Anthropocene

If I had a vote on the commission I would most likely accept adding this new epoch to the geological calendar. There have been too many important events happening in the past couple years for it to be classified in just the Holocene era. The world has changed an incredible amount from even around the middle Holocene. Kolbert talks about the introduction of the concept of Anthropozoic era, which was introduced by a man named Antonio Stoppani in the 1870’s. It talked about the idea that humans have had an incredibly impact on the world and have become more and more obvious since Stoppani introduced the concept. Through building cities and farming the environment and the entire world has been changed. I think it would be a lot easier to talk about how the world is and what has happened if there were more categories to divide time into. However, I do not have a definite opinion on when it should begin.

Kahan uses an example of a barber in a small town in South Carolina and how it isn’t a good idea for him to ask his customers to sign a petition about climate change because he could find himself out of a job, like the former congressman Bob Inglis. It shows that people tend to be exiled by the people with opposing beliefs to theirs because they don’t agree with them. It makes it harder for the people who may understand climate science to express their beliefs. I think people should just keep talking about the issues. Eventually someone is going to listen to what you are saying and it might lead them to sitting down one day and doing research on it themselves. Eventually it could create a chain reaction and more and more people will become informed on the issues.