In 2000, Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen proposed that the epoch known as the Holocene, which started some 11,700 years ago, had reached its end. To describe our current era, he employed the term anthropocene, originated earlier by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer. Together the two scientists asserted that humans’ collective influence on the Earth system was so profound that it was altering the planet’s geological and ecological trajectory. According to them, humanity had entered a new geologic era.
