Yeah, I feel like this Wikipedia graphic puts it quite well why that was rejected:
You see that “Pleistocene” vertical bar? And you see that tiny sliver of “Holocene” at the top. Yeah, the Anthropocene folks were basically arguing that so many riveting things happened in the Holocene already, that we need to declare a new epoch for what’s happening now.
Besides, if we do continue to irrevocably fuck Earth and the current mass extinction event continues to wipe out a big chunk of life on Earth, then a future sentient species might declare our entire existence as just the geological event that ended the current era (Cenozoic).
Don’t forget nuclear fallout. There’s even a term for when humans started to irrevocably fuck Earth: the Anthropocene.
And heavy metals from burning fossil fuels.
Just a thin, oily, radioactive, toxic smear in the record.
Followed by the layer of shoes, then nothing.
The committee recently pulled the plug on the Anthropocene unfortunately. It was never official and they just rejected it this year.
Yeah, I feel like this Wikipedia graphic puts it quite well why that was rejected:
You see that “Pleistocene” vertical bar? And you see that tiny sliver of “Holocene” at the top. Yeah, the Anthropocene folks were basically arguing that so many riveting things happened in the Holocene already, that we need to declare a new epoch for what’s happening now.
Besides, if we do continue to irrevocably fuck Earth and the current mass extinction event continues to wipe out a big chunk of life on Earth, then a future sentient species might declare our entire existence as just the geological event that ended the current era (Cenozoic).