In the age of the "Petrolocene" the combustion, transformation, and subsequent impacts of fossil fuels have become the greatest factors on the geological scale.
The geological epoch cannot necessarily be defined simply by the human species itself, as in the Anthropocene, or by capitalism (as in the "Capitalocene") because there are many human beings (and even some who participate in capitalism) that do not contribute to the use of fossil fuels (which, if any other species used as homo sapiens sapiens has, would lead to the same impacts).
Current population size, agricultural practices, and technological developments have all been powered, and in some sense driven, by the use and transformation of fossil fuel based energies.
