The word “Anthropocene” is the invention of Paul Crutzen, a Dutch chemist who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering the effects of ozone-depleting compounds. The importance of this discovery is difficult to overstate; had it not been made—and had the chemicals continued to be widely used—the ozone “hole” that opens up every spring over Antarctica would have expanded until eventually it encircled the entire earth. (One of Crutzen’s fellow Nobelists reportedly came home from his lab one night and told his wife, “The work is going well, but it looks like it might be the end of the world.”
