2. Terms and concepts_the Anthropocene

Vocabulary flashcards covering the geological, social, and political discussions surrounding the Anthropocene and its proposed alternatives, including the Capitalocene and Chthulucene.

Holocene Epoch

The geological epoch spanning the last $11,500\text{ years}$ since the close of the last ice age, marked by a relatively stable, warm climate, glacial retreat, rapid human population growth, and the rise of modern civilization.

Anthropocene

An unofficial unit of geologic time (derived from the Greek anthropo for human and cene for new) describing the period in Earth's history when human activity began exerting a dominant, transformative impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems.

Paul Crutzen

The atmospheric chemist who, along with Eugene F. Stoermer, proposed and popularized the term 'Anthropocene' in $2000$ to argue that Earth had entered an entirely new geological epoch driven by human alteration of the Earth system.

Eugene F. Stoermer

The diatom researcher who co-authored the seminal $2000$ Global Change Newsletter paper with Paul Crutzen introducing the concept of the Anthropocene.

Technosphere

The rapidly expanding, globally interconnected network of human-devised technological systems, artificial structures, and synthetic materials (such as plastics) that physical scientists identify as a distinct planetary modification.

Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP)

An internationally agreed-upon physical reference marker in geological strata—informally known as a 'golden spike'—used to define the precise onset of a specific geological epoch or stage.

The Great Acceleration

A term coined by US historian John McNeill describing the dramatic, post-Second World War surge across numerous socioeconomic and Earth system metrics—such as greenhouse gas emissions, plastic production, and population—starting around the mid-$20\text{th}$ century.

Orbis Spike

A distinct dip in atmospheric $\text{CO}_2$ levels recorded around $1610$, caused by the reforestation of abandoned agricultural lands in the Americas following the catastrophic decline of Indigenous populations due to European colonization.

Orbis Hypothesis

The proposal by Maslin and Lewis ($2015$) identifying the year $1610$—marked by the collision of Old and New World biotas, the emergence of a global trade system, and a dip in atmospheric $\text{CO}_2$—as the golden spike for the Anthropocene.

Crawford Lake

A site in Canada whose sediment record contains a sharp spike in atmospheric plutonium from mid-$20\text{th}$-century thermonuclear bomb testing, proposed and ultimately rejected as the formal GSSP marker for the Anthropocene.

International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS)

The official scientific body responsible for standardizing the geological time scale, which voted on $5\text{ March }2024$ to reject a proposal to formalize the Anthropocene as an official geological epoch.

Anthropocentrism

A philosophical view centering human significance, cited by critics of the term 'Anthropocene' as a conceptual flaw that homogenizes humanity, obscures sociopolitical inequalities, and dilutes analysis of capital accumulation.

Capitalocene

An alternative critical concept framing the ongoing global environmental crisis as the outcome of the world-making dynamics of capitalism and continuous capital accumulation, rather than of humanity as an undifferentiated whole.

Andreas Malm

The scholar who introduced the term 'Capitalocene' in $2009$ in Lund, Sweden, tracing the origins of the contemporary climate crisis to the rise of 'fossil capital' after $1830$.

Jason W. Moore

A world-ecology scholar who places the origins of the 'capitalogenic' crisis within the long seventeenth century ($c.\,1550\text{--}1700$), emphasizing the historical integration of capital, power, and nature.

Chthulucene

A concept proposed by Donna Haraway (from the Greek chthonic, meaning subterranean or ancient) designating an era that rejects human supremacy and emphasizes multispecies kinship, entanglement, and sympoiesis on a damaged planet.

Donna Haraway

The feminist theorist who authored Staying with the Trouble ($2016$), critiquing the Anthropocene's exceptionalist narrative and proposing the Chthulucene under the slogan 'make kin, not babies!'

Necrocene

An alternative '-cene' term proposed by Justin McBrien that highlights the systemic generation of extinction, toxicity, and death produced by global capitalist expansion.

Reworlding

A restorative process within Donna Haraway's Chthulucene framework focused on assembling the debris of past destruction and cultivating shared conditions for human and non-human survival.