Over the years, numerous traditions have sought ways to understand the world and humanity’s place in it: from a frontier vision of settlement and expansion to a wilderness-seeking Romanticism, and from pragmatic, resource-driven management and exploitation to stronger commitments to sustainability and conservation. The Anthropocene draws on and goes beyond these legacies, challenging the ‘grand separation’ between nature and society inherited from the Enlightenment era.

First coined in 2000 by Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and American freshwater biologist Eugene Stoermer, the term emerged from the natural sciences. Widely contested within the field – particularly among geologists who, after 15 years of debate, only recently rejected the Anthropocene as an official 'time-rock' unit – the concept has nonetheless bridged disciplines, resonating across the humanities and social sciences.

While there is no single definition, the Anthropocene has come to capture the rapid and radical anthropogenic alterations of the Earth’s systems. From continually rising greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss to agricultural expansion and deforestation, excess nitrogen and phosphorus use, and widespread chemical and plastic pollution, six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been crossed.

Hence, much like how the term ‘environmental crisis’ unified various ecological concerns of the 1960s and early 1970s, the Anthropocene offers a linguistic concretion for current planetary shifts. In doing so, it spotlights interdependencies that are both spatial, ranging from local to global, and temporal, extending from the deep past to the far future.

This synthesis has proven particularly valuable for connecting disciplines and encouraging novel research frameworks. Cultural anthropologists, for example, are increasingly drawing on multispecies ethnographies; urban scholars are mapping environmental destruction associated with urbanisation; and political economists are extending notions of ‘hegemony’ to socio-ecological systems. By energising established debates about the socio-ecological implications of past and present anthropogenic activity, what to do after ‘having done’ has, in many respects, emerged as a central question of the Anthropocene.

In an epoch largely defined and driven by technological developments, it is unsurprising that technocratic solutions and managerial strategies have emerged as the first port of call. Aligned with eco-modernist tradition and under the banner of ‘Enlightened Anthropocentrism’ and the ‘Good Anthropocene’, concepts such as ecological stewardship, planetary management, and geo-engineering have made their way to the forefront of the debate.

However, by building on its Greek derivative, Anthropos, meaning ‘human’, and nurturing a hubristic belief in human ingenuity through its recommendations, the Anthropocene runs the risk of reinforcing the anthropocentric worldview that brought about the environmental crisis in the first place. In doing so, it neglects the deeper shifts required in our relationship with nature. This is also reflected in the noticeable absence of alternative ontologies in discussions and prescriptions. The sidelining of de-growth and post-development frameworks, Indigenous knowledge and local experiences, concepts like Buen Vivir and pluriversality, and scholarship from the Global South, raises the question of whether the Anthropocene truly fosters novel epistemic frameworks or merely reinforces entrenched hierarchies of knowledge and power, exporting a Western/Eurocentric worldview and normative guide to action to the rest of the world.

The concept of a single, amorphous Anthropos, along with notions of a unified humanity and planetary “We,” also risks attributing responsibility equally to all of humanity. This framing dilutes accountability and erases crucial distinctions in how different countries, societies, and classes have contributed – each to varying extents – to the current socio-ecological crisis. In turn, it may aggravate, reproduce, or even create new forms of injustice. Similarly, the Anthropos obscures differences in impact across local, regional, and national contexts, as well as along intersectional lines of class, race, gender, age, and ability. Individuals living in semi-arid or polar regions, as well as small island nations and coastal areas are, for instance, disproportionately affected by the increasing frequency and severity of climatological disasters. Moreover, already vulnerable and marginalised groups often lack the infrastructure and resources necessary to withstand or adapt to changes that threaten their livelihoods, health, and well-being.

Finally, with its holistic, systems-oriented perspective and attendant sweeping narratives, the Anthropocene risks naturalising environmental degradation as an inevitable consequence of human development – or even framing it as part of a 'grand destiny' in human evolution – rather than recognising it as a direct outcome of the growth-, competition-, and profit-driven dynamics of the capitalist world economy.

It stands to reason that the Anthropocene retains a detrimental attachment to the structures, institutions, and ideologies that underpin our current predicament. This short-circuits the drastic changes and fundamental rethinking of existing patterns of extraction, production, distribution, and consumption required to address the planetary challenge at hand.

We need a more nuanced understanding of our socio-natural realities – one that critically interrogates our economic structures, institutional frameworks, and the social relationships that sustain them; one that is sensitive to imbalances in causation, impact, cost, and benefit; one that acknowledges disparities in vulnerability, responsibility, and accountability, particularly with respect to past and present ecological and climatological destruction; and one that facilitates the cross-scalar integration of knowledge, enabling multilevel cooperation and polycentric problem-solving.

In light of these considerations, various counter-Anthropocene narratives have emerged, including the Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Growthocene, and Chthulucene, each highlighting distinct critiques. While these alternatives clearly demonstrate that the Anthropocene is not the Wegweiser we have been seeking, they also prompt a deeper question: can any single term truly accommodate all these needs?

While the right term can certainly help clarify our shared challenges and foster the collective understanding necessary to inspire change and guide action, we must be cautious not to fall into a purely semantic exercise. Radically rethinking our relationship with the Earth – and ultimately forging transformative ways of justly coexisting within its finite limits – will require much more than just a paradigm shift.