On 20 March, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) announced that it is upholding a decision made earlier this month by a group of geoscientists: Twelve members of the international Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) voted against the proposal to create an Anthropocene epoch, and only four voted for it.

The SQS is a subcommittee of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) is the largest and oldest constituent scientific body in the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).

The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth until now. It affects Earth’s geology, landscape, limnology, ecosystems and climate.

An early concept for the Anthropocene was the Noosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky, who in 1938 wrote of “scientific thought as a geological force”.

Proceeding from the notion of the geological r?le of man, the geologist A. P. Pavlov (1854-1929) in the last years of his life used to speak of the anthropogenic era in which we now live.

In 2001 the atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, proposed that human activity was impacting natural environmental conditions to the extent that we had effectively left the natural stable conditions of the Holocene and moved into a new interval that he named the Anthropocene. In response to this suggestion, the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) was established in 2009.

This month, after over 15 years of deliberation, the proposal by the IUGS to ratify the Anthropocene was voted down by a wide margin:

Joint statement by the IUGS and ICS on the vote by the ICS Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy

It is with the delegated authority of the IUGS President and Secretary General and on behalf of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) that the vote by the ICS Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS) to reject the proposal for an Anthropocene Epoch as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale is approved. The voting members of SQS have extensive experience and wide expertise in Quaternary stratigraphy and chronology. Their vote was approved by the ICS executive, and that approval was overwhelmingly supported by the chairs of the ICS subcommissions. Despite its rejection as a formal unit of the Geologic Time Scale, the Anthropocene will nevertheless continue to be used not only by Earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large. It will remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the Earth system.

The Anthropocene: IUGS-ICS Statement
Read the statement: short version
Read the statement: extended version

The Anthropocene is one of those nice scientific terms that has entered noospherically into the public consciousness. So, no worries: The Anthropocene will remain an invaluable descriptor of human impact on the Earth system.

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Featured Image: Rick Jo / Shutterstock.com (elsewhere on the net, e.g. here but impossible to locate copyright details)