NYT: this could be the end of an epoch

Dear friends,

For more than a decade, a panel of scientists has been deliberating on whether the official record of geologic time should be updated to include a momentous new age: our own.

A verdict might finally be near. Or the debate is about to enter a contentious new phase.

“Everybody picks on the Anthropocene Working Group because they’ve taken so long,” one geologist told me. “In geologic time, this isn’t long.”

Here’s my story from Sunday’s newspaper. It is possibly the nerdiest thing I’ve managed and ever will manage to get on the NYT front page.

Ray