Translation of an opinion piece published in Le Monde 14-11-14

Last week, in Berlin, an event took place that was as modest as it was decisive: for the first time, the Working Group of the Sub-Commission on Quarternary Stratigraphy met under the chairmanship of an English geologist, Dr Jan Zalasiewicz. Hardly headline news, is it? That’s where you’re wrong. To begin with, these geologists were meeting in connection with, and at the invitation of, a cultural institution (the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, located a stone’s throw from the Reichstag). Already that’s something of an oddity. But, more than that, they were meeting for our benefit, by which I mean they were meeting to decide the geological epoch we ought to consider ourselves to be inhabiting from now on. Now that’s certainly surprising.