Lupine Publishers | Scholarly Journal Of Psychology And Behavioral Sciences
Introduction
Man
is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against
himself- Rachel Carson. The Anthropocene is a generally accepted framework for
describing the planet we now live in. The Anthropocene is a crucial paradigm
for addressing environmental challenges in scientific, political, and ethical
arguments. Its major contribution is a scientific, and hence non-normative, the
hypothesis of man-made global warming. The assumed connection of man and
environment provides a systemic perspective.
Holocene or Anthropocene?
The
Holocene epoch relates to the fast proliferation, expansion, and global effect
of humans, encompassing all its recorded history, technological revolutions,
the emergence of major civilizations, and the overall considerable change to
urban existence in the present. Sir Charles Lyell seems to have proposed the
word Holocene in 1833, and it was adopted by the International Geology Congress
in Bologna in 1885, referring to the post-glacial geological age of the past 10
to 12 thousand years of history. The Anthropocene has surpassed the Holocene as
the most recent geological period. Since the year 2000, the notion of the
Anthropocene has dominated discussion in practically every academic subject
[1-4], including the humanities and social sciences, and has evolved into an
inter-and transdisciplinary study area. It has also dissolved long-standing
humanities divisions that have affected this discipline, such as those between
‘nature’ and ‘history,’ and ‘geological’ and ‘human.’ Furthermore, when
previous ideas of human purpose, temporality, and collective memory- all of
which are vital to historical inquirydeteriorate, historians must create new
and crucial frameworks connecting the past and present to make sense of our
future. At the very least, the term ‘Anthropocene’ sounded academic, combining
Anthropos, the Greek word for ‘human,’ with ‘cene,’ the suffix used in
geological period names [5]. The Anthropocene is a term from the Holocene Era
that refers to the current evolutionary stage in which humans have become a
significant factor in world activities.
Histories of the Anthropocene
The
study of history is based on the concept that human history has a particular
consistency that connects our past, present, and future. In our usual creative
universe, we typically envisage the future using the same conceptual framework
that allows us to comprehend the past. History of climate is the study of
historical variations in climate and their impact on civilization from the
advent of hominins to the present. This contrasts with palaeoclimatology, which
studies climate change throughout Earth’s history. These historical effects of
climate change may either improve human existence and lead society to thrive,
or they can play a role in civilization’s eventual demise. Scholars have been
hesitant to formally identify the Anthropocene as a new epoch, despite a huge
increase in research over the last two decades. The difficulty in determining
the beginning point is likely the most powerful argument, but issues about the
human being, anthropocentrism and the validity of metaphors have also prompted
many scientists to question the classification’s efficiency [6]. The
Anthropocene’s projected ages, on the other hand, range from 50 to 10,000 years.
The word “Anthropocene” was invented by Eugene Stoermer in the early 1980s, but
it only acquired general acceptance in the scientific world until Dutch
atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen supported it in 2000. It occurs throughout
the Holocene, a roughly 12,000-year period of growing natural stability during
which varied human communities evolved.
The
shift from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, unlike any previous geological
shift, is driven by the purposeful behaviour of sentient creatures: ‘This is
not merely an environmental disaster; it is a volcanic change induced by
people.’ As a result, the notion of the Anthropocene implies that the history
of human civilizations is inextricably linked to the history of the climate.
History and geology are inextricably linked, posing a significant intellectual
problem for the humanities. The Anthropocene hypothesis has become a solid,
discussed phrase in the humanities and social sciences, bringing up new ways of
thinking about humans, environmental communities, energy production,
interactions with non-human life, confrontation, the social, and the presence
of the past [7-9]. When academicians and other social scientists started
studying globalization in the late 1980s and early 1990s, climate change became
widely accepted in the public realm. While the Marxist critique of capital,
subaltern studies, Indigenous science, and post-colonial criticism have all
been enormously helpful in analysing globalization during the past twenty-five
years, they have not fully equipped us to make sense of the ecological crisis
in which humanity now finds itself. Joseph Needham, a physicist, and historian
who had studied extensively in China, explored methods to break down boundaries
and proposed a venture that highlighted all cultures’ reciprocal reliance.
The Anthropocene Controversy
We
may make the case for the Anthropocene by stating that humans have depleted 40%
of the world’s petroleum reserves during the previous few hundred years. This
work has taken ages, if not millennia, to complete. Human activity has
significantly altered approximately half of the Earth’s terrestrial area,
generating biodiversity shifts [10,11], nutrient cycle, and soil, climatic, and
environmental changes. Synthetic nitrogen fixation is currently fixing more
nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems than all-natural processes combined. People
use half of all freshwaters, which is quickly dwindling in many areas. Some
scientists think that the Anthropocene began in the late eighteenth century,
when analyses of air trapped in polar ice indicated the beginning of increased
global carbon dioxide and methane emissions. This day also happens to coincide
with the creation of the steam engine. According to the WGA (Working Group on
the Anthropocene), the Anthropocene Period began in 1950, because of nuclear
testing, the discovery of plastics, and the exponential demographic rise of the
human population. The Post-Anthropocene epoch is also known as the Plutocene
epoch. Despite significant advances in the study over the previous century [5],
we are still a long way from understanding nature. The Anthropocene debate is
the peak of Nature/Society duality. And, though the Anthropocene is inadequate
as a historical rather than geological assertion, it is always an argument worth
considering. A sequence of early steps results in the emergence of new
concepts. On the way to a new synthesis, there are various philosophical
detours. Without a question, the Anthropocene definition is the most impactful
of these compromises. No other theory based on historical transition has had
such a broad influence throughout the Green Thought continuum; no other
socioecological notion has piqued the public’s curiosity.
Anthropocene and Health
Go to
The
fast expansion of the human population and human activities is producing a
problem: the increasing pressure is disrupting important biophysical Earth
systems and producing environmental changes that are detrimental and disastrous
to human well-being. The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change report
for 2019 shows how planetary health is evolving in the ecological, social, and
human health realms.
Conclusion
If
you assume that humans are the only species deserving of consideration, you
have not comprehended Darwin’s revelation that we are but are no longer aware
of our function in the environment. People’s ability to affect change at such a
large scale and such a rapid pace were unparalleled. The rate at which these
changes occur spans from decades to centuries, as opposed to hundreds to thousands
of years for analogous transitions in Earth’s natural dynamics. The
Anthropocene must be part of our lexicon if we acknowledge that not all men are
equal contributors to our global ailments and that many are victims. We know
who we are, what we do, and what our duties are as a community.
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