ABSTRACT
In 2002 chemist Paul Crutzen argued that we should no longer consider ourselves to be living in the Holocene epoch, the 11,500 year warm and stable period since the last ice age. He used the term Anthropocene, the age of man, to describe a new geologic epoch characterized by human domination of the planet and much less climatic stability.* His Nobel Prize-winning work on the chemistry of ozone depletion in the stratosphere showed that humans have demonstrated the capacity to fundamentally and dangerously alter the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.
