Google Trends Data Shows Increasing Public Interest in the "Anthropocene"

There are numerous indicators that suggest increasing public interest in the Anthropocene—a concept that suggests humanity has transformed the earth to such an extent that we have entered a new biogeophysical age [for an introduction, see my open access introduction to our book Rivers of the Anthropocene (University of California Press, 2017) as well as our open access Roundtable: The Anthropocene in British History in the Journal of British Studies 57:3 (2018)].

In this interactive graph, I have pulled data from Google Trends, which shows quantitative evidence of growing interest in the Anthropocene. The data covers the years 2004 through 2018 and ranks the intensity of searches from 0 to 100. The data is normalized by Google based on search volume. You can hover over each month to see

Photo Credit: N. Johannes. The bulk carrier Marine Princess seen loading scrap metal at Alexandra Dock, Liverpool, 11th April of 2017. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.