Life on Earth is geologically measured by categories such as era, period, epoch, and era, ranging from the largest in time to the smallest. Some elements are considered at each of these large scales of planetary history, such as climatic, physical, and organic events. Geological time covers millions of years and allows us to know the evolution of the planet.

We live in the Holocene. It started more than eleven thousand years ago, when the last ice age ended, and continues to this day. It is characterized by a stable and warm climate. We, in this era, through ways of life such as agriculture, industrialization and urbanization, cause a great impact on the environment. We are top predators and are causing the acceleration of climate change as a result of the complexity of human society which has always considered the environment as an unlimited source of resources to be exploited… deluded or fatally doomed to extinction! We have never understood the inextricable connection between each of the parts of the whole. We never assume interdependence. Today, despite the loud voices that defend this scientific and spiritual truth, we continue to destroy and think that we can get out of the disaster only by scientific development, without stopping. Without changing the way of living together. Without the possibility of achieving better life practices as an option.

(…) has sparked a global debate that allows us to better understand the great environmental challenges of our time.

The term Anthropocene suggests that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch due to destructive human activity. Humans have caused an impact of such magnitude that we have caused a change in geology, climate and planetary life. Industrialization, large-scale agriculture, the exploitation of natural resources, and urbanization that requires the extraction of minerals for the construction of its facilities have caused changes in ecological systems that lead to accelerated extinction of biodiversity. They are major changes that determine the arrival of a new geological epoch.

The validity of the anthropocene – caused by the Holocene mass extinction – a word that comes from the Greek root anthropos or new human and kain being, is a proposal from a part of the scientific community that has not yet been officially accepted, but has sparked a global debate that allows us to better understand the great ecological challenges of our time.

Many disparage the thesis and defend the modern modus vivendi as sustainable and improved only by the action of science and technology. They cannot conceive of a change in the way of life that corresponds to the new civilizational model, which implies a shift from the search for power to its sustainable management, from unlimited consumption to sobriety, from competition to cooperation, from subordination of technologies to artisanal knowledge of living, from individualism to interdependence; and to promote a politically aligned quest that allows us to overcome absolute dependence on digitization. (OR)