Anthropocene - the Ongoing Story

The Anthropocene Working Group recently decided not to recognise the existence of the Anthropocene - much to the disgust of some members of the group - see HERE.

If the Anthropocene had been recognised it would have marked the end of the Holocene, the current geological epoch, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the Younger Dryas. There has been much discussion about when the putative Anthropocene would be deemed to start. I had a strange wish to straddle two Geological Epochs! 

The wish for the new epoch has a great deal to do with environmental concerns. Perhaps it should be considered an Event rather than Epoch, similar to the Great Oxygenation Event of the Proterozoic, the Snowball Earth Events and the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. 

And as THIS ARTICLE suggests, global warming has been caused by a small number of people rather than humanity as a whole and would be better named Plutocracene!