If I were faced with the decision on whether or not to add an Anthropocene epoch to the geological time scale I would without a doubt vote yes. Our current time in history looks very different from the rest of the geological time scale, it is littered with extinctions of animals, superfund sites and horrendous loss of nature and human connection. After reading The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and Will Steffen’s The Anthropocene it has begenmade clear that there is something that is unnatural that is impacting our globe significantly. The Anthropocene era should already hold merit in the eyes of geologists and others. “There is little doubt that humans played a significant role, given the strong correlation between the extinction events and human migration patters. A later but even more profound impact of human on fauna was the domestication of animals,…” (Steffen, p.616). I feel as though there is enough evidence at this point in history to assume the place of a new epoch in time. This period to me means finally recognizing our impact as humans on the ecosystems and environment around us. On average industrial societies use four or five times more energy than agrarian ones, and we can quantify our imprint on earth and directly link it to the onset of industrialization and widespread use of fossil fuel based energy systems. (Steffen). With this knowledge in mind we can place the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch at the turn of the nineteenth century, with the beginning of industrialization and later the massive popularity of efficiency based economy. I feel confident making my decision regarding the Anthropocene epoch with only the information I have here, and my prior knowledge of linkage between industry and climate change.
Dan Kahan brings up a very worthy topic of discussion. We are all a product of our environment. I mean, news outlets play to this fancy very well. They have constructed bias and stances to appeal to certain audiences, and then feed them with more bias information that leads people to different consensus’s on the same topics. This is also fundamental how statistics work, you can skew a data set to represent what your desired outcome is and promote your favored information. So, it might not be fair for all of the climate change activists to write off the nonbelievers as ignorant. I think that the issue is with availability of resources to the public. It is difficult to remedy climate change when some people don’t see it as a threat, it is a very similar issue to the dangers of smoking cigarettes. If you smoked your first pack of cigarettes and were guaranteed to wake up the next day with cancer, I bet we wouldn’t see a plague of cigarettes all across the world. It comes down to proximity of the issue, and since Climate change is quite unpredictable and climate change doesn’t happen over night we see a method of denial and procrastination. We need more resources to be available to the general public about climate change and the direct impact we are having on our environment. This news needs to be spread worldwide and education needs to be implemented. If there are people from every type of background funding and supporting climate change as a real issue I think we will see more of a public response. We should target the industry and try to positively educate and impact businesses on sustainability and our footprint.