'So many problems with the Anthropocene definition'

The world recently got closer to accepting that it is in the Anthropocene-the age of humans. On July 28, the Anthropocene Working Group, set up in 2009 by a UNESCO subcommission to assess geological "reality" and the most suitable timing of the epoch's beginning, announced 1950 to be the starting year. The group's study on a dozen sites found the presence of radionuclides, especially plutonium, in geological materials of early 1950s, showing the impact of nuclear tests by nations in the period, and indicating a date to mark the transformative effect humanity has had on Earth's ecology and climate. While the final acceptance of the Anthropocene Epoch is subject to its ratification at the International Geological Congress in South Korea next year, author AMITAV GHOSH is conflicted about the development. At the launch of his book, Smoke and Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories, in Delhi, Ghosh talks to RAJAT GHAI about the problems in the framing of the issue, the narrowness of the definition, the missing voices and histories in the narrative, and his latest book. Excerpts:

- AMITAV GHOSH, RAJAT GHAI

As a chronicler of history, how do you see these efforts by scholars to define the geological epoch currently we are in after humans?

I have very complicated feelings about it. I understand in a sense why the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) wanted to narrow the date down to one particular geological layer, to a certain stratum and in a particular place [Crawford Lake in Canada, which has accurately datable sediments showing plutonium's presence]. It's because they just wanted to make it as narrow as possible. Part of the reason people support this approach is because there is a sense that it might lead to greater political action or awareness of the problem. But I do feel that it is important to note that there have been several resignations from AWG over the narrowness of this definition because effectively, it ignores the prehistory of this problem which goes back three or four centuries to the invention of an extractivist economy, which is what my book The Nutmeg's Curse is about.