What are the main points of "The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea" by Rob Nixon?

"The Anthropocene: The Promise and
Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea" examines the argument advanced by Paul Crutzen and Eugene
Stoermer that the Holocene epoch, usually regarded by geologists as the current geological
epoch, is actually over. Humans have had such a profound effect on the planet, including its
geology, that we have created a new epoch: the Anthropocene.

The Anthropocene
began with the Industrial Revolution, but its effects have been particularly pronounced since
1950, according to Nixon. These effects include altering the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle
and the rate of extinction; the building of megacities; and changing the pH of the oceans.
"Of vertebrate terrestrial life, humans and our domesticated animals now constitute over
90% by weight, with less than 10% comprised by wild creatures," Nixon writes.

The article stresses the enormous influence that the idea of the Anthropocene has had,
first in academia, where is has led to a great deal of interdisciplinary study, then in
politics. However, it has been a controversial idea as well as an influential one, principally
because the type of grand narrative it encourages risks a loss of subtlety in the discussion of
environmental change, as though all the humans in the world are acting in the same
way.

There is also a split between those who see the Anthropocene epoch as a
crisis, and those, like the geographer Erle Ellis, who regard it as "the beginning of a new
geological epoch ripe with human-directed opportunity." Others see the very name
"Anthropocene" as evidence of humanand narcissism. The article ends by mentioning the
Anthopocene Cabinet of Curiosities, an exhibition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
intended to use objects to tell the story of the Anthropocene (website attached). Nixon
concludes,

The work on display here seeks to give immense
biomorphic and geomorphic changes a granular intimacy. Collectively, these Anthropocene stories
have the power to disturb and to surprise, hopefully goading us toward new ways of thinking and
feeling about the planet we have inherited and the planet we will bequeath.

href="http://nelson.wisc.edu/che/anthroslam/">http://nelson.wisc.edu/che/anthroslam/
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