The world is 4.5 billion years old, an amount of time almost unimaginable for humans. We have only inhabited the earth 200,000 years, yet are already making a drastic impact on the Earth’s ecosystem. This new age has become a proposed epoch on the geological time scale called the Anthropocene, a word that carries a negative connotation for me. It is impossible to ignore the impact humans have been making recently that has created changes in the atmosphere and changed the geomorphology of the earth through the mining of natural resources. There is no question that humans have started to change the earth, and for the worse.
It is still important to consider how big this impact has been, given how old the Earth actually is. I am still torn, as well as many other scientists, in deciding if the Anthropocene is a term that should actually be added to the geological time scale or if it is more of a political term, being used to inspire people to create social change. In the past the stratigraphy is what has determined the different epochs in the geologic time scale.Only time will be able to tell us if this is a new epoch, it will be interesting to see how this will change how we classify the History of the Earth.