Anthropocene Human Impact

Humanity is confronted by multiple environmental challenges which threaten to undermine the advances in health achieved over recent decades. The Rockefeller Foundation/Lancet Commission on Planetary Health showed how climate change, loss of biodiversity, land use change, ocean acidification and overfishing, nitrogen and phosphorus loading and environmental pollution more generally all have the potential to adversely affect health through a range of pathways1. A recent joint publication by WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity articulated the myriad connections between biodiversity and health and the threats to both posed by environmental change2. The dramatic changes in the global environment have led many scientists to conclude that we are living in a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – in which the activities of one species – homo sapiens -have become the dominant driving force transforming the Earth’s natural systems3. These natural systems provide food, clean water and air and modulate the global temperature within limits in which humanity has been able to flourish for around 11,500 years during the preceding Holocene epoch.

Anthropocene is a term used to describe earth’s history including when humans dominated a majority of natural processes globally. Anthropocence was a term used throughout the article to discuss the impact humankind had on the environment that caused many changes that had a negative impact over many years. Another term used was anthrones, the human footprint, which describes how much human kind has made lasting impassions on the earth. These terms have made me come to the realization anthropology operates at the crossroads of social and physical sciences, along with humanities to examine the diversity of humankind across many cultures and time.

Many people have even become extremely proficient in dealing with them. However, being able to deal in large numbers and understanding what they truly mean are two entirely different things. Human being experience an extreme cognitive dissonance between the two. The difference between 1,000,000,000 and 100,000,000 years may not look like much to the average person’s eye, but that difference is the difference between running a marathon, something a human being can reasonably accomplish in a day, to running from Stony Brook to Rochester, something which would take days to accomplish. The difference between a million seconds and a billion seconds is almost 32 years. Our place in the history of the planet, and the Anthropocene’s context in our own history can only really be understood in the context of extremely large numbers. Through a better understanding of large numbers and the geological timescale, the

Finney and Edwards raise concerns over this component of the Anthropocene. The emphasis on the beginning of the Anthropocene ignores the geological strata, which is a major component to its validity as an official epoch. According to Finney and Edwards, the Anthropocene overly emphasizes the beginning of this potential epoch, not its contents. The focus on the start leads to “the opinion that geological time scales are defined solely by their beginnings” (Finney and Edwards, 7). According to the AWG, the suggested start for the Anthropocene is 1945 (Finney and Edwards, 7). An indicator for this date is “the human human-caused atomic detonations” that resulted in the spread of atomic radiation across the planet (Zalasiewicz et al., 2230). In defining the Anthropocene based on its cause and date, and using the definition as grounds for justification as a geological time unit is where Finney and Edwards find fault. Also, the core of the concept centers at being a human caused event, which can be used to socially and politically sway

Has Earth entered into a new geologic epoch, characterized by human influences? A recent study, spear-headed by the British Geological Survey, has come to the conclusion that man’s global impact has become distinct enough to end the Holocene and effectively begin the Anthropocene. Published in Science, the study identifies how man’s impact on our oceans, resources, climate, and vegetation has altered the sedimentary makeup of the planet. Massive species invasions, increased rates of extinction, genetically modified plants, redistributed metals, sediment, hydrocarbons, fossils, increased levels of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus all combine to create signals that geologists interpret to denote a break in the Holocene

The first main problem is climate change. This phrase is everywhere, but a lot of people don’t really understand the connection between these words and their lives. Due to large global climate changes, this will threaten the natural biosphere as well as civilization. This issue is important because climate change is already occurring due to greenhouse

By following the understanding of extinctions up to the present day, Kolbert addresses that extinctions are not strictly catastrophic or uniformitarian. Rather, by citing the major and minor extinctions such as the disappearance of the great auk the End-Cretaceous extinction Kolbert proves that extinctions have a wide variety of causes. Finally, with the grim depiction past and present day extinctions, Kolbert moves on to discuss the title topic: The Sixth Extinction. The term Anthropocene refers to the height of human alteration of the planet earth, which is thought to have begun during the Industrial Revolution. As humans dramatically alter the earth and its ecosystems, it is predicted that humans will eventually cause the sixth extinction if the current environmental trends continue. A combination of accelerated climate change, overhunting, deforestation, and natural ecosystem patterns have begun wiping out entire species at alarming rates. Truly, Kolbert emphasizes that all of humanity’s understanding of extinction is pointing to a devastating mass-extinction which could eventually affect the same beings which catalyzed

An article “Anthropocene: Humanity has changed the Earth so much that it has entered a new epoch, scientists conclude “by Andrew Griffin on UK Independent news on Friday 8 January 2016, pointed out what happens to the Earth and how humans affect the environment.

Regrettably, the reader may feel disoriented by the book’s unusual format. The volume is divided into two unnumbered sections, ‘Monsters of the Anthropocene’ and ‘Ghosts of the Anthropocene’. Both sections are positioned upside-down in relation to one another, and each

The first challenge in this essay is to shift the way people think about some of the biggest environmental problems that are affecting humanity in a global level, rather to see them as independent and isolated problems to view them as a whole, as a part of a system and as a consequence of other different problems that are being faced in other parts of the world.

Through the years, our planet has been negatively affected by anthropogenic activities. The Anthropocene has been thought of as a geological period where human activity has negatively impacted ecological systems on the planet. These harmful activities have led to, air pollution, soil degradation, and soil contamination in urban and suburban areas, by dangerous pollutants like heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Kumar & Hundal, 2016). Soil and air pollution and other environmental issues and pressures will continue to be a problem as the world’s population rises in an urbanizing society. Now, more than ever, we must collectively work towards a good Anthropocene, which is essentially building sustainable systems that will mitigate the environmental harm already done to the planet and its people. A good Anthropocene will have positive impacts on the natural, built, and social environments.

As much as we as humans try to protect and conserve our planet’s natural resources, there seems to be no going back. We humans have already destroyed our planet. In the article “Conservation in the Anthropocene,” Karieva starts off by saying that “By its own measures, conservation is failing. Biodiversity on Earth continues its rapid decline… Simply put, we are losing many more special places and species than we're saving.” Karieva also defines this time period in which we live, referred to as the Anthropocene as a “new geological era in which humans dominate every flux and cycle of the planet's ecology

The Anthropocene, a new geological epoch sounds new for a lot of people. It is an era which indicates the extreme impact of humankind or human-dominated on the earth. This epoch described by scholars that “Geological Era in which human activity has affected the geological flows and forces to such a degree that one can’t remove humans out of the equation” (qtd Steinmann 7). Scholars suggest that the significant impact of humankind intervention in the environment that accelerate the Anthropocene epoch to the peak contributed through mismanagement of the plastic waste, industrial waste particles dispersed on the planet and the release of carbon monoxide gas from large or small scale industries. Those and other non describes human’s mismanaged human activity on the environment is a reason for the unpredictable climate change, high sea level and other natural disasters all over the earth. All signs of the Antropocene era show that humans are able to destruct the environment or can participate in the developments of the environment.

In the small slither of time human civilisation have been on this planet we have made an unmistakable impact on the planet. The amount of changes humans have made to the planet has now led scientist to give this period of time its own name; The Anthropocene, also known as the ‘Age of Humans’. The Anthropocene era includes things such as the rise of fossil fuels and urbanisation. This has caused a cascade of effects on the landscape, climate, species and even our own way of life. Humans are actively shaping the planet and is something that our own species needs to decide on what we want our future to look like?

Humans have made changes to planet Earth since their arrival here, that is a fact that seems to be undisputed. However, in the last 200 years, those changes have grown much larger and impacted the Earth as a whole more broadly. From the burning of fossil fuels, the building of atomic weapons, the spraying of pesticides and the genetic engineering of organisms, it seems that we are accustomed to putting progress before pollution, hoping that our progress will fix the havoc that it has left in its wake. This new “human dominated” era has been suggested to be called the Anthropocene which is what it is most commonly recognized as. Others have argued that it should be called the Capitalocene or still others such as writer Donna Haraway think that it should be called the Chthulucene. Whatever we call it, it is clear that it has become a part of our lives in every way, including art and visual culture. Many artists hope to address the changes humans are making and spread the word about the damage we are causing. An example of such art in the Anthropocene is Chris Jordan’s project Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption. The project consists of 41 similarly composed photos with rhythmic repetitive design of different piles of objects that are meant to highlight the mass consumption of people and industry in the United States. This project was designed as Jordan puts it, to show “evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse