Introduction

The word Anthropocene was initially put forward in 2000 at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program annual conference by the Dutch geochemist Paul Crutzen, who had achieved scientific fame in the 1970s and 1980s thanks to his major contribution to the fight against ozone depletion. According to Crutzen, human activities have reached such a large scale that the human species has morphed into a geological force in its own right. As Christian Schwägerl puts it, the Anthropocene thesis boils..