I. Overview Even though this new scientific term has been kicking around for fifteen years, “the Anthropocene” suddenly has drawn immense attention. The multidisciplinary Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS), for example, confidently anchored its 2014 annual meeting's call for papers with the title “Welcome to the Anthropocene: From Global Challenge to Planetary Stewardship,” which succinctly captures much of contemporary environmentalism's enthusiasm for this idea, following its endorsement by the Economist in 2011.¹ This study, however, is a more cautious exploration of this new label for “Geology's New Age.”

It reassesses the ongoing ideological reprocessing of this taxonomic term…