The Anthropocene: an event not an epoch

Following last month's decision by the International Union of Geological Sciences to reject the proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch, I saw one or two comments on social media by environmental campaigners who seemed to regard the decision as a setback, even a defeat.

In the light of this, I was interested to read the following a couple of days back, in a paper published last year on the stratigraphic basis of the proposed epoch. This is from the introduction (the emphasis is mine and I've removed the inline references for readability):

"It is no longer necessary for every paper on the subject of the Anthropocene to summarize the case for the proposed new series/epoch and its suggested start in the mid-20th century, or to outline the whole history of the Anthropocene concept. Instead, this paper takes as its starting point recent work which reconfigures the Anthropocene from a proposed geological epoch to an emergent, unfolding, intensifying event. This work proposes that the Anthropocene concept would be most useful to science if it continues to be regarded as an informal time unit alongside the GTS."

Source: The stratigraphic basis of the Anthropocene Event

I have no expertise in the field, but I do like this approach, focusing not on the attempts at classification, but on the effects of recent human activity -- particularly on the effects of the Great Acceleration.

It reminded me of a twitter thread I read last year by Jacquelyn Gill, a palaeoecologist, who pointed out that we already have a geological epoch defined by humanity, namely, the Holocene, and that defining the Anthropocene as a formal geological epoch is not necessary for raising awareness about the profound global changes our activities are causing.