Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
In the past 70 years, humans have exceeded the energy consumption of the entire preceding 11,700 years—largely through combustion of fossil fuels. This huge increase in energy consumption, human population, and industrial activity has led to pollution, environmental degradation and climate change.
The #Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), an interdisciplinary group of scientists led by #JaiaSyvitski, has designated the Anthropocene as a new epoch on the Geological Time Scale, characterized by the overwhelming human impact on the Earth.
Their paper, published in "Nature Communications Earth and Environment", documents the natural drivers of environmental change throughout the past 11,700 years—known as the #Holocene Epoch—and the dramatic human-caused shifts since 1950. nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00029-y
"We need to work together to reverse these environmental trends and dig ourselves out of it,” said Syvitski. “Society shouldn't feel complacent. Few people who read the manuscript should come away without emotions bubbling up, like rage, grief and even fear.”
For more information on the state of our planet visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library
In the past 70 years, humans have exceeded the energy consumption of the entire preceding 11,700 years—largely through combustion of fossil fuels. This huge increase in energy consumption, human population, and industrial activity has led to pollution, environmental degradation and climate change.
The #Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), an interdisciplinary group of scientists led by #JaiaSyvitski, has designated the Anthropocene as a new epoch on the Geological Time Scale, characterized by the overwhelming human impact on the Earth.
Their paper, published in "Nature Communications Earth and Environment", documents the natural drivers of environmental change throughout the past 11,700 years—known as the #Holocene Epoch—and the dramatic human-caused shifts since 1950. nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00029-y
"We need to work together to reverse these environmental trends and dig ourselves out of it,” said Syvitski. “Society shouldn't feel complacent. Few people who read the manuscript should come away without emotions bubbling up, like rage, grief and even fear.”
For more information on the state of our planet visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library
