In February 2000, Paul Crutzen rose to speak at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Mexico. And when he spoke, people took notice. He was then one of the world’s most cited scientists, a Nobel laureate working on huge-scale problems – the ozone hole, the effects of a nuclear winter.
So little wonder that a word he improvised took hold and spread widely: this was the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, representing an Earth transformed by the effects of industrialised humanity.
The idea of an entirely new and human-created geological epoch is a sobering scenario as context for the current UN climate summit, COP28. The impact of decisions made at these and other similar conferences will be felt not just beyond our own lives and those of our children, but perhaps beyond the life of human society as we know it.
It’s here for 50,000 years if we do nothing, but we’re likely going to do something. 200 years. Generations one and two will set up the carbon free energy infrastructure, generations three and four will manage the return to acceptable CO2 levels and environmental restoration.
Edit: y’all need to lay off the defeatism. It’s really pathetic to read.
Are these “generations” in the room with us right now?
Yes. Millennials are gen 1
even if we stopped emissions tomorrow, at a dead stop, it would be hundreds of years before we got back to baseline pre industry levels.
there is simply no way to turn the ship around this point.
Also greed is never going to allow it.
Did you not read anything I wrote?
sry i read it too fast. yes what you said. best case, but realistically it’s not going to happen under a capitalist system. Maybe we’ll have revolutions to force the switch. However my pessimistic mind thinks otherwise.
More like all of those generations promising to decrease emissions only for the exact opposite to happen, if our history is anything to go by.
We should nuke some stuff too, later generations will clean it up anyways