Anthropocene: The Challenges for a New World

In the last decades, the humankind has become a geological force and rivals with the great forces of nature in the impact and modification of the Earth system. The word Anthropocene was proposed by the scientists Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoemer, in 2000, to describe this new age and capture the central human role in geology and ecology. In this article, a brief review of Anthropocene history, from the point of view of geology and environmental sciences, is presented and the confluence of Chemistry and the main Anthropocene topics is shown considering the future of our Planet. Several approaches to define the beginning of Anthropocene are discussed as well as the evidences that, from the point of view of chemistry, biology and environmental sciences, we are in a new epoch, different from Holocene. There is no doubt that mankind has modified the Planet in a dramatic extent, in some cases in an irreversible extent, and the Holocene concepts are not suitable to describe the new tendencies in the chemical and biological variables and the future of the earth system as a whole. The future depends on the approaches to manage humanity's relationship with the environment. The Planetary Boundaries concept defines a "safe operating space" for humanity with respect to the Earth system, and is based on a small number of sub-systems or processes, many of which exhibit abrupt change behavior when critical thresholds are crossed. Chemistry has a central role in the goal of identifying and maintaining a safe operating space in which humanity can pursue its further development and evolution.