Opinion
In recent decades, man has become a geological force,
competing with natural forces in the impact and modification of the
Earth system. The term Anthropocene was proposed by scientists
Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoemer, in 2000, to describe this new
time and emphasize the preponderant role of man in geology
and ecology. There is no doubt that man has unequivocally and
in some cases irreversibly changed the Planet, and that Holocene
concepts can no longer be used to describe trends in chemical and
biological variables and the future of the Earth system as a whole.
Tomorrow depends, to a great extent, on actions to optimize the
relationship between man and the environment. This, then, is the
moment we find ourselves in today: the Epoch of Humans. The one
in which Homo sapiens finds that civilization has become a force
of planetary reach and of geological duration and scope. We are
billions of people in the world and we continue to multiply. From a
biological point of view, it is a growth equivalent to that of a colony
of bacteria: an extremely explosive pace, in a very short period of
time. We have become planetary: today there is not a single region
that is not directly or indirectly affected by the whole of human
activity. By releasing smoke from automobiles, chimneys and fires,
humanity changed the composition of carbon in the atmosphere,
causing a temperature increase of 1°C, glaciers melting and sea
level rise by, so far, 20 centimeters. Not to mention how humanity
physically altered the planet, with concrete and steel.
A clear example is the rivers: in the last decades, we have
transformed the river courses of all the hydrographic basins of
the world by building 40 thousand dams. If the reservoirs of all
these dams were placed side by side, we would have a flooded
area equivalent to the State of Bahia. In an article published in
the bulletin of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program,
Crutzen defended his thesis by saying that the rate of urbanization
has increased tenfold in the last century and that, in a few
generations, humanity will extinguish the fossil fuels generated
over the last hundreds of millions of years. The text had an almost
immediate repercussion among geologists. Scientist Andrew
Gale of the University of Portsmouth, a member of the Geological
Society of London, told The Times newspaper that he agrees with
the argument of the chemist and his fellow geologists. According
to him, human activities have become the main force behind the
great changes in topography and climate. According to him, you
cannot have 6.5 billion people living on a planet the size of ours and
exploit every possible resource without causing gigantic changes in
the physical, chemical and biological environments, which will be
dramatically reflected in our geological record.