Maturity: 5 things to know about anthropocene and on the weight of humanity

In the first test of the Maturity 2025among the seven tracks proposed for the Italian theme, a text by the philosopher of science also appears Telmo Pievanientitled A quarter of era (geological) of celebrity. In the song, contained in a 2022 issue of the quarterly magazine Under the volcano (Feltrinelli), the concept of the sedimentary signature left by human activities through everything we have produced and built (or transformed into energy), thanks to the raw materials present in nature.

It affects the disproportion between the set of human artifacts and that of the living, that is, the biomass. This, concludes Pievani, is the indelible trace of anthropocenethe unpleasant legacy of our “quarter of an hour of celebrity” in the history of the planet.

What is meant by anthropocene? What are the terms of the contrast between human works and living beings outlined in the song? We collected some things to know about this topic. Even for those who, maturity, has faced it for a few years now.

The term anthropocene describes a period of the history of the earth where human activities have drastically modified the planet in its physical, chemical and biological characteristics, with particular reference to the increase in greenhouse gase concentrations in the atmosphere.

Anthropocene derives from the Greek anthroposman, and Kainosrecent, and was initially coined in 2000 by the Dutch chemist Nobel Prize Paul Crutzen (which first included the causes of the Ozone hole) To indicate the beginning of a new geological phasein which man acts as a force that irreversible terrestrial systems irreversible.

For the anthropocene working group (Anthropocene Working Group, AWG), composed in 2009 to collect sufficient evidence to demonstrate the actual beginning of a new geological era marked by human activities, the characteristics of the anthropocene include: a increase in erosion and sediments produced by agriculture and urbanization; there disturbance of the cycles of the elements like that of carbon, nitrogen or phosphorus; environmental changes such as global warming, the increase in sea level or acidification of oceans; quick changes in the biosphere, e the proliferation and global dispersion of cementplastic and other “technophossils”, industrial materials produced by man that will be found by the archaeologists of the future.

The current geological era is the Olocene, the period that welcomed the development of modern human society, which began 11,700 years ago with the end of the last glacial phase that affected the northern hemisphere. However, many exponents of the scientific community believed that the impact of human activities in the second half of the twentieth century had been such as to justify the official passage to a new geological phase.

However, in 2024 and after decades of debate, the International Union of Geological Sciences (UICG) established that we are still in the olcene, rejecting the proposal to formalize the beginning of the anthropocene giving it a precise “start date” over time (of the reasons we wrote more widely here). Therefore, for the organization, anthropocene cannot be considered “a formal unit of geological temporal scale”, but remains in common language, to indicate “the priceless human impact on the-tree system”.

Yes. In 2020 a study on Nature He tried to quantify the “weight” of anthropocene. And revealed that today the anthropic mass measure 1,1 teratonerlated (1.1 trillion tons) And if it continues to increase at this rhythm it could go to triple the “dry” biomass of the earth (the estimated one, that is, without considering the weight of the water) by 2040. The way we arrived literally fear. In 1900 the anthropic mass was equivalent to just 3% of the biomass, but in 120 years it came to exceed 100%, on the dint of concrete and asphalt trips and plastic tons produced and poured into the sea.

The phenomenon took a few decisive accelerations in particular historical moments, such as in the phase of the economic boom followed by the Second World War. Based on the study, conducted by a group of biologists from the Weizmann Institute (Israel), 2020 marked, with a margin of more/less 6 years, the point of no return, the moment when all anthropic works such as roads, buildings, concrete infrastructures and all the plastic, bricks and technology we produce have come to weigh more than plants, microorganisms, people and animals.

But that’s not only what we built. Phenomena such as deforestation, soil consumption linked to agricultural activities and breeding and decline of abundance and the number of living species caused by man have to do with it. Although humanity represents just 0.01% of life on the planet we have caused, together with the previous generations of Homo sapiensthe disappearance of 83% of wild mammals and half of the plants. AND radically modified the balance between the species of living: for example by overturning the proportions between breeding animals and wild animals. If we take the birds, only 30% of those present on the planet is made up of wild species. The remaining 70% is breeding poultry.

Based on an ISPRA report, the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, published in 2024, the consumption of land in our country continues to advance at the rhythm of about 20 hectares per day.

Every year in Italy about 70 square km of territory are cemented: among new houses, streets, squares, shopping centers and factories, it is as if a new city like large city like Naples appeared every year.

This happens while the Italian population decreases: in practice we consume a precious resource, which reforms with extreme slowness, to build “Boxes” of inefficient concretethat we do not need, in a disordered growth that subtracts resources from our well -being and agriculture.