Abstract
The concept of the Anthropocene appeared at the beginning of the twenty-first Century and has quickly become a hot topic. It has even enjoyed growing media success throughout the last two decades, both in scientific circles and in popular works. It has provoked polemical reactions as well as much semantic debate. The use of the term Anthropocene remains ambiguous and we are faced with a concept that is still under construction, and which is worthy of further examination so that we might grasp its originality and also its usefulness for thinking about both education and politics in a new way.
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Notes
- 1.
The Holocene is the current official geological epoch that began 11,700 years ago.
- 2.
A nuclear winter refers to a cooling of several degrees of the Earth’s surface temperature, which would jeopardize global food security in the event of a full-scale nuclear war.
- 3.
This is an element worked on with his two co-writers Raphaël Stevens and Gauthier Chapelle in Une autre fin du monde est possible (2018).
- 4.
The ICS is the largest scientific body of the IUGS, consisting of representatives from 50 countries, and composed of an Executive Board and 16 sub-committees, each with about 20 voting members.
- 5.
These different assumptions are developed in The Anthropocene Decoded for Humans (Wallenhorst, 2019).
- 6.
The Stone Age begins with the creation of stone tools by the first hominids (2.4–3.2 million years ago).
- 7.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million (ppm). One part per million is the fraction corresponding to one millionth.
- 8.
Ice caps are large glaciers located at the poles. They are sometimes several kilometres high and extend over tens of square kilometres. These ice caps are an important part of the Earth system and can be seen from space. They have a high albedo (albedo is the reflective power of a surface) and thus contribute to global cooling.
- 9.
It is possible that one or the other stratigraphic factor mentioned appears among the secondary factors correlated to the main factor responsible for the differentiation of the two sedimentary layers (but history will remember the predominance of one factor over the others).
- 10.
This component is further developed by Nathanaël Wallenhorst (2019).
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Wallenhorst, N., Robin, JY., Boutinet, JP. (2023). The Emergence of the Anthropocene, an Astonishing Revelation of the Human Condition? . In: Wallenhorst, N., Hétier, R., Pierron, JP., Wulf, C. (eds) Political Education in the Anthropocene . Anthropocene – Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40021-6_2
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