I think I would vote for the the Anthropocene epoch part of the geological calendar. I think it is important that the environmental damages that we have created be recognized by our generation, and hopefully future generations, if we can keep our planet liveable. I would hope that by officially adding the Anthropocene Epoch to the geological calendar, people would realize just how scary and serious this issue is, and begin to make changes in their everyday life, and fight for large-scale changes. I would also hope that people in school would be able to learn about what humans have done to the planet and begin to think of ways to fix it, and hopefully prevent it in the future. I think the epoch’s start date would need to be set way back at the beginning of industrialization. Steffen states that…”The Anthropocene began around 1800 with the onset of industrialization, the central feature of which was the enormous expansion in the use of fossil fuels.” (Steffen 614) Kolbert talks about the idea that we should not name our current situation the Anthropocene epoch because we should wait 20 years until it gets bad again. I think that that is an invalid idea because we could use that excuse forever and never actually name this event anything, and just continue to wait years and year as it gets worse and worse.
Dan Kahan made a good point when he said that our view on climate change determines the person that we are. I think this has a huge effect on how climate change is dealt with and how it affects the solutions we come up with to fix climate change. I think it has such a big effect because even people that know that the planet is in trouble will not do anything about it, or change their ways, or vote for environmental fixes, based on the beliefs and values of the people they are around. These people are making decisions off of the beliefs of others, instead of science and facts. I think it is kind of hard to just bring climate change into a conversation, people don’t normally love to have a conversation with someone who is super blunt. But I think it might be best to be blunt and bring up climate change in your conversations to bring awareness to it, just like Dr. Cathy Whitlock.