Alarming news, arriving almost daily, nearly rise temperatures, melting glaciers, species diebacks, nuclear waste, oceans contaminated with plastic, and other calamities has seared in our minds the staggering impact that humanity now has on our planet. The belatedly atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen encapsulated these concerns into a single word, the "Anthropocene," which he proposed in 2000 every bit the geologic proper name of an era dominated by the human race. Geologists cannot hold on when the Anthropocene began, and stratigraphers are nevertheless debating whether information technology is in fact a geologic era at all. However, the term has riveted public attending and sparked impassioned arguments near the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Several scholars in the humanities criticize the proper name itself, however, arguing that it perpetuates long-standing misconceptions about this relationship. Replacing "Anthropocene" with a name that focuses instead on its underlying causes might be more conducive to helping us tackle them.

Ane problem with the term is hubris: naming a geologic era afterward ourselves suggests a certain awe at our own magnificence. And sociologist Eileen Crist holds that it was such an anthropocentric worldview that got us into this predicament in the first place. When scientists talk over possible responses to a apace warming planet, they nigh e'er have the dominion of humans over all other species, Crist and others charge, imagining that the enlightened amidst us tin can sagaciously steer planet Earth onto a sustainable pathway without major disruptions to our modern ways of life.

A 2nd indictment is that "Anthropocene" implicitly blames the unabridged human being race for a crisis caused by a relative few. Surely the "Man of the Hole," the last survivor of an uncontacted hunter-gatherer tribe in the Brazilian Amazon, bears less responsibility for our present predicament than, say, old Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was CEO of ExxonMobil. The tribe'southward carbon emissions are essentially null, whereas ExxonMobil is the fourth-largest emitter worldwide among fossil-fuel companies, according to Carbon Majors data through 2018.

Yet another critique is that the "Anthropocene discourse" tends to hold non but all humans but human nature responsible for this predicament. That makes little sense to anthropologists, who point out that people have repeatedly figured out how to live inside their ecological means and even thrive. Social scientists and others argue, however, that the environmental bug we face derive non from human nature only from culture: specifically, a socioeconomic configuration that arose in Europe in the second half of the past millennium. Giving the menses a name that focuses on its actual historical and cultural roots, they say, would help u.s.a. understand what happened, remind us that information technology is a choice—not an inevitability—and peradventure offer a way frontward that does non crave sacrificing the glorious wealth of life that surrounds us.

To this finish, thinkers take suggested an astonishing variety of alternative names. The about widely accepted is "Capitalocene," first proposed by man geographer Andreas Malm, who locates the origins of the "era of capital letter" in the use of coal to fuel factories in 19th-century England. In contrast, geographer and historian Jason Due west. Moore contends that the Capitalocene arose in 15th-century Europe with an economic arrangement predicated on perpetual territorial expansion. Expanding to the New Earth and moving on to colonies and dominions in Asia, Africa and Australia, capitalism established global systems of manufacturing and trade that consumed nature at unprecedented rates and is simply now bumping up confronting planetary boundaries. Philosopher Donna Haraway has proposed another name that looks to the time to come: "Chthulucene" (from the Greek chthonos, significant "of the globe"), an age in which nosotros humans teach ourselves to live in full and rich harmony with our fellow beings.

These thinkers seek non so much to dethrone the concept of the Anthropocene as to—perhaps past taking a page from the thought of the Chthulucene—enrich the ongoing discussion between scientists and society to support united states all in making the difficult choices ahead. Nosotros welcome that thought. Working collaboratively, the natural sciences and the humanities tin help us intermission through idea barriers and generate fresh ideas. To quote Albert Einstein: "Nosotros cannot solve our bug with the same thinking we used when we created them."