Mikaela Martinez Dettinger - The Anthropocene

 In writing my senior seminar project, I came across a term that I had never heard before, the anthropocene. The anthropocene refers to a geological epoch that begins at the time when human beings began to have dominant influence on the environment and climate. In learning more about the anthropocene through a series of Webinars by Duke University,  I learned that this isn't a universally recognized term. Mostly anthropologists, philosophers, and non-scientific environmental scholars tend to use the term. I thought this was a very curious correlation because the beginning and current stages of the anthropocene measured through scientific studies and findings. The only way we could see when humans became the dominant influencers of our climate and environment would be through tracking and monitoring changes through means that most philosophers might be able to grasp at a conceptual level, but could never apply in actual field work like the science-minded experts can. Why doesn't science literature use the term anthropocene as widely? 

Perhaps it is because the way that the anthropocene is framed is usually used to talk about the environment in terms of the social-scientific effects and cultural implications that our changing climate has. The changing environment has created severe socio-economic blowback in the form of increased mortality rates, growth in economic disparity in regions hit by natural disasters, even crises come about by immigrants labels "climate refugees" who have been forces fro their homes due to an increase in the inhospitality of the natural world around them. On cultural level, addressing the fact of the anthropocene includes accepting that climate change is a man-made crisis. This simple act of self-reflection is not a question for some, but for other members of our species it is a pill too big to swallow. This has created a cultural divide in many places, specifically in the United States, as debate on the validity of climate science acts as a barrier to passing helpful legislation. Even within family units, people often have a hard time disagreeing on the extent to which individual human actions (outside of the scope of large corporations) play a role in the changes that the anthropocene uses as markers for tis beginning and end. Perhaps this is why the scientific community does not use this terminology widely. It goes beyond the scope of delivering facts to assert a claim: humankind is the biggest factor in the negative changes we are seeing. Yes, scientists speak out about this and this is what the science says, but to state it directly through established terminology would be to spark a new conversation. Maybe it is best felt that this conversation be left to the thinkers and the debaters of the world. However, I do think it would be helpful to establish such terminology. As a think and debater myself, I believe it would provide less wiggle-room to those who seek to deny the role of humans in the climate crisis because the very language they would be using to explain and understand it would tie the climate crisis directly to humans. Language is the home of understanding, as Gadamer would assert, and maybe it is time for the scientific fact to be translated into language.

I do hope that there is a similar term used in the scientific community similar to the anthropocene and that I am just ignorant of it, but I have not been able to find one.