This topic is honey for political junkies, but there are reasonable geological arguments in favor of this, and many of the arguments opposed to it are political

This topic is honey for political junkies, but there are reasonable geological arguments in favor of this, and many of the arguments opposed to it are political or ideological in nature (the "but man is natural" argument for instance). Epochs are defined by noticeable, large-scale changes in rock strata in lots of places around the globe: glaciation, extinction events, increased volcanism, movement of the continents. It's inarguable that humans have had an impact on the planet which will be measurable in the rock strata for millions of years to come. We've tweaked the isotopes found in the air (the atomic age), we've spiked the carbon content of the atmosphere in a very short period of time, and our dominance of the planet has brought the extinction of many, many other species. These are facts which stand regardless of personal politics. Maybe the best non-political argument against an anthropocene is that it makes the Holocene epoch almost meaninglessly short. I dunno. Anyway, adopting, or not, this new definition will have basically zero impact on anyone's life who isn't a geochronologist, but here we are.