The term 'Anthropocene' — coined by chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000 — names the claim that human activity has become the dominant force shaping Earth's physical, chemical, and biological systems. The evidence is compelling: we have altered the atmosphere's chemistry, changed ocean acidity, driven a mass extinction event, transformed land cover across half the planet, and left in the geological record a permanent layer of plastic, concrete, and radionuclides. What makes the Anthropocene philosophically significant is not just what we have done but what it means for how we understand our relationship to the planet. The Holocene conditions that enabled civilisation — relatively stable climate, predictable seasons, abundant biodiversity — cannot be taken for granted. The question is no longer whether humans have reshaped the Earth, but whether we can manage what we have set in motion.

💡 Did you know? The weight of all human-made objects — buildings, roads, machines, plastic — now exceeds the total weight of all living biomass on Earth. The technosphere outweighs the biosphere. This fact was published in Nature in 2020.