), in which Homo sapiens developed from a culturally enhanced biological factor (early weapons, early domesticated dogs for hunting, active use of fire etc) to a geographic factor (settlement and agriculture in the Neolithicum etc., in a diachronous, regionally scattered way. It was then however only during the Great Acceleration of the midth 20th century and its effects on the Earth System, that humanity switched into a global geological and Earth System factor, with a near synchronous, globally correlatable start.

And by the way, attempts to precisely date a primary marker in a GSSP with an absolute date is nothing new in geology. It simply is a "proxy age" for the start of an Epoch. This is not different in the Pleistocene (there mostly magnetic polarity reversals were used for near exact absolute dating of associated geological markers), and the Holocene (with exemplary primary marker layers in the NorthGrip Ice-Core and the speleotheme core of Meghalaya, India). These also are "calendar-time" proxy approaches for associated climatic changes and other geosignals. Nothing different as to our GSSP-proposal for the Golden Spike of an Anthropocene Epoch. We have a great event array of geosignals (event here in the normal understanding of short-termed "incidents" or sharp well visible starts of new criteria). This is why we chose a layer of radioactive fallout from H-bomb-tests for precise dating. To me, this results in so much of added-value also for cooperation of geoscientists with archaeologists, historians, etc: there are now much more correlation possibilities also for archaeology (a lot of additional regional and possibly global event layers also can be detected within the Anthropocene succession, such as first occurrence of plastic types etc); In addition we now can also jointly evaluate a global archive of human activity (that is not set up by humans, hence not biased in any way) along with other archives established by humans (historical archives, e.g. fish landings, plastic production,satellite data etc) together with historians.

With all that in mind, it is even more such a pity that you have left the AWG group some time ago. I always liked our cooperation so much.

Dear Reinhold,

Thanks for your comments. I very much enjoyed working with you and other members of the AWG, especially on papers such as the following:

The geological cycle of plastics

Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere:

The lower bounding surface of anthropogenic deposits

The broiler chicken as a signal of a human-configured biosphere

Underground metro systems

The technofossil record

These papers have one thing in common. That is, their subject matters have highly diachronous signals in physical strata. This applies to plastics, the material technosphere, chicken bones whose morphology is changed by human selection and factory farming, anthropogenic strata, underground metro systems, technofossils, and so much more. All part of a very substantial body of evidence indicating that human influence on Earth system transformation cannot be reduced to a single moment in time.

It was the contradiction between this diachronous physical stratigraphic evidence and the desire of the AWG to impose an isochronous timeline upon it that inevitably led to my resignation from the group. Where the AWG went wrong in my humble opinion was to relentlessly pursue the idea of a precisely defined 1950 timeline regardless of material evidence to the contrary.

It is not the abundant physical stratigraphic evidence of human-influenced Earth System transformation that was rejected in the recent vote. Nor was the Anthropocene itself thrown out of court (as implied by recent reports, and I think members of the former AWG should stop saying to the press that this is the case). To be clear, what was rejected was the idea of the geological epoch defined with an isochronous 1950s start. The broader concept of the Anthropocene lives on, with substantial bodies of evidence supporting it, and will continue to provide a framework for the study of more important Anthropocene issues than just the narrow question of date of start.

I too hope we can work together again

All best, Matt

English is not my native language (Portuguese is), but I believe it is not incorrect to consider that the ‘stratigraphic discussion about the Anthropocene’ has become a ‘philosophical contest for the Anthropocene’. This “contest” has epistemological meanings, but also ethical and practical consequences. In the philosophical sense, the ‘dispute’ has taken the form of a kind of dilemma, which can be formulated roughly as follows:

(1) (A) If the Anthropocene means the ‘epoch of humans’, then human agency has geological/archaeological records that indicate an ancient and diachronic beginning; (B) If the Anthropocene is the ‘epoch of humans’, then it encompasses the current situation of the Earth System as transformed by human agency and its products and records. Proposition ‘A’ emphasises stratigraphy, while ‘B’ refers to physical or process geology.

(2) Propositions ‘A’ and ‘B’ are correct in their logical arguments.

(3) So, the Anthropocene is both a diachronic record of its own formation process and the currently experienced and forming record of a planetary geoenvironmental new situation.

I think that in order to escape from this ‘dilemma’ we need a defensive strategy, as the philosophers say. I suggest that it's not a question of ‘taking the dilemma by the horns’ by demonstrating that one or the other proposition is false. Rather, it's about ‘getting between the horns’ by showing that, although the alternatives are both valid in themselves, there must be an external reference point to the internal logical argument of each proposition, which can provide a basis for a decision. This element is the ‘definition’ of the Anthropocene.

This definition should be sought in the original proposal of the term and its respective concept, as formulated by Crutzen and Stoermer: the Anthropocene is the current geoenvironmental situation of the planet. Of course, this situation didn't happen overnight, but Crutzen proposed the Industrial Revolution as a benchmark (which is quite plausible, as it indicates what was previously referred to as the ‘modern industrial ecological phase’). The AWG, working under the restrictive logic of chronostratigraphic classification, which looks for synchronic patterns of record, proposed the mid-20th century.

In fact, this original definition of the Anthropocene leaves implicit the process that led to the current planetary configuration called the Anthropocene, but does not consider it in the very definition of the time. Proposition ‘B’ therefore questions the original definition of the Anthropocene itself, proposing that it be replaced by another definition (of a long diachronic process). In other words, it uses the term Anthropocene in a sense that does not correspond to the original. I should remind that, in order to characterise this long diachronic process and the records that led to the Anthropocene (in its original sense), the concept of the Technogene (Ter Stepanian) was proposed decades ago. More recently, the use of diachronic units has also been considered very fruitfully, such as the Human Modifying Episode or the Technogenic Event.

Therefore, it can be concluded that, with Crutzen's original meaning of the term Anthropocene as a priority, the AWG's proposal (A) is the most appropriate (which does not detract from the merit of the ‘diachronic option’ (B), only by not endorsing the use of the term Anthropocene for it).

This is the epistemological approach to the issue. But, as we know, since it was first proposed, the concept of the Anthropocene has been incorporated not only into popular culture, but also into the field of public policies. For example, the concept is currently used by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), among others. In this context, a large section of the scientific community, political agents involved in environmental issues and ordinary people were certainly looking forward to the ratification of the AWG's proposal on the Anthropocene by the International Commission on Stratigraphy as a scientific referendum that would boost decision-making and encourage action to tackle global environmental change. In this sense, the ‘rejection of the Anthropocene’ has been seen as an ethical problem, because the restrictive logic of chronostratigraphy has taken precedence over much more relevant interests.

Personally, as a geologist, I believe that we are living in the Anthropocene Epoch and that this corresponds to the contemporary phase of a great diachronic episode, which should nevertheless be called something else. I also believe, following the ideas of Ter Stepanian, that the Holocene (Pre-Anthropocene) should be considered a transitional phase, and that the Holocene and Anthropocene should be subsumed into a new period, the Technogene.

O inglês não é minha língua nativa (e sim o português), mas creio que não é incorreto considerar que a “discussão estratigráfica sobre o Antropoceno” se tornou uma “disputa filosófica pelo Antropoceno”. Esta disputa tem significados gnosiológicos e epistemológicos, mas também consequências éticas e práticas. No sentido filosófico, a “disputa” tomou a forma de um tipo de dilema, que pode ser formulado mais ou menos da seguinte maneira:

(1) (A) Se o Antropoceno significa a “época dos humanos”, então a agência humana tem registros geológicos/arqueológicos que indicam um início antigo e diacrônico; (B) Se o Antropoceno é a “época dos humanos”, então ela engloba a situação atual do Sistema Terra como transformado pela agência humana: e seu produtos e registros. A proposição “A” enfatiza a estratigrafia, enquanto a “B” se refere à geologia física ou dos processos.

(2) As proposições “A” e “B” são corretas em suas argumentações lógicas.

(3) Então, o Antropoceno é tanto um registro diacrônico de seu próprio processo de formação quanto o registro atualmente vivenciado e em formação relatio a uma situação geoambiental planetária.

Peno que para escaparmos dessa “dilema” é necessário de uma estratégia defensiva, como dizem os filósofos. Sugiro que não se trata de “pegar o dilema pelos chifres”, demonstrando que uma ou outra proposição seria falsa. Mas de “se esquias por entre os chifres” mostrando que, conquanto as alternativas sejam ambas válidas em si, deve haver um referencial externo à argumentação lógica interna de cada proposição, que possa dar fundamento para uma decisão. Esse elemento é a “definição” do Antropoceno.

Essa definição deve ser buscada na proposta original do termo e de seu respectivo conceito, como formulado por Crutzen e Stoermer: o Antropoceno é a situação geoambiental atual do planeta. Obiamente esta situação não se configurou do dia para a noite, mas Crutzen propôs a Revolução Industrial como marco de referência (o que é bem plausível, pois indica o que já se denominava antes como “fase ecológica industrial moderna”). O AWG, trabalhando sob a lógica restritiva da classificação cronoestratigráfica, que busca padrões sincrônicos de registro, propôs os meados do século XX.

Na verdade, essa definição original do Antropoceno deixa implícito o processo que levou à configuração planetária atual chamada de Antropoceno, mas não a considera na própria definição do temo. A proposição “B”, dessa forma, questiona a própria definição original do Antropoceno, propondo sua substituição por outra (de um longo processo diacrônico). Ou sejam utiliza o termo Antropoceno em um sentido que não corresponde ao original. Devo aqui lembrar que, para caracterizar esse lingo processo diacrônico e os registros que levaram ao Antropoceno (em seu sentido original) foi proposto há décadas o conceito de Tecnógeno (Ter Stepanian). Mais recentemente, o uso de unidades diacrônicas também foi considerado de forma muita proveitosa, como o Episódio Humano Modificador ou o Evento Tecnógeno.

Portanto, conclui-se que, tendo como referência o sentido original do termo Antropoceno de Crutzen como prioritário, a proposta do AWG (A) é a mais adequada (o que não inalida o mérito da “opção diacrônica” (B), somente não referendando o uso do termo Antropoceno para ela).

Esta é a abordagem epistemológica da questão. Mas, como se sabe, desde sua proposição o conceito de Antropoceno tem sido incorporado não só à cultura popular, mas também ao campo das políticas públicas. Por exemplo, o conceito é atualmente empregado pelo Programa das Nações Unidas para o Desenolvimento (UNDP), dentre outros. Nesse contexto, certamente uma ampla parcela da comunidade científica, dos agentes políticos engajados nas questões ambientais e das pessoas comuns aguardavam a ratificação da proposta do AWG sobre o Antropoceno pela Comissão Internacional de Estratigrafia como um referendo científico que potencializari as tomadas de decisão e incentivaria as ações referentes ao enfrentamento das mudanças ambientais globais. A “rejeição do Antropoceno”, nesse sentido, tem sido entendida como um problema ético, pois a lógica restritiva da cronoestratigrafia se sobrepôs a interesses muito mais relevantes.

Pessoalmente, como geólogo, considero que estamos na Época Antropoceno e que esta corresponde à fase contemporânea de um grande episódio diacrônico, que todavia deve ter outra denominação. Considero também, seguindo as ideias de Ter Stepanian, que o Holoceno (Pré-Antropoceno) deva ser considerado uma fase de transição, e que o Holoceno e o Antropoceno devam ser englobados em um novo período, o Tecnógeno.