In 2000, Nobel prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen announced the scale of change is so great that in just 250 years, human society has pushed the planet into a new geological era: the Anthropocene. This name has stuck and there are calls for the Anthropocene to be adopted officially. If it is, it may be the shortest of all geological eras. Evidence suggests that if human activities continue to change components of the Earth system, which are all interlinked, this could heave the Earth system out of one state and into a new state.