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Anthropocene

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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies
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Introduction

Literally, Anthropocene may be translated as “the age of humankind.” The notion first appeared among scientists in the Soviet Union, and, thus, the term is a case of entangled history, which has not yet been thoroughly explored at the time of writing (Brookes-Fratto 2020). The still-ongoing academic debate about the existence, content, and consequences of the Anthropocene began with Paul Crutzen’s brief article published in Nature in 2002 (Crutzen 2002). The word reflects the realization that human activity irreversibly altered the way the Earth as a biophysical system functions and that this change has already left stratigraphically meaningful, thus evolutionary and chemical, traces. Thus, Anthropocene is the new geological epoch in which humankind as a species currently lives and is the outcome of human activities.

As a stratigraphic layer, the Anthropocene contains traces showing that: the level of carbon dioxide has nearly doubled in the atmosphere, there is increasing...

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Balogh, R. (2021). Anthropocene. In: Romaniuk, S., Thapa, M., Marton, P. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Global Security Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74336-3_647-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74336-3_647-1

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