00:00:11.928 --> 00:00:15.407
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:00:27.323 --> 00:00:29.311
- We had a meeting down in Mexico.

00:00:29.311 --> 00:00:31.304
And someone had referred to the Holocene.

00:00:31.304 --> 00:00:33.845
And Paul burst out, "Well, we're
not in the Holocene anymore.

00:00:33.845 --> 00:00:35.234
We're in the Anthropocene."

00:00:37.086 --> 00:00:42.328
- There's probably never been anything like
this cycle in the history of the universe.

00:00:42.328 --> 00:00:44.220
- A novel geological force.

00:00:44.220 --> 00:00:46.670
A novel planetary force.

00:00:46.670 --> 00:00:50.364
- The effect of mankind is as great
as some of the great forces of nature.

00:00:54.611 --> 00:00:59.850
- Humankind acting as the most important
geological agent, that's the Anthropocene.

00:00:59.850 --> 00:01:02.519
- The Anthropocene is
like a common narrative.

00:01:02.519 --> 00:01:03.830
You laugh at times.

00:01:03.830 --> 00:01:06.464
You cry at others.

00:01:06.464 --> 00:01:11.690
- If I came at this from afar and
regarded this moment as a fable,

00:01:11.690 --> 00:01:14.040
I would have a smile on my face.

00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:17.860
- All right.

00:01:17.860 --> 00:01:22.380
Let's fast forward to 2050, and let's
say we go through the Great Collapse.

00:01:22.380 --> 00:01:24.630
I would certainly view it as a tragedy.

00:01:29.297 --> 00:01:30.130
- We're intelligent.

00:01:30.130 --> 00:01:31.300
We're manipulative.

00:01:31.300 --> 00:01:35.030
So it will be hard to shake us off, like
cockroaches, and rats, and so forth,

00:01:35.030 --> 00:01:36.615
the urban foxes and suchlike --

00:01:36.615 --> 00:01:37.520
we get by very well.

00:01:40.230 --> 00:01:43.340
- We've woken up behind the wheel of
a car that's moving down the highway,

00:01:43.340 --> 00:01:45.270
and now it's our turn to drive.

00:01:45.270 --> 00:01:47.500
- We have to really change the way we live.

00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:49.554
That decision needs to happen this decade.

00:01:54.882 --> 00:01:58.020
- For me, the question is
what's a good engineered planet?

00:01:58.020 --> 00:01:59.351
What's a good Anthropocene?

00:01:59.351 --> 00:02:00.350
That's the big question.

00:02:00.350 --> 00:02:01.380
That's up to us.

00:02:01.380 --> 00:02:05.980
- The choices we make today
will be preserved in rock,

00:02:05.980 --> 00:02:08.471
in the layer of the Anthropocene.

00:02:08.471 --> 00:02:11.898
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:02:22.854 --> 00:02:23.513
- Oh, my god.

00:02:23.513 --> 00:02:24.846
Look at that picture over there.

00:02:27.834 --> 00:02:31.320
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:03:00.010 --> 00:03:05.620
- The Anthropocene is a new term
coined only a decade ago or so --

00:03:05.620 --> 00:03:10.590
probably coined by Paul Crutzen, although
there are those who dispute that.

00:03:10.590 --> 00:03:15.600
And what it means is a new era in
the geological history of the Earth,

00:03:15.600 --> 00:03:22.480
an era in which it is for the first
time humankind that is inadvertently,

00:03:22.480 --> 00:03:28.860
unwittingly shaping the grand
geological, geophysical processes...

00:03:28.860 --> 00:03:32.360
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:44.330
...including climate, including
the carbon cycle, the sulfur cycle,

00:03:44.330 --> 00:03:46.880
the nitrogen cycle.

00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:49.788
- ...to bring water and food
where there is only parched earth.

00:03:52.930 --> 00:03:54.790
And people, where there is desolation.

00:03:54.790 --> 00:03:58.377
- Humankind acting as the most
important geological agent,

00:03:58.377 --> 00:04:06.150
moving rock and soil around on a scale
comparable to glaciation and natural soil

00:04:06.150 --> 00:04:06.650
erosion.

00:04:09.870 --> 00:04:11.810
That's the Anthropocene.

00:04:11.810 --> 00:04:15.275
- Reshaping the geography
of the land in dimensions

00:04:15.275 --> 00:04:19.235
never before possible,
to meet the needs of man.

00:04:21.710 --> 00:04:25.175
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:04:28.145 --> 00:04:31.340
- Here in the Rift Valley, one
would think the forces of nature

00:04:31.340 --> 00:04:33.182
are almost unsurpassable.

00:04:33.182 --> 00:04:40.048
But the human impact is even much
stronger than the force of nature.

00:04:40.048 --> 00:04:45.150
Humans are changing our
Earth in a way that has never

00:04:45.150 --> 00:04:47.948
been recorded any time in the past.

00:04:50.190 --> 00:04:57.960
This is what we call Anthropocene epoch, a
major geological period that is completely

00:04:57.960 --> 00:05:01.617
initiated and influenced by
human activities on Earth.

00:05:08.435 --> 00:05:15.540
- The burgeoning activities of humankind
are causing changes to the landscape,

00:05:15.540 --> 00:05:18.750
to the animals and plants
that live on the landscape,

00:05:18.750 --> 00:05:21.785
and to the chemistry of the
atmosphere and of the oceans.

00:05:21.785 --> 00:05:25.250
And these changes are being imprinted
upon the sediments, the sands

00:05:25.250 --> 00:05:29.210
and the mud that are accumulating
in the sea and in rivers and lakes.

00:05:29.210 --> 00:05:30.846
And these are the strata of the future.

00:05:33.230 --> 00:05:37.150
The big question is -- really it is a new
question, one that's not being studied --

00:05:37.150 --> 00:05:42.240
is whether these changes are sufficient
to make these future strata sufficiently

00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:50.260
distinctive to deserve their own
term of this Anthropocene epoch.

00:05:50.260 --> 00:05:53.690
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:06:00.060 --> 00:06:03.630
- What stratigraphers, or what
this working group is doing now,

00:06:03.630 --> 00:06:06.630
is something rather new for stratigraphy.

00:06:06.630 --> 00:06:15.450
They are not finding evidence about
past time, but about our current time.

00:06:15.450 --> 00:06:23.990
They are not looking for clues
or footprints from the past,

00:06:23.990 --> 00:06:27.950
but they are eyewitnesses
of what is going on today.

00:06:27.950 --> 00:06:30.270
And they can't be only stratigraphers.

00:06:30.270 --> 00:06:32.190
They have to be biologists.

00:06:32.190 --> 00:06:33.910
They have to be ethnographers.

00:06:33.910 --> 00:06:35.730
They have to be chemists.

00:06:35.730 --> 00:06:37.810
And even there is a lawyer.

00:06:37.810 --> 00:06:41.284
- If the concept of the
Anthropocene is true, then that does

00:06:41.284 --> 00:06:44.853
mean that the effect of
humankind is as great as some

00:06:44.853 --> 00:06:47.110
of the great forces of nature.

00:06:47.110 --> 00:06:50.610
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:06:50.610 --> 00:06:55.271
(SIRENS)

00:06:55.271 --> 00:06:58.025
- Each tree dies with majestic grace.

00:07:00.710 --> 00:07:05.413
We cut the top off Wisconsin
and sent it down the river.

00:07:07.409 --> 00:07:11.900
(EXPLOSION)

00:07:11.900 --> 00:07:15.393
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:07:35.353 --> 00:07:40.520
- Formal ratification of the Anthropocene
will mean that we have left one geological

00:07:40.520 --> 00:07:46.010
epoch, the Holocene, and that we have
entered another geological epoch,

00:07:46.010 --> 00:07:47.510
a new epoch --

00:07:47.510 --> 00:07:52.004
Anthropocene, which has been
caused by our own action.

00:07:54.494 --> 00:08:01.990
And if that is not enough to become
aware of the consequences of our actions,

00:08:01.990 --> 00:08:04.330
then I don't know what is.

00:08:04.330 --> 00:08:07.643
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:08:14.616 --> 00:08:19.260
- To decide on the word
Anthropocene would bring,

00:08:19.260 --> 00:08:23.890
I believe, a new opportunity
for our young generations.

00:08:23.890 --> 00:08:29.150
When I first heard the word
Anthropocene, I was really happy.

00:08:29.150 --> 00:08:31.789
It seemed like such a hopeful word to have.

00:08:31.789 --> 00:08:36.280
I look at the homework my
kids bring home in Guatemala,

00:08:36.280 --> 00:08:40.066
and they are still being taught
that they live in the Holocene.

00:08:40.066 --> 00:08:44.362
And then I wondered, wow, what would
change if they were already being

00:08:44.362 --> 00:08:46.250
taught that they live in the Anthropocene?

00:08:46.250 --> 00:08:50.220
Can you imagine their brains
making all those connections,

00:08:50.220 --> 00:08:53.830
thinking "Wow, I am a shaping force.

00:08:53.830 --> 00:08:55.660
I have a responsibility."

00:08:55.660 --> 00:08:58.118
That would change our behavior really fast.

00:08:58.118 --> 00:09:00.500
- We are not changing nature,
which is different from us.

00:09:00.500 --> 00:09:02.990
We are changing ourselves.

00:09:02.990 --> 00:09:06.476
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:09:32.400 --> 00:09:36.240
- Well the Anthropocene, as far as I
know, was first used in the year 2000.

00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:40.140
I was director at that time of an
international program on how the planet is

00:09:40.140 --> 00:09:42.100
changing, why it's changing, and so on.

00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:46.480
We had a meeting down in Mexico and a member
of our committee, in fact the vice-chair,

00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:47.240
was Paul Crutzen.

00:09:47.240 --> 00:09:49.990
And he's well known for
his work on the ozone hole.

00:09:49.990 --> 00:09:52.090
In fact, he's won a Nobel Prize on that.

00:09:52.090 --> 00:09:55.730
And sometime during the
meeting someone had referred

00:09:55.730 --> 00:09:59.150
to the Holocene, which is the
present geological epoch we're in.

00:09:59.150 --> 00:10:01.770
And Paul burst out, "Well, we're
not in the Holocene anymore.

00:10:01.770 --> 00:10:03.450
We're in the Anthropocene."

00:10:03.450 --> 00:10:06.940
And so the term was sort of
born, I think, at that meeting.

00:10:06.940 --> 00:10:10.657
- Ideas like Anthropocene have
been around for 100 years.

00:10:10.657 --> 00:10:12.240
But nobody really took them seriously.

00:10:12.240 --> 00:10:16.100
They said that "Look, the volcanoes,
the earthquakes, and so on, the mountain

00:10:16.100 --> 00:10:19.316
building, is much bigger
than human effects."

00:10:24.096 --> 00:10:25.970
- And then the penny
dropped for a lot of us,

00:10:25.970 --> 00:10:29.090
saying "Hey, it's not just the
Earth's orbit around the sun that

00:10:29.090 --> 00:10:30.740
can change a geological epoch.

00:10:30.740 --> 00:10:31.760
We're doing it.

00:10:31.760 --> 00:10:34.664
We're becoming a geological
force in our own right."

00:10:34.664 --> 00:10:37.830
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:10:41.606 --> 00:10:46.280
- And so the term was very quickly
picked up by other geologists.

00:10:46.280 --> 00:10:48.830
I noticed it was being used in journals --

00:10:48.830 --> 00:10:50.826
high profile ones, Science, and so on --

00:10:53.710 --> 00:10:58.050
without irony, without inverted commas,
as if it was a real formal term.

00:11:03.550 --> 00:11:08.040
- Well, I first heard the word, or read
the word, "Anthropocene" around 2000,

00:11:08.040 --> 00:11:10.210
when there was this paper that came out.

00:11:10.210 --> 00:11:14.440
And I went back and got this book I wrote
in 1992 off the shelf, on global warming,

00:11:14.440 --> 00:11:19.085
and it had a section where I was talking in
general about this moment in human history

00:11:19.085 --> 00:11:23.130
-- and in Earth history -- as being unique.

00:11:23.130 --> 00:11:26.100
That organisms had changed the
nature of the Earth before.

00:11:26.100 --> 00:11:28.680
That cyanobacteria, a couple
billion years earlier,

00:11:28.680 --> 00:11:32.270
had filled the atmosphere with oxygen.

00:11:32.270 --> 00:11:33.500
But they didn't know that.

00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:34.880
They weren't aware of that.

00:11:34.880 --> 00:11:38.790
So I wrote at that time that here
we are at this funny juncture, where

00:11:38.790 --> 00:11:44.330
geologists of the future will look back at
this era and see some signal in geology.

00:11:44.330 --> 00:11:48.880
And I said maybe we'd call it
something like the Anthrocene.

00:11:48.880 --> 00:11:52.760
But if I'd written Anthropocene,
like anthropology...

00:11:52.760 --> 00:11:56.990
but as it is, the idea resonated.

00:11:56.990 --> 00:12:01.110
- For me, the Anthropocene is about
viewing ourselves as a species.

00:12:01.110 --> 00:12:09.370
Therefore, gender aspects, race aspects,
ethnic aspects, become a bit second level.

00:12:09.370 --> 00:12:14.360
We're talking about a term that unifies
us in a way that few others can.

00:12:14.360 --> 00:12:17.797
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:12:28.130 --> 00:12:32.880
- So we discussed the Anthropocene because
it was appearing as if it was formal.

00:12:32.880 --> 00:12:34.080
It wasn't formal.

00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:35.060
So could it be?

00:12:35.060 --> 00:12:37.060
Might it be formal?

00:12:37.060 --> 00:12:41.290
And to my surprise, the great majority
of the technically minded, serious,

00:12:41.290 --> 00:12:45.576
non-radical, non-revolutionary geologists
thought there was merit to the term.

00:12:45.576 --> 00:12:47.920
- The geological debate will play out.

00:12:47.920 --> 00:12:50.690
I think that's a sideshow.

00:12:50.690 --> 00:12:54.120
I mean really, what I think the
power of this is the metaphor.

00:12:54.120 --> 00:12:56.030
That's the power of this concept.

00:12:56.030 --> 00:13:00.440
I'm not sure how many Scrabble players
have put Anthropocene on their board yet.

00:13:00.440 --> 00:13:03.980
But there's geological evidence
of this creature, Homo sapiens,

00:13:03.980 --> 00:13:07.050
coming through this growth spurt
in the last couple hundred years

00:13:07.050 --> 00:13:10.120
and leaving a signature, for
better or worse, on the planet,

00:13:10.120 --> 00:13:11.860
on a synthetic planet.

00:13:11.860 --> 00:13:15.360
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:13:31.197 --> 00:13:32.183
- Follow the crowd.

00:13:32.183 --> 00:13:33.062
Watch us grow.

00:13:33.062 --> 00:13:35.020
- I would think that what
we're playing out now

00:13:35.020 --> 00:13:37.249
would have taken a really
clever science fiction

00:13:37.249 --> 00:13:39.040
writer to come up with something like this.

00:13:42.379 --> 00:13:45.718
(TYPING)

00:13:47.626 --> 00:13:53.890
- This earth that we're sitting on,
resting on, began just over four and a half

00:13:53.890 --> 00:14:01.820
billion years ago as a cloud of gas
and dust whirling around the sun.

00:14:01.820 --> 00:14:06.480
And very quickly and very
brutally this gas and dust

00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:11.092
collided together to create planets
which crashed into each other.

00:14:11.092 --> 00:14:14.600
And the survivors were those we know now --

00:14:14.600 --> 00:14:17.710
Mars, Venus, Jupiter and the Earth.

00:14:19.670 --> 00:14:25.240
- The initial emergence of life,
that probably began somewhere

00:14:25.240 --> 00:14:28.450
on the order of three billion years ago.

00:14:28.450 --> 00:14:36.880
And from that time forward the Earth has
been in the grip of a unique history --

00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:42.460
unique in the solar system, possibly
entirely unique in the universe --

00:14:42.460 --> 00:14:52.650
in that its atmosphere, its hydrosphere,
its pedosphere, the rock and soil,

00:14:52.650 --> 00:14:55.950
have been influenced by
life, by life processes.

00:14:55.950 --> 00:14:59.450
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:15:07.772 --> 00:15:14.210
- One major event which happened just after
these rocks here particularly were formed,

00:15:14.210 --> 00:15:18.835
was the origin of multicellular life, of all
manner of creepy crawlies -- worms, snails,

00:15:18.835 --> 00:15:21.300
arthropods, crustaceans.

00:15:21.300 --> 00:15:26.210
But the first proper land fossils are really
in the late Silurian and early Devonian

00:15:26.210 --> 00:15:26.980
times.

00:15:26.980 --> 00:15:33.130
And by the late Devonian they'd really
begun to develop into tree-like things.

00:15:33.130 --> 00:15:36.290
Then in the succeeding
Carboniferous Period, let

00:15:36.290 --> 00:15:40.020
us say some 350 million years
ago, there were proper forests.

00:15:42.840 --> 00:15:46.880
The rocks around these hillsides
here belong to the Permian

00:15:46.880 --> 00:15:49.920
and this exciting Triassic Period.

00:15:49.920 --> 00:15:54.110
And those are separated by
the greatest extinction event

00:15:54.110 --> 00:15:58.980
ever, when something like
95% of species disappeared

00:15:58.980 --> 00:16:02.590
in the wake of enormous volcanic eruptions.

00:16:02.590 --> 00:16:04.803
And the beginning of
the Triassic Period also

00:16:04.803 --> 00:16:08.400
marks the beginning of the greenhouse
world, it's the time of the dinosaurs.

00:16:08.400 --> 00:16:11.690
And that lasted until 65 million years ago.

00:16:11.690 --> 00:16:15.108
We went through the Triassic, the
Jurassic, and then the Cretaceous Periods.

00:16:18.390 --> 00:16:21.220
And at the end of the Cretaceous
Period, famously, the dinosaurs

00:16:21.220 --> 00:16:22.720
died out, as did much else.

00:16:25.120 --> 00:16:26.672
Life was knocked over again.

00:16:29.528 --> 00:16:31.890
Who could have predicted that these...

00:16:31.890 --> 00:16:34.075
wee furry, squeaky things -- the mammals --

00:16:34.075 --> 00:16:36.200
in the shadow of the
dinosaurs, would have come out

00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:40.200
of their shadow to then take over the
top spot in the food chain on land

00:16:40.200 --> 00:16:42.095
and in part in the sea.

00:16:42.095 --> 00:16:45.350
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:16:54.616 --> 00:16:56.713
And then two and a half
million years ago we're

00:16:56.713 --> 00:16:58.760
into the period we're
in now, the time of ice.

00:17:03.310 --> 00:17:06.060
We have many advances and retreats of ice.

00:17:06.060 --> 00:17:11.032
And almost all of those are crammed
into what we call the Pleistocene epoch.

00:17:11.032 --> 00:17:15.387
This period of time has dominated
a lot of our landscapes,

00:17:15.387 --> 00:17:20.210
it's created the mountainscapes
we see around us.

00:17:20.210 --> 00:17:22.710
It has smoothed over these
hills we see around us here.

00:17:27.270 --> 00:17:31.590
- Now humanity appeared on the planet
during one of these cold periods,

00:17:34.020 --> 00:17:37.860
went through the previous
interglacial about 130,000 years ago,

00:17:37.860 --> 00:17:39.600
went into the next ice age.

00:17:39.600 --> 00:17:42.660
Now all that time, we were
hunter-gatherers only.

00:17:51.690 --> 00:17:56.960
- From archaeological records, the early
man actually started in East Africa --

00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:02.160
very close to where we are here in the
Rift Valley -- almost 3 million years ago.

00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:04.190
And it's what we call the cradle of mankind.

00:18:06.350 --> 00:18:10.850
It is believed that the geological
changes and climatic changes

00:18:10.850 --> 00:18:14.960
were really very abrupt and adverse.

00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:21.340
The rifting system might have caused the
early man to actually develop big brain,

00:18:21.340 --> 00:18:26.300
walk upright, and find ways to
start moving out of the Rift Valley,

00:18:26.300 --> 00:18:29.540
finally even finding their way up to
Europe and other parts of the world.

00:18:37.600 --> 00:18:40.490
- They developed out-sized brains --

00:18:40.490 --> 00:18:46.170
energy guzzling brains, far out of
proportion to their overall size.

00:18:46.170 --> 00:18:51.630
And with these big brains they
managed to develop social skills,

00:18:51.630 --> 00:18:56.470
including eventually articulate language.

00:18:56.470 --> 00:19:00.650
Once we developed language
we developed the capacity

00:19:00.650 --> 00:19:06.150
for extremely efficient
cooperation and teamwork.

00:19:06.150 --> 00:19:09.410
It made us better at
altering environments so as

00:19:09.410 --> 00:19:14.020
to direct more energy into our mouths.

00:19:14.020 --> 00:19:19.040
And that's a big part of the story of the
human impact on the rest of the Earth.

00:19:19.040 --> 00:19:22.350
- Looking at the unique
signature of human activity,

00:19:22.350 --> 00:19:25.740
I think we get the first is really
just the emergence of humans

00:19:25.740 --> 00:19:32.350
acting not individually as organisms,
but acting as part of a system.

00:19:32.350 --> 00:19:34.470
If you work together you can do two things.

00:19:34.470 --> 00:19:38.390
One is you can learn from each other,
and the other is that you can coordinate,

00:19:38.390 --> 00:19:40.760
you can "divide and conquer"
and this sort of thing.

00:19:40.760 --> 00:19:44.260
You can work together to
drive a herd off a cliff.

00:19:44.260 --> 00:19:47.030
So you can develop technology
like better spear points.

00:19:47.030 --> 00:19:50.060
You can share that with a larger group.

00:19:50.060 --> 00:19:53.100
Well, honestly it's the reason
that we are a global force.

00:19:53.100 --> 00:19:56.950
We are distinct from other organisms
in the way we are changing the planet.

00:19:56.950 --> 00:19:59.764
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:20:11.490 --> 00:20:14.180
- When human beings harnessed
fire for the first time,

00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:17.250
that in and of itself gave humans --

00:20:17.250 --> 00:20:19.790
or proto-humans, hominids --

00:20:19.790 --> 00:20:23.910
a power to change
landscapes through burning.

00:20:23.910 --> 00:20:26.516
And there's a lot of evidence
suggesting that they did so.

00:20:35.690 --> 00:20:39.950
There is pretty strong
evidence implicating humankind

00:20:39.950 --> 00:20:45.560
in some of the great extinction
events of the late Pleistocene,

00:20:45.560 --> 00:20:50.988
meaning 30,000 to 12,000 years ago or so.

00:20:54.410 --> 00:20:58.540
When human beings recently
arrive into a landscape --

00:20:58.540 --> 00:21:01.300
whether it's Australia or North America --

00:21:01.300 --> 00:21:10.190
and the existing fauna doesn't have any
experience with intelligent, fire-wielding,

00:21:10.190 --> 00:21:17.960
spear-wielding, perhaps bow and arrow
wielding, two-legged, upright, mobile,

00:21:17.960 --> 00:21:23.680
teamwork-using creatures, then
that fauna is unprepared --

00:21:23.680 --> 00:21:26.380
naive in the face of human hunting pressure.

00:21:28.830 --> 00:21:32.500
- Up in the northern high latitudes,
there's a very interesting hypothesis

00:21:32.500 --> 00:21:37.990
that when those animals went
extinct the vegetation changed.

00:21:37.990 --> 00:21:40.880
If you take away the megafauna,
that allows trees to come up.

00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:44.670
There's nothing eating them and keeping
them down, eating the seedlings,

00:21:44.670 --> 00:21:45.897
so the trees come up.

00:21:48.420 --> 00:21:54.330
When it snows, the snow sits below a dark
canopy that warms the regional climate.

00:21:54.330 --> 00:21:58.424
So yes, we affected the
environment then most likely too.

00:22:06.660 --> 00:22:10.900
- When you look back at the
extinctions of the megafauna --

00:22:10.900 --> 00:22:12.700
the large carnivores and herbivores --

00:22:12.700 --> 00:22:17.290
they resemble other periods in Earth's
history, where you have mass extinctions.

00:22:17.290 --> 00:22:21.580
There's something about them that
resembles changes without us.

00:22:21.580 --> 00:22:26.540
As a start to the Anthropocene, the
idea that the megafauna extinctions

00:22:26.540 --> 00:22:31.450
and the early burning of forest is
a unique signal of human activity --

00:22:31.450 --> 00:22:33.960
it's always going to be
controversial, because it resembles

00:22:33.960 --> 00:22:36.890
other cyclic behavior of the planet.

00:22:36.890 --> 00:22:40.390
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:22:50.950 --> 00:22:54.620
- So 11 and a half thousand
years ago, the ice retreated.

00:22:54.620 --> 00:22:57.175
The Pleistocene epoch gave way
to the latest interglacial,

00:22:57.175 --> 00:22:58.570
which we call the Holocene epoch.

00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:09.740
Since then, the climate
has been very stable.

00:23:09.740 --> 00:23:11.460
In fact, remarkably stable.

00:23:11.460 --> 00:23:14.960
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:23:34.770 --> 00:23:37.490
- Agriculture might be
the next great landmark

00:23:37.490 --> 00:23:40.800
in the history of the human
alteration of the planet

00:23:40.800 --> 00:23:45.880
because it intensified soil erosion, it
involved the creation of new species.

00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:52.270
Every domesticated plant or animal is a
new species that has its wild forebear.

00:23:52.270 --> 00:23:57.120
So that too is a big change
to the environment on Earth.

00:23:57.120 --> 00:24:03.600
The argument here is that by clearing
forests in order to plant crops,

00:24:03.600 --> 00:24:05.210
and then later --

00:24:05.210 --> 00:24:11.670
especially by planting wet rice,
which releases a lot of methane

00:24:11.670 --> 00:24:12.650
into the atmosphere --

00:24:12.650 --> 00:24:19.840
humankind entirely, unknowingly, emitted
carbon and methane into the atmosphere

00:24:19.840 --> 00:24:26.210
in quantities significant enough
to begin to change the climate

00:24:26.210 --> 00:24:33.230
and to forestall what might otherwise
have been a return to ice age conditions.

00:24:33.230 --> 00:24:39.300
That's controversial, and one can't
say it's true with any confidence --

00:24:39.300 --> 00:24:40.760
but it's an interesting idea.

00:24:40.760 --> 00:24:46.090
And if it's true, then you might want
to say that the Anthropocene began

00:24:46.090 --> 00:24:49.180
8,000 or more years ago.

00:24:55.890 --> 00:24:58.130
- When we talk about the
Anthropocene, we need

00:24:58.130 --> 00:25:02.280
to differentiate clearly between
an influence on the environment

00:25:02.280 --> 00:25:04.420
and kicking the planet out of the Holocene.

00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:06.420
So, an interesting hypothesis.

00:25:06.420 --> 00:25:09.700
But you certainly cannot
demonstrate either by observation,

00:25:09.700 --> 00:25:14.630
or by bottom-up calculation, that
there would have been enough CO2 pushed

00:25:14.630 --> 00:25:18.850
into the atmosphere fast enough to
drive the Earth out of the Holocene.

00:25:18.850 --> 00:25:23.230
(TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWING)

00:25:23.230 --> 00:25:28.071
We think that the threshold occurred
with the Industrial Revolution.

00:25:31.438 --> 00:25:34.890
The invention of the steam engine,
the access to fossil fuels,

00:25:34.890 --> 00:25:37.540
broke a huge constraint
on the human enterprise.

00:25:44.750 --> 00:25:49.460
Because up until then, we were constrained
as to how fast we could change the Earth

00:25:49.460 --> 00:25:52.303
and how extensive those changes could be.

00:25:52.303 --> 00:25:57.133
(TYPING)

00:25:57.133 --> 00:26:00.514
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:09.250
- James Watt was one of those
tinkerers who changed the world.

00:26:09.250 --> 00:26:11.480
Not that he intended anything of the sort.

00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:15.368
He was a curious sort who
liked to tinker just for fun,

00:26:15.368 --> 00:26:17.118
and he was also hoping to make some money.

00:26:19.750 --> 00:26:23.140
- James Watt was right there at
the beginning of the Anthropocene.

00:26:23.140 --> 00:26:25.580
He was the one who developed
the steam engine --

00:26:25.580 --> 00:26:29.380
if you like, the first really important
use for this new energy source

00:26:29.380 --> 00:26:35.120
that we found trickling out from the surface
of the Earth, these fossil fuels which

00:26:35.120 --> 00:26:37.970
had locked up a lot of very dense energy.

00:26:37.970 --> 00:26:41.470
- But here is the sign
and symbol of a new order.

00:26:41.470 --> 00:26:42.333
Steam and smoke.

00:26:42.333 --> 00:26:47.110
There is power behind me,
and behind the power is coal.

00:26:47.110 --> 00:26:52.290
- And the significance of that is
that it made it a practical device

00:26:52.290 --> 00:26:56.742
for pumping water out of coal mines,

00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:03.500
so that miners could get
deeper and deeper coal.

00:27:03.500 --> 00:27:07.380
And of course, there was a very convenient
fact associated with the steam engine

00:27:07.380 --> 00:27:09.130
of Watt -- it burned coal.

00:27:09.130 --> 00:27:16.040
It was a positive feedback loop that opened
the door to the massive use of coal that

00:27:16.040 --> 00:27:18.834
characterized the Industrial Revolution...

00:27:18.834 --> 00:27:22.316
- And this is the world
that coal has created.

00:27:22.316 --> 00:27:26.690
Black countries of belching
furnaces and humming machinery,

00:27:26.690 --> 00:27:29.120
industrial towns with grimy surroundings...

00:27:29.120 --> 00:27:32.920
- ...and eventually spread to every part
of the world where there is abundant coal.

00:27:36.856 --> 00:27:39.808
- Discovering that heat
could drive a machine,

00:27:39.808 --> 00:27:44.740
they opened up a great new
reservoir of reliable power.

00:27:44.740 --> 00:27:47.850
- So the steam engine that he
developed was an energy source

00:27:47.850 --> 00:27:51.980
that could power a lot of tools much
faster and more efficiently than humans

00:27:51.980 --> 00:27:54.100
could, but also transport.

00:27:54.100 --> 00:27:57.310
With the steam engine, we could
start moving people and materials

00:27:57.310 --> 00:28:01.430
across the landscape at higher
speeds, farther distances, and so on.

00:28:03.230 --> 00:28:09.400
- In 1889, the steam tractor ran clear
across South Dakota and changed my world.

00:28:09.400 --> 00:28:15.100
- Watt and the turn to fossil
fuels, and coal in particular,

00:28:15.100 --> 00:28:18.660
deserves to be understood as
a turning point in the history

00:28:18.660 --> 00:28:22.061
of the onset of the Anthropocene.

00:28:22.061 --> 00:28:22.560
- Steam.

00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:23.059
Inventions.

00:28:23.059 --> 00:28:23.590
Power.

00:28:23.590 --> 00:28:24.870
Black out the past.

00:28:24.870 --> 00:28:25.930
Forget the quiet cities.

00:28:25.930 --> 00:28:28.930
Bring in the steam and steel,
the iron men, the giants.

00:28:31.160 --> 00:28:36.620
- The warming that has been demonstrated
for the 20th century, and even

00:28:36.620 --> 00:28:43.458
the late 19th century, in a sense you can
trace that back to the tinkerer James Watt.

00:28:47.750 --> 00:28:53.074
- As farms became more mechanised, more
and more farm products flowed to market.

00:28:53.074 --> 00:28:58.882
Farmers cultivated many times more land,
raised many times more crops per man acre

00:28:58.882 --> 00:28:59.870
than ever before.

00:28:59.870 --> 00:29:06.460
- In so far as one can trace the onset
of the Anthropocene to individuals,

00:29:06.460 --> 00:29:15.070
one of those you quickly come to is the
German physical chemist Fritz Haber,

00:29:15.070 --> 00:29:18.880
who did a lot of things -- some of
which are not remembered very fondly,

00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:24.500
such as advanced the German chemical
weapons program in World War I.

00:29:24.500 --> 00:29:31.305
But he also was the key scientist
behind the process of ammonia synthesis.

00:29:37.070 --> 00:29:40.110
- The process that could take
nitrogen from the atmosphere --

00:29:40.110 --> 00:29:43.420
a very unreactive compound --

00:29:43.420 --> 00:29:47.178
and react it to form ammonia, which
then could be used as fertilizer.

00:29:47.178 --> 00:29:51.440
- The wide awake farmer keeps
improving his crops and stock.

00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:56.550
- The reason this is so revolutionary
is that nitrogen shortage in the soil

00:29:56.550 --> 00:30:02.603
has always been one of the key
limits to what farmers can do.

00:30:02.603 --> 00:30:05.561
- High winds and sun.

00:30:05.561 --> 00:30:09.380
A country without rivers,
and with little rain.

00:30:09.380 --> 00:30:14.320
Settler, plow at your peril.

00:30:14.320 --> 00:30:17.540
- This process that Haber
developed broke a big bottleneck

00:30:17.540 --> 00:30:19.810
on the numbers of humans we
could have on the planet.

00:30:24.420 --> 00:30:31.110
- And according to some calculations,
something like 40% of the human population

00:30:31.110 --> 00:30:36.722
could not exist without the food
produced by nitrogenous fertilizers.

00:30:36.722 --> 00:30:39.982
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:30:45.670 --> 00:30:48.470
We wouldn't have 7 billion
people on the face of this Earth

00:30:48.470 --> 00:30:50.234
without Fritz Haber's invention.

00:30:53.240 --> 00:30:55.980
- So Haber's process
played a very large role

00:30:55.980 --> 00:30:58.058
in the development of the Anthropocene.

00:30:58.058 --> 00:31:01.218
(TYPING)

00:31:04.460 --> 00:31:08.080
- From the furrow of the rails
sprouted our modern industrial world.

00:31:10.830 --> 00:31:15.540
The idea of masses of goods for
masses of people took shape.

00:31:15.540 --> 00:31:18.740
- For people like me, who believe
that the Anthropocene is real

00:31:18.740 --> 00:31:23.470
and that it has already begun
and we're already in it,

00:31:23.470 --> 00:31:28.540
one of the organizing
concepts of it is this notion

00:31:28.540 --> 00:31:32.247
of a great acceleration in the
middle of the 20th century.

00:31:37.710 --> 00:31:39.500
- Science and research --

00:31:39.500 --> 00:31:42.350
key words in industrial progress.

00:31:42.350 --> 00:31:44.520
- You might date it to 1945.

00:31:44.520 --> 00:31:48.010
You might prefer rounder
numbers and date it to 1950.

00:31:48.010 --> 00:31:51.010
- No need for the bride to feel tragic.

00:31:51.010 --> 00:31:53.180
The rest is push button magic.

00:31:53.180 --> 00:31:57.660
- But what it comes down to
is a tremendous expansion

00:31:57.660 --> 00:32:06.358
in the scale, scope, and pace of human
intervention in the ecology of the planet.

00:32:06.358 --> 00:32:09.774
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:32:25.400 --> 00:32:29.785
- We're the equivalent of a teenage spree.

00:32:32.880 --> 00:32:35.411
And fossil fuels have again, largely --

00:32:35.411 --> 00:32:37.910
and technology and the things
that have come through that --

00:32:37.910 --> 00:32:41.780
have enabled us to just be in this amazing
muscle-flexing moment in our history

00:32:41.780 --> 00:32:43.920
as a species.

00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:48.730
- Then in 1954 a vaccine to
prevent paralytic polio...

00:32:48.730 --> 00:32:51.780
- The Great Acceleration
in the Anthropocene --

00:32:51.780 --> 00:32:53.660
what happens in the '50s?

00:32:53.660 --> 00:32:57.430
We have an amazing shift in medicine.

00:32:57.430 --> 00:32:58.750
We have more antibiotics.

00:32:58.750 --> 00:33:00.000
We have vaccines.

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.230
We have the potential to
live longer life spans.

00:33:04.230 --> 00:33:08.480
- Vaccination now will save lives
from death or paralysis this year.

00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:14.250
- So it means that we have more time
to create, to think, and to want.

00:33:14.250 --> 00:33:16.290
And then you have also technology.

00:33:16.290 --> 00:33:17.980
You have TV, you have radio.

00:33:17.980 --> 00:33:21.172
It begins to spread out, like a virus.

00:33:21.172 --> 00:33:22.926
- Am I talking to myself or what?

00:33:22.926 --> 00:33:23.425
- Rocky!

00:33:23.425 --> 00:33:25.650
Rocky, it works!

00:33:25.650 --> 00:33:26.941
It works, Rocky!

00:33:26.941 --> 00:33:27.940
- We desire what we see.

00:33:27.940 --> 00:33:28.860
- It works!

00:33:28.860 --> 00:33:34.280
- So we began an intensive consumption
pattern that started in the '50s.

00:33:34.280 --> 00:33:38.676
The level of consumption of humanity
grew exponentially since then.

00:33:38.676 --> 00:33:42.078
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:33:46.938 --> 00:33:52.105
In a nutshell, for me, the Anthropocene
is linked to a huge behavioral change

00:33:52.105 --> 00:33:55.610
in our perception of need and want.

00:33:55.610 --> 00:33:58.610
- With new uses there arise new wants.

00:33:58.610 --> 00:34:02.732
New wants mean new markets,
and new prosperity.

00:34:02.732 --> 00:34:04.690
- The Great Acceleration
for me is always going

00:34:04.690 --> 00:34:09.610
to be associated with Will Steffen's classic
paper that really introduced the term.

00:34:09.610 --> 00:34:13.900
And he's got a panel of
many different variables

00:34:13.900 --> 00:34:16.739
that are increasing
exponentially in recent times.

00:34:16.739 --> 00:34:17.883
Population density.

00:34:20.706 --> 00:34:24.460
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

00:34:24.460 --> 00:34:26.480
Fossil fuel combustion.

00:34:26.480 --> 00:34:27.501
McDonald's restaurants.

00:34:31.929 --> 00:34:33.230
Land clearing.

00:34:33.230 --> 00:34:35.060
Use of fertilizer for nitrogen.

00:34:35.060 --> 00:34:40.010
- The savings can be as much as a
dollar an acre for each acre fertilized.

00:34:40.010 --> 00:34:40.887
- Soil erosion.

00:34:45.270 --> 00:34:46.050
The list goes on.

00:34:46.050 --> 00:34:49.340
- Masses of things for masses of people.

00:34:49.340 --> 00:34:55.080
Plywood, canned goods, drugs, paint,
newsprint, auto parts, neat copper wire.

00:34:55.080 --> 00:34:58.370
- What struck us was an
amazing discontinuity

00:34:58.370 --> 00:35:00.190
in the middle of the 20th century.

00:35:00.190 --> 00:35:07.550
Right around 1950, if a parameter existed at
that time like population, it just shifted.

00:35:07.550 --> 00:35:09.760
It started going up quite dramatically.

00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:13.320
And if you look at all the
indicators of the human enterprise --

00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:16.300
be it population, be it
gross domestic product,

00:35:16.300 --> 00:35:21.310
be it resource use like
fertilizer use, damming of rivers,

00:35:21.310 --> 00:35:26.600
be it conversion of forest to crop
land, be it fisheries, or whatever --

00:35:26.600 --> 00:35:31.510
things took off around 1950, at
the end of the Second World War.

00:35:31.510 --> 00:35:34.850
We said that really is stage
two of the Anthropocene.

00:35:34.850 --> 00:35:40.180
- Well the Great Acceleration is, in
terms of Earth history, it's very neat --

00:35:40.180 --> 00:35:44.960
because it's the beginning of the nuclear
era, of all of these things of extinctions,

00:35:44.960 --> 00:35:47.910
of biodiversity loss.

00:35:47.910 --> 00:35:52.840
So it's another ratcheting
up of the human pertubation,

00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:54.355
the human disturbance of the Earth.

00:35:54.355 --> 00:36:00.840
- Communication has made equal strides,
with callers able to see as well as hear.

00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:03.880
- Some of the parameters we use,
like communication, like telephones,

00:36:03.880 --> 00:36:06.380
there were virtually none before 1950.

00:36:06.380 --> 00:36:09.020
Motor cars -- there were
a few, but not many.

00:36:09.020 --> 00:36:10.440
They absolutely took off.

00:36:10.440 --> 00:36:13.602
- (SINGING) How do you feel
about this fine automobile?

00:36:13.602 --> 00:36:17.350
- (SINGING) It's easy to
see myself taking the wheel.

00:36:17.350 --> 00:36:19.460
- And it changes the way we live.

00:36:19.460 --> 00:36:21.130
Suburbs start appearing.

00:36:21.130 --> 00:36:25.290
Long distance travel by ordinary
people becomes possible.

00:36:25.290 --> 00:36:28.010
- The automobile and the
power behind it have been

00:36:28.010 --> 00:36:30.970
major factors in the growth of our country.

00:36:30.970 --> 00:36:34.600
We can drive anywhere we want,
at any time, for any reason --

00:36:34.600 --> 00:36:36.300
including fun.

00:36:36.300 --> 00:36:43.373
- The Great Acceleration also consists of
an enormous expansion in the use of energy.

00:36:46.920 --> 00:36:51.950
From the 1940s onward, oil became
increasingly the most important fuel

00:36:51.950 --> 00:36:53.241
on the face of the Earth.

00:36:53.241 --> 00:36:57.300
- The whole idea will blow up sky high.

00:36:57.300 --> 00:37:02.712
Around here, blowing sky high was power
to revolutionize man's way of life.

00:37:02.712 --> 00:37:06.650
For the farmer, power to run the tractor...

00:37:06.650 --> 00:37:14.630
- About 1960, it eclipsed coal as the most
important energy source for humankind.

00:37:14.630 --> 00:37:23.730
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:37:23.730 --> 00:37:29.150
- Now CO2 had crept up, and by 1950 it was
somewhere around 310 parts per million.

00:37:29.150 --> 00:37:32.900
Now this is above the 285
upper limit of the Holocene.

00:37:32.900 --> 00:37:35.600
Since then, in the
intervening 50 or 60 years,

00:37:35.600 --> 00:37:39.040
CO2 has gone from 310 to
nearly 390 parts per million.

00:37:39.040 --> 00:37:40.180
It's just rocketed up.

00:37:40.180 --> 00:37:46.340
Temperature now is clearly above
the first half of the 20th century.

00:37:46.340 --> 00:37:49.240
We see other gases, nitrous
oxide and methane, go up.

00:37:49.240 --> 00:37:53.270
We see the ozone hole appear for the first
time, because we were able to invent --

00:37:53.270 --> 00:37:55.580
synthesize -- CFCs,
chlorofluorohydrocarbons.

00:38:02.220 --> 00:38:04.730
- This hairspray leaves
hair feeling like hair.

00:38:08.160 --> 00:38:12.304
Ozon Fluid Net, the hairdresser's
hairspray in the pink and gray can.

00:38:17.200 --> 00:38:21.569
- So we see all sorts of markers that are
telling us that the planet has shifted.

00:38:21.569 --> 00:38:24.992
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:38:30.860 --> 00:38:34.240
And so I think it's absolutely
clear, indisputable,

00:38:34.240 --> 00:38:37.080
we're moving out of the
Holocene at a fast rate.

00:38:37.080 --> 00:38:39.110
And you say "Well, why did that occur?"

00:38:39.110 --> 00:38:44.980
Well, the interesting reason
there is not technological.

00:38:44.980 --> 00:38:47.700
We had all the technologies already there.

00:38:47.700 --> 00:38:50.210
It was probably
institutional, that it finally

00:38:50.210 --> 00:38:54.536
took the Second World War to break down
the old feudal European institutions

00:38:54.536 --> 00:38:57.660
and bring in the new Bretton Woods
institutions, the International Monetary

00:38:57.660 --> 00:38:59.670
Fund, the World Bank, and so on.

00:39:01.200 --> 00:39:04.930
- Summing up the importance of
Bretton Woods, Mr. Vincent says...

00:39:04.930 --> 00:39:09.533
- We can be thankful that
the history we are now making

00:39:09.533 --> 00:39:16.010
is not another chapter in the almost
endless chronicle of war and strife.

00:39:16.010 --> 00:39:19.680
- And this just completely transformed
how we transmitted knowledge,

00:39:19.680 --> 00:39:23.260
how we moved money and capital and so on.

00:39:23.260 --> 00:39:25.660
- Since World War II, communism --

00:39:25.660 --> 00:39:27.970
by force and by propaganda --

00:39:27.970 --> 00:39:30.580
has extended its frontiers
into the heart of Europe.

00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:39.010
- Behind the Great Acceleration
in the Anthropocene after 1945,

00:39:39.010 --> 00:39:45.490
is the extraordinary geopolitical
pressures that came with the Cold War.

00:39:45.490 --> 00:39:49.030
So that big countries, big economies --

00:39:49.030 --> 00:39:55.450
by which I mean the US, the Soviet Union,
China, and to a lesser extent Britain,

00:39:55.450 --> 00:39:58.370
France, India --

00:39:58.370 --> 00:40:00.990
the leaders in these
countries felt themselves

00:40:00.990 --> 00:40:10.710
to be locked into an eternal
competition for a limited good, which

00:40:10.710 --> 00:40:13.020
is power in the international system.

00:40:13.020 --> 00:40:20.840
And they were often prepared
to take risks that otherwise I

00:40:20.840 --> 00:40:25.160
think they would have been
very unlikely to have taken.

00:40:25.160 --> 00:40:31.290
Risks that made sense only if one thought
one was locked in a life and death struggle

00:40:31.290 --> 00:40:33.052
that one had to win.

00:40:33.052 --> 00:40:39.294
- I woke at midnight and saw
my little brother smiling.

00:40:39.294 --> 00:40:46.000
I asked him why he smiled, and he
said "I dreamed of Chairman Mao."

00:40:46.000 --> 00:40:51.740
- Chairman Mao is certainly a person who you
could point to as an individual player that

00:40:51.740 --> 00:40:53.740
has a role in the Anthropocene.

00:40:56.240 --> 00:41:02.210
- He was the main moving force behind a new
military-industrial complex where none had

00:41:02.210 --> 00:41:08.750
existed before, ratcheting up levels of
pollution and resource use and extraction

00:41:08.750 --> 00:41:10.832
in China.

00:41:10.832 --> 00:41:16.050
- Workers at this plant designed and
built the paper-making machinery.

00:41:16.050 --> 00:41:20.280
They were also building a little
furnace for the Leap Forward.

00:41:20.280 --> 00:41:25.490
- Every large tree was cut down at
that time in the Great Leap Forward

00:41:25.490 --> 00:41:28.351
as part of this plan to make
steel in the countryside.

00:41:28.351 --> 00:41:32.530
- One third of Communist China's steel
production comes from these mills --

00:41:32.530 --> 00:41:35.350
about three million tons a year.

00:41:35.350 --> 00:41:37.910
- They cut down all the trees to fuel this.

00:41:37.910 --> 00:41:42.370
From an ecological point of view, kind
of unprecedented ecological change,

00:41:42.370 --> 00:41:45.680
initiated by really a stroke of a pen.

00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:49.810
- And everywhere in China, near
industrial plants and on communes,

00:41:49.810 --> 00:41:54.058
small furnaces have added
their output to the big mills.

00:41:54.058 --> 00:41:58.150
- A single, kind of misguided policy:
cut down all the big trees in China.

00:41:58.150 --> 00:42:02.110
Now, strangely enough, there's more tree
cover in China than there was before --

00:42:02.110 --> 00:42:04.870
but there's no big old trees,
at least in the villages.

00:42:04.870 --> 00:42:08.050
They were all cut down then.

00:42:08.050 --> 00:42:13.790
- So he didn't revolutionize the
Anthropocene the way he tried

00:42:13.790 --> 00:42:17.648
to revolutionize politics
in the world and in China...

00:42:17.648 --> 00:42:24.460
(SINGING IN CHINESE)

00:42:24.460 --> 00:42:32.468
...but he did have an outsized impact, more
so than 99.999% of his fellow human beings.

00:42:32.468 --> 00:42:35.744
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:43:00.140 --> 00:43:05.460
- We now understand, in the last
decade, more and more the impact

00:43:05.460 --> 00:43:07.347
of human activities on the environment.

00:43:13.810 --> 00:43:16.990
We were pretty much in a state of...

00:43:16.990 --> 00:43:22.170
blissful ignorance, shall I say, during
the second half of the 20th century.

00:43:22.170 --> 00:43:25.670
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:43:31.423 --> 00:43:35.564
- I wonder if the years ahead
will be as bright as this.

00:43:35.564 --> 00:43:37.230
- We haven't seen anything yet, darling.

00:43:37.230 --> 00:43:47.080
- We had an unconscious,
celebratory approach to resources.

00:43:49.430 --> 00:43:56.770
- Somewhere, someone sets a blast to erupt
rich ores of metal from stubborn rock.

00:43:56.770 --> 00:43:58.520
- Just kind of, "Wow, look what I can do!"

00:43:58.520 --> 00:44:02.020
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:44:14.610 --> 00:44:21.230
- Only those clays containing 50% or
60% aluminum ore and known as bauxite

00:44:21.230 --> 00:44:23.410
are mined for commercial production.

00:44:23.410 --> 00:44:26.607
- Building a smelter in the
wilderness and harnessing the river,

00:44:26.607 --> 00:44:28.940
and taking the bauxite from
the other side of the world,

00:44:28.940 --> 00:44:31.900
because that's where the energy
was, embedded in the river.

00:44:31.900 --> 00:44:37.010
And look what we can do, that sense
of this human domination of wilderness

00:44:37.010 --> 00:44:40.000
and this Earth system
was purely celebratory.

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:42.160
And now it's like, "Oh!"

00:44:42.160 --> 00:44:45.740
- As we consume nature's
resources to feed our industry,

00:44:45.740 --> 00:44:50.720
these processes are in turn
destroying our environment.

00:44:50.720 --> 00:44:54.830
Conservationists have warned that
unless immediate measures are taken,

00:44:54.830 --> 00:44:58.890
this generation of humans may go
down in history as the greatest

00:44:58.890 --> 00:45:00.330
destructive vandals of all time.

00:45:21.770 --> 00:45:24.230
- Unless we do bring these
chemicals under better control,

00:45:24.230 --> 00:45:28.810
we are certainly headed for disaster.

00:45:28.810 --> 00:45:31.970
- Rachel Carson was often
considered as the first person

00:45:31.970 --> 00:45:33.980
who started the environmental movement.

00:45:33.980 --> 00:45:39.190
And she was very important to challenge
this post-World War II idea --

00:45:39.190 --> 00:45:41.610
if you like, the Great Acceleration idea --

00:45:41.610 --> 00:45:48.760
that progress was a neoclassically,
economically driven increase in wealth.

00:45:48.760 --> 00:45:53.610
- Each enterprising achievement
brings wonderfully new ways of life

00:45:53.610 --> 00:45:55.490
at our fingertips.

00:45:55.490 --> 00:46:00.730
- Increase in stuff that we could
consume, and certainly lifestyles

00:46:00.730 --> 00:46:02.910
improved in many different ways.

00:46:02.910 --> 00:46:09.644
- The outlook for the future is as big
as the cities, as warm as the towns,

00:46:09.644 --> 00:46:13.600
and as bright as the people.

00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:16.310
It's a great life, hey Bob?

00:46:16.310 --> 00:46:18.030
And you too, Judy.

00:46:18.030 --> 00:46:19.800
- Many people were brought out of poverty.

00:46:19.800 --> 00:46:24.515
But Rachel Carson, she showed us this
type of progress has its downsides.

00:46:24.515 --> 00:46:30.280
- A conflagration touched off by a chemical
explosion, kept going like a chain reaction

00:46:30.280 --> 00:46:32.270
by a continuing series of minor blasts.

00:46:32.270 --> 00:46:37.050
- The work that made her famous,
and helped to mobilize concern

00:46:37.050 --> 00:46:42.150
about the human impact on the
environment, came in 1962.

00:46:42.150 --> 00:46:49.720
That work was called Silent Spring, and it
drew attention to the impact of pesticides

00:46:49.720 --> 00:46:51.712
and insecticides...

00:46:51.712 --> 00:46:56.320
- Advanced farming technology is taking
a terrible toll on the environment.

00:46:56.320 --> 00:46:59.560
Chemicals such as DDT run
off into streams which

00:46:59.560 --> 00:47:06.990
carry them into the marshlands and lakes,
home to much of the world's wildlife.

00:47:06.990 --> 00:47:10.693
- ...upon living things,
especially upon birds.

00:47:10.693 --> 00:47:14.640
- These birds are the victims
of man's carelessness.

00:47:14.640 --> 00:47:17.888
We may never know just how many
birds, small mammals, and fish

00:47:17.888 --> 00:47:21.919
have been poisoned by weed killers
and insecticides used by men

00:47:21.919 --> 00:47:23.460
without sufficient care or knowledge.

00:47:23.460 --> 00:47:26.953
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:47:38.440 --> 00:47:43.790
- You might say that Rachel Carson
used the birds almost as a metaphor.

00:47:48.970 --> 00:47:52.300
The larger issue that she
was drawing attention to

00:47:52.300 --> 00:48:00.880
was the new production of new kinds of
chemicals that did not exist in nature.

00:48:00.880 --> 00:48:05.900
There are hundreds of thousands of these
that the ingenuity of chemical engineers

00:48:05.900 --> 00:48:07.200
had created.

00:48:07.200 --> 00:48:12.018
(TYPING)

00:48:12.018 --> 00:48:17.020
- A kingdom of scientific research,
a new domain of man's own creation.

00:48:17.020 --> 00:48:21.090
A world of primary substances
which never existed before.

00:48:21.090 --> 00:48:24.910
The aristocrats of this new
realm are the phenolic plastics.

00:48:24.910 --> 00:48:30.740
- So that these inevitably
were being released --

00:48:30.740 --> 00:48:33.750
sometimes intentionally,
sometimes accidentally --

00:48:33.750 --> 00:48:35.220
into the environment.

00:48:35.220 --> 00:48:39.370
And therefore the ecosystems --

00:48:39.370 --> 00:48:44.870
of the United States in particular, but
to some extent the world in general --

00:48:44.870 --> 00:48:54.320
were acquiring new, entirely artificial,
entirely man-made veneer to them...

00:48:54.320 --> 00:48:57.540
- The science that has carried
us beyond the machine age,

00:48:57.540 --> 00:49:01.590
on into a world of new materials
that are not found in nature:

00:49:01.590 --> 00:49:05.810
Cellulose film, dyes,
plastics, neoprene, and rayon,

00:49:05.810 --> 00:49:10.600
that makes life more luxurious, more
beautiful for everybody everywhere.

00:49:10.600 --> 00:49:14.140
- ...which perhaps was more than
just a veneer and a coating,

00:49:14.140 --> 00:49:20.040
because eventually the
persistent new chemicals --

00:49:20.040 --> 00:49:24.560
ones that do not break
down quickly by nature --

00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:30.440
work their way into all the nooks and
crannies of the Earth's ecosystem.

00:49:30.440 --> 00:49:39.470
So this was a beginning, as she saw it, of
a sort of new artificialization of nature --

00:49:39.470 --> 00:49:42.482
which she regarded with some trepidation.

00:49:46.810 --> 00:49:48.794
- What's it to you?

00:49:51.770 --> 00:49:56.230
It's a remarkable new
polyester film called mylar.

00:49:56.230 --> 00:50:01.634
- Plastic, plastic, plastic,
plastic, plastic, plastic.

00:50:01.634 --> 00:50:06.640
- For me, plastic represents a lot
of what the Anthropocene is about.

00:50:06.640 --> 00:50:11.140
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:50:11.140 --> 00:50:17.710
You find it in components of the most
impressive technology for outer space.

00:50:17.710 --> 00:50:22.875
And you find it in the shoes of
Maya girls in the town where I live.

00:50:22.875 --> 00:50:26.037
It covers so many of
our needs that it really

00:50:26.037 --> 00:50:28.702
represents a huge shift in our behavior.

00:50:31.594 --> 00:50:34.740
Now everything is wrapped in
plastic, or has some component.

00:50:34.740 --> 00:50:42.903
And so plastic really represents to
me a major symbol of the Anthropocene.

00:50:42.903 --> 00:50:44.256
- Can you tear it?

00:50:49.790 --> 00:50:52.350
It's almost impossible.

00:50:52.350 --> 00:50:55.430
- Man, the innovator, is
the only living organism

00:50:55.430 --> 00:50:59.937
to create his own unnatural
habitat: the city.

00:50:59.937 --> 00:51:04.796
In his drive for independence man
has moved from the shelter of nature

00:51:04.796 --> 00:51:07.440
into the artificial life of
a manufactured community --

00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:13.320
a monument to superiority
over nature and his vanity.

00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:15.980
- Well we live in a time
when everything we look at

00:51:15.980 --> 00:51:18.520
is an artifact, already, of our existence.

00:51:18.520 --> 00:51:20.830
And there isn't a place on
this planet just about you

00:51:20.830 --> 00:51:22.980
can go where there isn't that reality.

00:51:22.980 --> 00:51:26.466
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:51:37.930 --> 00:51:41.620
In fact, a synthetic gas, like it
has one of those hexafluorofluro --

00:51:41.620 --> 00:51:42.779
it's not a CFC --

00:51:42.779 --> 00:51:46.070
but one like that, that showed up in
atmosphere samples up in the stratosphere,

00:51:46.070 --> 00:51:48.220
and bubbles in Antarctic ice.

00:51:48.220 --> 00:51:49.960
And no one knows where it came from.

00:51:49.960 --> 00:51:55.239
It's this weird chemical that was definitely
synthesized, but not intentionally.

00:52:00.330 --> 00:52:02.176
It was like some byproduct of something.

00:52:02.176 --> 00:52:04.550
And that said to me something
very powerful at that time.

00:52:04.550 --> 00:52:05.550
We're just there.

00:52:05.550 --> 00:52:09.320
This is us, this planet,
for better and worse.

00:52:18.890 --> 00:52:22.060
- The Anthropocene has
seen new types of rock.

00:52:22.060 --> 00:52:24.890
So concrete is a new type of rock...

00:52:24.890 --> 00:52:30.930
- The look of America expressed
in materials old and new.

00:52:38.780 --> 00:52:40.760
- ...made in large amounts.

00:52:40.760 --> 00:52:44.260
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:53:05.340 --> 00:53:08.740
Brick is a type of mud rock
which has been, if you like,

00:53:08.740 --> 00:53:10.998
flash metamorphosed in a furnace.

00:53:18.560 --> 00:53:22.320
And again that has been shaped
into peculiar shapes which

00:53:22.320 --> 00:53:26.010
will be seen in the future as something
again quite different from anything

00:53:26.010 --> 00:53:28.258
in the previous fossil record.

00:53:28.258 --> 00:53:31.174
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:53:38.160 --> 00:53:44.325
- Man is exploring a source of
enormous, potentially useful energy:

00:53:44.325 --> 00:53:46.292
the nuclear explosion.

00:53:46.292 --> 00:53:49.770
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:53:55.602 --> 00:53:59.980
(TYPING)

00:53:59.980 --> 00:54:06.070
- One of the characteristics of the
Anthropocene is places that you might call

00:54:06.070 --> 00:54:08.060
sacrifice zones...

00:54:08.060 --> 00:54:12.560
- A brilliance of 500 suns lights
hundreds of miles of the Pacific,

00:54:12.560 --> 00:54:15.451
and the force of a million
tons of TNT is released.

00:54:17.656 --> 00:54:22.870
- ...where for the alleged
betterment of humankind,

00:54:22.870 --> 00:54:28.130
some very nasty things were
done with mainly local impacts.

00:54:28.130 --> 00:54:32.800
And a great example of this
would be the nuclear archipelagos

00:54:32.800 --> 00:54:37.237
built for atomic weapons
production during the Cold War.

00:54:37.237 --> 00:54:41.170
- Even with these googles they saw a
stab of light as brilliant as lightening.

00:54:41.170 --> 00:54:44.670
The bomb is away!

00:54:44.670 --> 00:54:47.170
It's falling.

00:54:47.170 --> 00:54:50.616
(EXPLOSION)

00:54:52.580 --> 00:54:58.665
One world at the crossroads watches
and ponders the lessons and the future.

00:54:58.665 --> 00:55:02.712
- The sacrifice zones of
the nuclear archipelagos

00:55:02.712 --> 00:55:09.630
have now an artificial character to them,
because they include nuclear radiation

00:55:09.630 --> 00:55:14.510
in the form of waste dumped
into the local environment.

00:55:14.510 --> 00:55:15.760
These are now --

00:55:15.760 --> 00:55:21.320
in a chemical sense, in a biological
sense, in a radiological sense --

00:55:21.320 --> 00:55:24.030
environments that are entirely novel.

00:55:24.030 --> 00:55:26.260
There's nothing like this
on the face of the Earth.

00:55:33.610 --> 00:55:37.560
- And there's probably never been
anything like this, quite like this,

00:55:37.560 --> 00:55:40.410
in the history of the universe
-- on this or any other planet.

00:55:40.410 --> 00:55:47.970
So this is a signature of human
action, these sacrifice zones,

00:55:47.970 --> 00:55:51.680
and a signature of the Anthropocene.

00:55:54.180 --> 00:55:57.640
(EXPLOSION)

00:56:08.930 --> 00:56:13.304
- The kind of strata we're producing --
what one would call the urban stratum,

00:56:13.304 --> 00:56:16.740
of cities, and roads, and
landscapes, and railways and such --

00:56:16.740 --> 00:56:20.240
there's been nothing like them
for four and a half billion years.

00:56:26.207 --> 00:56:31.030
Some of the minerals we're creating --
things like pure aluminium, pure titanium,

00:56:31.030 --> 00:56:33.360
pure molybdenum, such like that --

00:56:33.360 --> 00:56:36.940
nothing like that has existed on Earth
for four and a half billion years.

00:56:36.940 --> 00:56:40.976
So these are entire novelties, and there's
quite a lot of this material around.

00:56:40.976 --> 00:56:45.836
- Aluminum flows in an uninterrupted stream.

00:56:45.836 --> 00:56:50.587
Aluminum is transformed into a
hundred thousand useful things.

00:56:50.587 --> 00:56:53.170
- What we're talking about in
terms of the effect of the Great

00:56:53.170 --> 00:56:56.690
Acceleration on the planet are
the things that are well known.

00:56:56.690 --> 00:56:59.030
It's the greenhouse gases,
and it's the climate.

00:56:59.030 --> 00:56:59.973
But it's much more.

00:56:59.973 --> 00:57:03.994
(GUN SHOTS)

00:57:03.994 --> 00:57:07.334
- In just ten months,
fashionable women have caused

00:57:07.334 --> 00:57:13.097
the deaths of 500 leopards, 100,000 blue
foxes, three quarters of a million beavers,

00:57:13.097 --> 00:57:15.192
and half a million seals.

00:57:20.964 --> 00:57:24.166
(MOTORBIKE ENGINE)

00:57:24.166 --> 00:57:30.110
- The Anthropocene had a major impact on
the biodiversity here in the Rift Valley,

00:57:30.110 --> 00:57:33.310
where there were almost 400
different species of birds --

00:57:33.310 --> 00:57:35.790
including the famous flamingos.

00:57:35.790 --> 00:57:39.460
There were microorganisms that
fitted within their food chain.

00:57:39.460 --> 00:57:42.890
But as a result of
Anthropocene, many fish species

00:57:42.890 --> 00:57:47.100
in some of the lakes like Lake
Naivasha were completely wiped out.

00:57:47.100 --> 00:57:50.840
In fact, right now when we talk of Lake
Naivasha, it's almost an ecological desert.

00:57:55.880 --> 00:57:59.220
These birds have now completely
migrated to other areas.

00:57:59.220 --> 00:58:03.980
For example, in the Rift Valley they
moved to Lake Bogoria, towards the north.

00:58:10.260 --> 00:58:13.867
- The Anthropocene is much
more than only climate change.

00:58:13.867 --> 00:58:19.563
A ship, when it's sailing without cargo,
it has to be filled in its ballast tank

00:58:19.563 --> 00:58:20.354
with ballast water.

00:58:20.354 --> 00:58:26.360
In that water which you take, you also take
approximately 7,000 to 10,000 organisms.

00:58:26.360 --> 00:58:28.870
Most of them of course, are alien species.

00:58:33.271 --> 00:58:38.020
Transport them world round,
release them somewhere --

00:58:38.020 --> 00:58:44.490
this is the biggest ever migration
we have witnessed on the Earth.

00:58:44.490 --> 00:58:47.990
And if this is not the Anthropocene,
then what the Anthropocene is?

00:58:52.730 --> 00:58:56.190
- The impact of the harbor
process on the Earth is enormous,

00:58:56.190 --> 00:59:02.700
because of the creation of dead zones by
the over-fertilization of coastal zones.

00:59:02.700 --> 00:59:05.100
- There were live corals
up until very recently.

00:59:05.100 --> 00:59:07.980
And these corals have all
been killed by the runoff.

00:59:07.980 --> 00:59:11.941
- Over thousands of square kilometers every
summer, everything bigger than bacteria

00:59:11.941 --> 00:59:13.234
is being killed off.

00:59:18.890 --> 00:59:22.990
The Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake
Bay, the Baltic, and other areas,

00:59:22.990 --> 00:59:25.265
we're having these growing dead zones.

00:59:25.265 --> 00:59:29.130
- World wide, ocean dead
zones now number about 400.

00:59:29.130 --> 00:59:36.555
(MUSIC PLAYING)

00:59:36.555 --> 00:59:39.030
- It doesn't seem to have
any central nervous system.

00:59:39.030 --> 00:59:41.010
- Then how does it move?

00:59:41.010 --> 00:59:42.990
- All plants move.

00:59:42.990 --> 00:59:46.950
But they don't usually pull themselves
out of the ground and chase you.

00:59:52.400 --> 00:59:54.410
- So if we start picking
apart what's happening

00:59:54.410 --> 00:59:57.995
to the biological fabric of the
planet, it's been made over.

00:59:57.995 --> 01:00:00.570
It's been affected by
humans for a long time.

01:00:00.570 --> 01:00:04.080
And that's not just losing
species, it's moving species around

01:00:04.080 --> 01:00:06.710
that then take off in a new environment.

01:00:06.710 --> 01:00:10.580
The biological part of this planet
has been drastically changed,

01:00:10.580 --> 01:00:13.080
particularly in the last 50 or 60 years.

01:00:13.080 --> 01:00:16.559
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:00:31.469 --> 01:00:35.980
(TYPING)

01:00:35.980 --> 01:00:41.260
(ROCKET LAUNCHING)

01:00:41.260 --> 01:00:44.260
- This is what an astronaut
in the Gemini will see.

01:00:44.260 --> 01:00:48.720
At 17,000 miles an hour, the curvature
of the Earth is plainly visible.

01:00:48.720 --> 01:00:54.870
Through the magic of the camera, Earthlings
take their first ride into space.

01:00:54.870 --> 01:00:59.730
- The build-up to this concept of the
Anthropocene I think has to also include,

01:00:59.730 --> 01:01:02.370
in the late '60s, the Apollo space program.

01:01:02.370 --> 01:01:07.650
- Two days before Christmas in 1968,
Astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders,

01:01:07.650 --> 01:01:11.640
became the first humans to pass out
of Earth's gravitational control

01:01:11.640 --> 01:01:15.320
and into that of another body
in the solar system: the Moon.

01:01:15.320 --> 01:01:19.810
- Everything in a NASA mission is completely
planned out, right down to where you pee

01:01:19.810 --> 01:01:20.820
and what you eat.

01:01:20.820 --> 01:01:23.300
And here is this moment
no one had anticipated --

01:01:23.300 --> 01:01:26.160
the emotional power of the Earthrise.

01:01:26.160 --> 01:01:28.660
- Oh my god, look at
that picture over there.

01:01:28.660 --> 01:01:30.660
Here's the Earth coming up.

01:01:30.660 --> 01:01:31.760
Wow, is that pretty.

01:01:33.227 --> 01:01:35.060
- Hey don't take that, that's not scheduled.

01:01:36.940 --> 01:01:40.050
- You got a color film, Jim?

01:01:40.050 --> 01:01:42.010
Hand me a roll of color, quick.

01:01:42.010 --> 01:01:42.990
- Oh, man...

01:01:42.990 --> 01:01:43.980
- Quick.

01:01:43.980 --> 01:01:46.940
- And they were scurrying for
the camera, like, "Is there film?

01:01:46.940 --> 01:01:47.500
Who got it?"

01:01:47.500 --> 01:01:51.090
And there was even a debate about who took
the picture, because it was so hurried.

01:01:51.090 --> 01:01:51.757
- It takes film.

01:01:51.757 --> 01:01:53.048
- There's several of them here.

01:01:53.048 --> 01:01:53.845
Give it to me.

01:01:53.845 --> 01:01:55.790
- Let's get the right setting here.

01:01:55.790 --> 01:01:57.441
Just calm down, Lovell.

01:01:57.441 --> 01:01:58.932
- Well, I got ...

01:01:58.932 --> 01:02:01.920
Oh, that's a beautiful shot.

01:02:01.920 --> 01:02:03.800
- It's become a transformative point.

01:02:03.800 --> 01:02:08.220
I think that was the sense of us
regarding ourselves from afar,

01:02:08.220 --> 01:02:11.789
like our mirror moment, and realizing --

01:02:11.789 --> 01:02:14.330
really integrating -- the idea
that we are on a small planet,

01:02:14.330 --> 01:02:17.250
which was always sort of a
touchy-feely abstraction.

01:02:17.250 --> 01:02:21.350
And then there it was, much
more clearly as seen from space.

01:02:24.960 --> 01:02:32.170
- That wonderful blue, green, white globe,
floating out in the blackness of space.

01:02:32.170 --> 01:02:36.060
And that actually had a
big impact on humanity,

01:02:36.060 --> 01:02:38.280
because it showed the
Earth wasn't limitless.

01:02:38.280 --> 01:02:46.490
It showed it was actually a fairly small
sphere out in a very, very big universe.

01:02:46.490 --> 01:02:50.130
So seeing our own planet from outside
our own planet, I think had a big impact.

01:02:58.180 --> 01:03:04.010
- And now scientists, like many of the
people studying this Anthropocene question,

01:03:04.010 --> 01:03:07.410
they're kind of like the adult in the
room -- going to the teenager, "Now, son,

01:03:07.410 --> 01:03:11.731
if you don't modulate your behavior
or you're going to hit the wall."

01:03:11.731 --> 01:03:12.230
- Hi, Dad.

01:03:12.230 --> 01:03:13.771
- Must you always make so much noise?

01:03:13.771 --> 01:03:14.975
This is not a parade ground.

01:03:14.975 --> 01:03:17.975
But it's still this sense of oh, you
know, this is the end of the party.

01:03:17.975 --> 01:03:30.140
- (SINGING) After the party is over and
done with, what a mess the place is in.

01:03:30.140 --> 01:03:34.360
That's when the clean up blues begin.

01:03:34.360 --> 01:03:38.700
- And that I think is a big part of what
frames this idea of the Anthropocene

01:03:38.700 --> 01:03:42.700
and this transition we're going through,
from the equivalent of our teen,

01:03:42.700 --> 01:03:47.110
celebratory "look what I can do" years to
that transition toward grown-up behavior.

01:03:47.110 --> 01:03:50.580
And I think that's what makes this
all a sort of an uncomfortable moment.

01:03:50.580 --> 01:03:57.010
- It could be, for example, that out of a
recognition of the potential dangers that

01:03:57.010 --> 01:04:03.964
the Anthropocene poses, that human beings
are going to bring the Anthropocene

01:04:03.964 --> 01:04:05.416
to a halt...

01:04:05.416 --> 01:04:11.230
(WHISTLE BLOWING)

01:04:11.230 --> 01:04:14.150
- ...and it will then be
followed by some other -cene.

01:04:14.150 --> 01:04:16.770
We'll have to invent a new term
for that when the time comes.

01:04:16.770 --> 01:04:18.430
That is a theoretical possibility.

01:04:18.430 --> 01:04:21.190
I do not expect to see that anytime soon.

01:04:21.190 --> 01:04:25.410
I think there are too many arrows
pointing in the other direction,

01:04:25.410 --> 01:04:30.370
pointing in the direction of a
continuation of the Anthropocene --

01:04:30.370 --> 01:04:39.630
perhaps with less intense resource
use, less intense pollution.

01:04:39.630 --> 01:04:43.500
- The idea is to find more
efficient, less wasteful

01:04:43.500 --> 01:04:46.750
ways to use nature to make men more free.

01:04:46.750 --> 01:04:51.867
- That's not by any means the same as
bringing the Anthropocene to a close.

01:04:51.867 --> 01:04:54.200
It would take much more than
that, because we've already

01:04:54.200 --> 01:04:58.550
bought, in effect, a considerable
amount of climate change

01:04:58.550 --> 01:05:00.690
for the rest of the 21st century.

01:05:00.690 --> 01:05:04.190
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:05:17.636 --> 01:05:22.020
- The Great Acceleration was powered
by about 20%, or slightly less,

01:05:22.020 --> 01:05:23.500
of the Earth's population.

01:05:23.500 --> 01:05:25.530
That's changing in the 21st century.

01:05:25.530 --> 01:05:28.530
China is developing, India
is developing, Brazil.

01:05:28.530 --> 01:05:30.719
Other countries are developing rapidly.

01:05:30.719 --> 01:05:32.844
And they're starting their
own Great Accelerations.

01:05:36.640 --> 01:05:40.030
What's different for them
is the resource base.

01:05:40.030 --> 01:05:41.410
We're hitting peak oil.

01:05:41.410 --> 01:05:43.240
We may be hitting peak phosphorus.

01:05:43.240 --> 01:05:45.980
So they're trying to bring
their people out of poverty

01:05:45.980 --> 01:05:49.370
in a vastly different world than
what the Western countries had

01:05:49.370 --> 01:05:51.790
in the 1950s and '60s, and so on.

01:05:58.730 --> 01:06:01.570
- There's really two human
experiences right now on the planet,

01:06:01.570 --> 01:06:03.260
approaching the Big Zoom.

01:06:03.260 --> 01:06:08.050
This pulse of us, the
industrialized us, maybe a billion

01:06:08.050 --> 01:06:10.100
are already in this mega-mode.

01:06:12.960 --> 01:06:16.810
In the meantime, in the background
you had this other burst of humanity

01:06:16.810 --> 01:06:19.380
that started out mainly
just being a lot of people,

01:06:19.380 --> 01:06:22.510
but without any real resource intensity.

01:06:22.510 --> 01:06:24.540
And that's the developing world.

01:06:24.540 --> 01:06:25.280
So they're...

01:06:25.280 --> 01:06:29.150
even as we're unzooming, in a sense
of having more efficient lives,

01:06:29.150 --> 01:06:35.211
the other big great burst of humanity
is just getting into gear to zoom.

01:06:35.211 --> 01:06:38.648
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:06:59.189 --> 01:07:02.040
- The Anthropocene is
clearly a Western term.

01:07:04.440 --> 01:07:08.840
But it correlates with what many
societies have been saying in

01:07:08.840 --> 01:07:16.260
that, from the Maya perspective, there is no
distinction between human and environment.

01:07:16.260 --> 01:07:17.590
There never has been.

01:07:17.590 --> 01:07:19.030
It's a continuum.

01:07:25.990 --> 01:07:30.440
So the Anthropocene is a new challenge,
because we are now in nature.

01:07:30.440 --> 01:07:33.284
We are not outsiders observing nature.

01:07:36.600 --> 01:07:40.530
If you look at most indigenous
societies like the Maya,

01:07:40.530 --> 01:07:46.658
you see they have always been telling us to
get a grip and realize we are a continuum,

01:07:46.658 --> 01:07:48.410
and we are all somehow interconnected.

01:07:54.380 --> 01:08:00.140
- For me, the Anthropocene also means
that instead of looking at humans as this

01:08:00.140 --> 01:08:04.180
external disturbance on ecosystems, from
my point of view it means that we can look

01:08:04.180 --> 01:08:08.120
at ecosystems as part of the human system
-- that human systems essentially form

01:08:08.120 --> 01:08:10.670
the ecosystems that we look at.

01:08:10.670 --> 01:08:14.170
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:08:24.120 --> 01:08:28.649
When I first started presenting my work
on the ecology of ecological change

01:08:28.649 --> 01:08:31.354
in rural China, the impression
I got was that nobody

01:08:31.354 --> 01:08:34.479
was really interested the second I said
there were people in the ecosystem.

01:08:34.479 --> 01:08:37.810
An ecosystem with people in
it isn't a real ecosystem.

01:08:37.810 --> 01:08:41.890
It's kind of a degraded thing
kind of on the side, that needs

01:08:41.890 --> 01:08:45.327
to be kind of ignored by real ecologists.

01:08:45.327 --> 01:08:47.910
And since that time, fortunately,
that's changed dramatically.

01:08:57.210 --> 01:09:01.649
So for me, using the term
Anthropocene in a scientific way,

01:09:01.649 --> 01:09:06.370
as a formal term in geology, has
really big implications for ecology.

01:09:06.370 --> 01:09:11.240
Especially if it becomes a formal
part of geological terminology,

01:09:11.240 --> 01:09:13.680
makes it more than just a legitimate study.

01:09:13.680 --> 01:09:16.000
It makes it really the study of our time.

01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:18.585
So we already have an artificial planet.

01:09:18.585 --> 01:09:22.050
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:09:27.495 --> 01:09:32.960
(TYPING)

01:09:32.960 --> 01:09:39.850
- Yes, there are aspects of this planet
and life on Earth that are artificial.

01:09:39.850 --> 01:09:42.460
For that matter, wheat is artificial.

01:09:42.460 --> 01:09:48.000
But if, for example, we want
to embrace geoengineering

01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:53.870
in the form of filling the
stratosphere with sulfate particles

01:09:53.870 --> 01:10:01.250
so as to deflect a bit more sunlight, this
is a much more grand-scale intervention

01:10:01.250 --> 01:10:05.630
into the ecosystems of the planet.

01:10:11.090 --> 01:10:15.670
One of the possible consequences of loading
the stratosphere with sulfate particles

01:10:15.670 --> 01:10:18.500
would be we might change
the tint of the sunset,

01:10:18.500 --> 01:10:22.360
as some volcanic eruptions
have done in the past.

01:10:28.720 --> 01:10:33.580
I would enjoy the rosy hue
of the sunset just as much

01:10:33.580 --> 01:10:38.250
if it was done by human
intervention or by Mount Pinatubo.

01:10:38.250 --> 01:10:43.700
But what worries me is that there are
other kinds of potential consequences

01:10:43.700 --> 01:10:47.550
that could come with sulfate
particle loading of the stratosphere

01:10:47.550 --> 01:10:50.790
that we don't know about,
because we haven't done it.

01:10:50.790 --> 01:10:56.860
And if we experiment with it, we might find
that some of these unintended consequences

01:10:56.860 --> 01:10:57.640
are unwelcome.

01:11:05.626 --> 01:11:09.130
- Tsiolkovsky's quote, the Russian
rocket scientist, who said,

01:11:09.130 --> 01:11:12.457
"The Earth is man's cradle, but man
cannot remain in the cradle forever."

01:11:12.457 --> 01:11:14.040
I think that's where we are right now.

01:11:14.040 --> 01:11:15.765
We're in the cradle of the Anthropocene.

01:11:15.765 --> 01:11:19.140
We've finally got to the point -- and
arguably this is the most interesting point

01:11:19.140 --> 01:11:20.056
in the Anthropocene --

01:11:20.056 --> 01:11:23.430
where we've realized that
we are actually in charge.

01:11:23.430 --> 01:11:26.870
We've woken up behind the wheel of a
car that's moving down the highway,

01:11:26.870 --> 01:11:28.460
and now it's our turn to drive.

01:11:32.220 --> 01:11:35.030
- There have been other
species that had their moments,

01:11:35.030 --> 01:11:36.770
but presumably they weren't...

01:11:36.770 --> 01:11:38.888
cyanobacteria weren't self-aware.

01:11:38.888 --> 01:11:40.846
"Oh my gosh, look what
I did to the atmosphere.

01:11:40.846 --> 01:11:42.610
There's a bunch of oxygen now.

01:11:42.610 --> 01:11:44.269
I'm going to enable this whole new...

01:11:44.269 --> 01:11:45.810
these other forms of life to evolve."

01:11:45.810 --> 01:11:47.250
That wasn't there.

01:11:47.250 --> 01:11:48.330
So that's the thing.

01:11:48.330 --> 01:11:49.579
How do we deal with ourselves?

01:11:49.579 --> 01:11:54.610
We have to get comfortable with
ourselves in this kind of magical moment.

01:11:54.610 --> 01:11:58.040
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:12:04.047 --> 01:12:05.630
- Have things gotten worse for people?

01:12:05.630 --> 01:12:06.180
I don't think so.

01:12:06.180 --> 01:12:08.180
I think things have been
getting better overall.

01:12:10.110 --> 01:12:13.380
We have a lot of potential to do things
in a way that will really be good.

01:12:13.380 --> 01:12:15.550
It will be something we
can be proud of, I think.

01:12:17.900 --> 01:12:21.600
So for me the question is,
what's a good engineered planet?

01:12:21.600 --> 01:12:23.286
What's a good Anthropocene?

01:12:23.286 --> 01:12:24.286
That's the big question.

01:12:24.286 --> 01:12:25.140
That's up to us.

01:12:31.946 --> 01:12:35.160
- In confronting this notion
of the Anthropocene --

01:12:35.160 --> 01:12:37.560
in confronting this century,
this momentous century,

01:12:37.560 --> 01:12:40.270
when we're going to go
from zoom to something new,

01:12:40.270 --> 01:12:42.359
and we don't know what that is yet --

01:12:42.359 --> 01:12:44.400
one of the things we have
to get comfortable with

01:12:44.400 --> 01:12:47.620
is the range of reactions
to that idea, that there

01:12:47.620 --> 01:12:54.170
will be people among us who are
fundamentally fearful and blameful.

01:12:54.170 --> 01:12:57.230
And there will be people among us
who will fundamentally go forth,

01:12:57.230 --> 01:13:01.270
and this is our power moment.

01:13:01.270 --> 01:13:04.770
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:13:10.110 --> 01:13:14.060
- The one who pays the
mariachis asks for the song.

01:13:14.060 --> 01:13:22.770
And the risk of the Anthropocene is
having it be a male, Western thing

01:13:22.770 --> 01:13:27.040
that the rest of the world all
of a sudden has to pick up on.

01:13:27.040 --> 01:13:31.202
And that makes me reflect
on the concept of diversity.

01:13:31.202 --> 01:13:34.590
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:13:41.870 --> 01:13:46.990
We will have different responses and
different questions about the Anthropocene

01:13:46.990 --> 01:13:49.075
and what we're going to do about it.

01:13:49.075 --> 01:13:56.408
And my point would be, if you only
produce one mainstream line of thought

01:13:56.408 --> 01:13:59.400
we reduce the possibility
for successful adaptation.

01:14:04.400 --> 01:14:08.001
If we allow each other to think
outside the box -- all of us --

01:14:10.240 --> 01:14:15.070
to bring what our own particular
understanding of the Anthropocene

01:14:15.070 --> 01:14:22.186
and how we'll adapt is, I think we'll
be more successful overall as a species.

01:14:27.997 --> 01:14:33.380
(TYPING)

01:14:33.380 --> 01:14:36.850
- We're either going to
really understand that we

01:14:36.850 --> 01:14:39.036
can't continue with business as usual.

01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:49.864
We have to really change the way
we live, the way we use energy.

01:14:49.864 --> 01:14:52.608
That decision needs to happen this decade.

01:15:01.880 --> 01:15:07.800
Or if enough people still think we
can get away with business as usual --

01:15:07.800 --> 01:15:10.900
still consuming Earth's resources,
still putting out our waste --

01:15:10.900 --> 01:15:16.810
and somehow the planet will cope, I think
we could be headed for the same fate

01:15:16.810 --> 01:15:19.044
as many past civilizations,
which is collapse.

01:15:22.059 --> 01:15:24.392
And I don't think we're going
to muddle down the middle.

01:15:24.392 --> 01:15:27.040
We're going to jump one way or the other.

01:15:32.810 --> 01:15:39.240
- If we have about one meter rise of
sea level along the east African coast,

01:15:39.240 --> 01:15:45.610
the lateral in addition will
be almost 300 kilometers --

01:15:45.610 --> 01:15:49.700
which means the whole Rift Valley
will be completely covered by water.

01:15:49.700 --> 01:15:55.650
There's a very small ridge in North Africa
which stops it from linking the Red Sea.

01:15:55.650 --> 01:16:00.010
And with a meter rise, that means the water
will flow completely into this African rift

01:16:00.010 --> 01:16:02.160
and join the Indian Ocean.

01:16:02.160 --> 01:16:06.660
This region -- particularly in
East Africa, the home of mankind --

01:16:06.660 --> 01:16:11.560
might be one of the first places to be
wiped out during the Anthropocene epoch.

01:16:18.390 --> 01:16:24.820
- If we would have a change in geography
due to sea level rise as a consequence

01:16:24.820 --> 01:16:33.680
of climate change, well then we will have
a very serious obstacle for the maintenance

01:16:33.680 --> 01:16:41.280
of current international growth, because its
basic presumption is territory, geography,

01:16:41.280 --> 01:16:43.030
is a stable element --

01:16:43.030 --> 01:16:45.053
which we have seen in the Holocene.

01:16:45.053 --> 01:16:47.270
But in the Anthropocene --

01:16:47.270 --> 01:16:51.930
which is characterized by
instability, by change --

01:16:51.930 --> 01:16:53.726
this presumption will no more be valid.

01:16:53.726 --> 01:16:57.490
We will have perhaps to
reinvent what the state is.

01:16:57.490 --> 01:17:00.984
So we will have to think of a very
new approach to international law.

01:17:07.772 --> 01:17:09.730
- There's been this kind
of "woe is me" framing

01:17:09.730 --> 01:17:11.229
around this moment in human history.

01:17:13.420 --> 01:17:17.510
The Anthropocene being, we're
exerting this huge impact

01:17:17.510 --> 01:17:21.770
on nature and on these Earth systems that
will rebound for many, many generations

01:17:21.770 --> 01:17:22.720
to come.

01:17:22.720 --> 01:17:25.280
And coral reefs are suffering and all that.

01:17:25.280 --> 01:17:26.560
I grew up with that.

01:17:26.560 --> 01:17:30.520
The 20th century environmental movement was
all mostly around "woe is me," and "shame

01:17:30.520 --> 01:17:31.440
on you."

01:17:31.440 --> 01:17:36.030
I reject the idea that this
is a "woe" kind of moment.

01:17:36.030 --> 01:17:38.610
I think it's a "get engaged" kind of moment.

01:17:38.610 --> 01:17:42.930
If we sleepwalk through this next few
decades, we're in deep trouble as a species

01:17:42.930 --> 01:17:46.410
if we just disregard the signals.

01:17:46.410 --> 01:17:51.270
If we get engaged and we maintain our
intellectual capacity as a society

01:17:51.270 --> 01:17:55.790
to innovate, and to share ideas, and
make sure the most vulnerable people

01:17:55.790 --> 01:17:57.350
on the planet...

01:17:57.350 --> 01:18:04.495
we do what we can to make their
lives less subject to hard knocks --

01:18:04.495 --> 01:18:07.120
there is a course forward there
that's really kind of exciting.

01:18:07.120 --> 01:18:10.550
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:18:18.900 --> 01:18:22.990
- There was a very sobering
moment when we were first

01:18:22.990 --> 01:18:26.990
trying to understand exactly
how the Anthropocene started

01:18:26.990 --> 01:18:28.270
and where it was going.

01:18:28.270 --> 01:18:30.630
We were sitting in a meeting in Berlin --

01:18:30.630 --> 01:18:34.320
John McNeill was there, Paul was
there, Paul Crutzen was there --

01:18:34.320 --> 01:18:37.450
and we were just doing something like this.

01:18:37.450 --> 01:18:41.480
We were saying "Year
2100, fast forward, what's

01:18:41.480 --> 01:18:43.610
the Anthropocene going to look like?"

01:18:43.610 --> 01:18:44.770
So we did a reality check.

01:18:44.770 --> 01:18:48.240
We got on to Google, and
we went back to 1900,

01:18:48.240 --> 01:18:50.236
and we looked at predictions
for the year 2000.

01:18:58.340 --> 01:19:00.600
And there were some pretty
wild and wacky predictions.

01:19:05.870 --> 01:19:08.800
But in many ways, nobody
predicted where we were.

01:19:08.800 --> 01:19:12.880
And in many ways, where we were was actually
more bizarre than what a lot of people

01:19:12.880 --> 01:19:13.620
had predicted.

01:19:13.620 --> 01:19:17.390
So it made us a little bit
humble, it's like, "Can we really

01:19:17.390 --> 01:19:19.274
predict where we're going to be in 2100?"

01:19:19.274 --> 01:19:23.180
- What you're about to see is an
imaginative glimpse into the future,

01:19:23.180 --> 01:19:26.680
a Hollywood view of the year 1960.

01:19:26.680 --> 01:19:31.635
We'll see some rather startling things,
some of which may be commonplace by then.

01:19:31.635 --> 01:19:36.090
- If you'll get me one of those new Super
P-1038 convertible rocket planes to fly

01:19:36.090 --> 01:19:38.070
to school, I'll eat anything you say.

01:19:38.070 --> 01:19:40.545
- Danny, you ought to
be ashamed of yourself.

01:19:40.545 --> 01:19:43.020
You've got a lovely plane now.

01:19:43.020 --> 01:19:46.485
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:19:54.405 --> 01:19:57.870
- For me, the story of
the Anthropocene matches

01:19:57.870 --> 01:20:02.820
a story embedded in magical realism.

01:20:02.820 --> 01:20:07.802
So you have your crazy
characters, you have your setting,

01:20:07.802 --> 01:20:10.207
and we don't know what will happen.

01:20:12.612 --> 01:20:18.390
In magical realism, you all of a
sudden get the most unprecedented event

01:20:18.390 --> 01:20:22.390
coming from outside, or from
within the main character.

01:20:22.390 --> 01:20:25.805
And it changes the whole story around.

01:20:25.805 --> 01:20:28.220
It's a bit of surreal.

01:20:30.635 --> 01:20:34.499
It's a bit of chaos.

01:20:34.499 --> 01:20:36.864
It's a bit of hopefulness.

01:20:36.864 --> 01:20:43.810
So a bit of all these together
makes it a big question mark.

01:20:43.810 --> 01:20:48.560
Magic realism gives you as the reader the
chance that if you don't like this ending,

01:20:48.560 --> 01:20:49.470
make up a new one.

01:20:55.674 --> 01:21:01.020
- If I were a sentient being from some
other part of some galaxy regarding us,

01:21:01.020 --> 01:21:05.900
I would most likely have been through
this transition myself a long time ago.

01:21:05.900 --> 01:21:09.780
And I would probably say,
"Aw, isn't this sweet.

01:21:09.780 --> 01:21:11.590
They're having their mirror moment."

01:21:11.590 --> 01:21:20.560
And my guess is any sentient life form smart
enough to have found us out, in some way

01:21:20.560 --> 01:21:22.710
or other has been through this juncture.

01:21:27.210 --> 01:21:28.638
- Report preliminary findings.

01:21:28.638 --> 01:21:31.720
- I have found evidence of
intelligent beings on this planet.

01:21:31.720 --> 01:21:39.170
- If I came at this from afar and sort
of regarded this moment as a fable,

01:21:39.170 --> 01:21:40.950
I would have a smile on my face.

01:21:44.310 --> 01:21:52.730
I would have a smile on my face because
it would inevitably bring back feelings

01:21:52.730 --> 01:21:58.437
that any organism has in making that
transition from childhood to adulthood.

01:22:05.930 --> 01:22:11.590
- If I were looking at
it from a distant galaxy,

01:22:11.590 --> 01:22:17.050
I suppose I might see
parallels in that history --

01:22:17.050 --> 01:22:20.500
the history of human
relationship with the Earth --

01:22:20.500 --> 01:22:26.230
to some sort of science
fiction of the epic sort.

01:22:26.230 --> 01:22:33.930
Whether I would regard it as
essentially tragic in nature?

01:22:33.930 --> 01:22:39.150
I doubt that, at least so far -- because
so many of the things that we have done

01:22:39.150 --> 01:22:45.850
in our interventions in the environment
have benefited human beings so much that

01:22:45.850 --> 01:22:49.920
it's hard to say that
this is a tragic story.

01:22:49.920 --> 01:22:56.850
And there's a fair amount of irony in it,
because of the unintended consequences

01:22:56.850 --> 01:22:58.174
of so many actions.

01:23:02.260 --> 01:23:08.790
That's often the perspective
that appeals to me most --

01:23:08.790 --> 01:23:16.350
to look upon our actions
with bemused attachment,

01:23:16.350 --> 01:23:21.710
recognizing how little we
understand what we're really doing

01:23:21.710 --> 01:23:25.710
and how much we're doing
without intending it.

01:23:29.895 --> 01:23:31.300
- Chaos theory.

01:23:31.300 --> 01:23:36.640
- There is so much that
we struggle to achieve,

01:23:36.640 --> 01:23:41.450
and so much that we do only by accident.

01:23:44.390 --> 01:23:50.499
If I were one of those Greek gods on
Olympus, I'm sure I would find it amusing.

01:23:50.499 --> 01:23:51.540
- (SINGING) Life's great!

01:23:55.240 --> 01:23:59.500
- I wouldn't quite use John McNeill's word,
"bemused", although that's a good one.

01:23:59.500 --> 01:24:01.600
I would use paradoxical.

01:24:01.600 --> 01:24:05.810
That's the feeling I would
have, this enormous paradox

01:24:05.810 --> 01:24:13.070
of this quite powerful, amazing creature,
but quite flawed creature at the same time.

01:24:13.070 --> 01:24:17.020
And I think that's still
a real open question --

01:24:17.020 --> 01:24:21.390
the question of our own genetic
makeup, our own background.

01:24:21.390 --> 01:24:27.790
Can we really have the wisdom to control
other aspects of our genetic makeup,

01:24:27.790 --> 01:24:31.900
that I guess drive us to want to
consume more and have more and so on.

01:24:31.900 --> 01:24:33.310
- I don't get that.

01:24:33.310 --> 01:24:36.090
What does it mean to be bemused
about a story like this?

01:24:36.090 --> 01:24:39.896
Yeah, sorry, harder for me to answer,
because I don't really understand it.

01:24:39.896 --> 01:24:41.620
- He doesn't know where we're going.

01:24:41.620 --> 01:24:44.070
- Well, we don't know where we're going.

01:24:47.525 --> 01:24:49.900
There's no question that we
don't know where we're going.

01:24:49.900 --> 01:24:52.460
And we don't know how to do
what we're going to have to do.

01:24:52.460 --> 01:24:54.340
But what's new?

01:24:54.340 --> 01:24:56.296
We've always been like this.

01:24:56.296 --> 01:24:59.516
- He doesn't know if it's good
news story or a bad news story.

01:24:59.516 --> 01:25:03.650
- Well from a scientific point of view it
is definitely not either one, in my opinion,

01:25:03.650 --> 01:25:08.360
even though there are some
trends that are very threatening.

01:25:08.360 --> 01:25:11.820
We could easily create a climate
that will make things much worse

01:25:11.820 --> 01:25:14.680
for everybody in an extreme way.

01:25:14.680 --> 01:25:17.230
That's definitely in the
cards scientifically.

01:25:17.230 --> 01:25:23.370
But from my point of view as an individual,
I don't see anything as foreordained yet.

01:25:25.870 --> 01:25:31.850
- Our species is not characterized by
having the territorial defined state

01:25:31.850 --> 01:25:34.950
in the stable conditions of the Holocene.

01:25:34.950 --> 01:25:39.800
Our species is characterized by adjustment
to climate, adjustment to nature.

01:25:39.800 --> 01:25:44.020
We have been here not for 11,700
years, how long Holocene has lasted.

01:25:44.020 --> 01:25:46.910
We've been here much longer.

01:25:46.910 --> 01:25:52.520
And every species on the Earth
lasts approximately 10 million years

01:25:52.520 --> 01:25:54.500
before being extinct.

01:25:54.500 --> 01:25:59.164
So we have just started, and
we would like to keep it going.

01:25:59.164 --> 01:26:02.410
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:26:07.888 --> 01:26:12.390
- During the Anthropocene, if you take all
the species, biological species, together,

01:26:12.390 --> 01:26:15.490
I think the humans are the most vulnerable.

01:26:15.490 --> 01:26:17.510
Reptiles can move in wet places.

01:26:17.510 --> 01:26:18.800
They live in water.

01:26:18.800 --> 01:26:20.620
They can live in arid areas.

01:26:20.620 --> 01:26:23.190
They can go for days or months without food.

01:26:23.190 --> 01:26:29.370
But humans cannot survive even for
one week without water, for example.

01:26:29.370 --> 01:26:33.850
What we're dealing with here
has no analog in the past.

01:26:33.850 --> 01:26:36.860
We might find ourselves in a
place where there's no water,

01:26:36.860 --> 01:26:43.310
there's major changes in the composition
of the vegetation, new diseases coming up,

01:26:43.310 --> 01:26:48.428
and the human food chain
completely broken down.

01:26:48.428 --> 01:26:52.170
During our Anthropocene, there
is no sufficient evidence

01:26:52.170 --> 01:26:59.775
to show that during this period of
extreme human impact on the Earth,

01:26:59.775 --> 01:27:06.670
that we can actually adapt sufficiently in
good time to be able to avoid extinction.

01:27:06.670 --> 01:27:09.278
And all this is caused by humans themselves.

01:27:15.492 --> 01:27:17.360
- We're only at the very beginning.

01:27:17.360 --> 01:27:21.248
Humans are robust, and
flexible, and adaptable.

01:27:21.248 --> 01:27:27.260
And we share that with some of the
other species that we sometimes decry,

01:27:27.260 --> 01:27:30.469
like cockroaches, and rats, and so forth.

01:27:30.469 --> 01:27:31.760
But we are, we're very similar.

01:27:31.760 --> 01:27:32.510
We're intelligent.

01:27:32.510 --> 01:27:33.370
We're manipulative.

01:27:33.370 --> 01:27:35.780
So it will be hard to shake us off.

01:27:35.780 --> 01:27:38.190
- But we're such little creatures.

01:27:38.190 --> 01:27:42.046
Poor humanity is so fragile, so weak.

01:27:42.046 --> 01:27:45.420
Little, little animals.

01:27:45.420 --> 01:27:46.880
Little animals.

01:27:46.880 --> 01:27:50.200
- The urban foxes and suchlike,
we're a bit like that.

01:27:50.200 --> 01:27:51.654
We get by very well.

01:27:55.450 --> 01:27:59.250
We may well be around for quite some time
yet, even as the Earth changes around us --

01:27:59.250 --> 01:28:02.420
even with a temperature rise of
three, five, maybe seven degrees.

01:28:02.420 --> 01:28:03.587
We'll move north.

01:28:03.587 --> 01:28:05.680
Areas of the Earth may become uninhabitable.

01:28:05.680 --> 01:28:07.990
And we'll carry on developing,
we'll carry on evolving.

01:28:07.990 --> 01:28:09.990
Our machines will carry on evolving.

01:28:09.990 --> 01:28:13.346
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:28:18.880 --> 01:28:22.000
And at the same time, there will
be knock-on effects on the Earth.

01:28:22.000 --> 01:28:25.940
So the changes are being driven by
us at the moment of the Anthropocene,

01:28:25.940 --> 01:28:29.612
despite the tragedies that
there may be in amongst that.

01:28:31.450 --> 01:28:37.140
- If I was to give a
message to the early men who

01:28:37.140 --> 01:28:41.230
lived before Anthropocene
in the Rift Valley,

01:28:41.230 --> 01:28:45.860
I would ask them: How did
you manage to adapt and even

01:28:45.860 --> 01:28:50.160
manage to find a way out of the
extreme conditions in the region

01:28:50.160 --> 01:28:53.865
and still survive, and make
sure that mankind continued?

01:28:56.840 --> 01:28:58.830
Migration is one option.

01:28:58.830 --> 01:29:00.370
But where do you migrate to?

01:29:00.370 --> 01:29:04.030
Whether it is in North America,
Africa, Asia and so forth,

01:29:04.030 --> 01:29:06.170
we see population just exploding.

01:29:06.170 --> 01:29:11.200
My question to early man, how did they cope
with some of these very extreme conditions?

01:29:11.200 --> 01:29:13.590
Is there any lesson we
can learn from it that

01:29:13.590 --> 01:29:19.475
might help us get through this terrifying
phase of the Anthropocene period?

01:29:21.650 --> 01:29:26.620
- For some, some will not be
able to survive if there is

01:29:26.620 --> 01:29:29.180
a big change in environmental conditions.

01:29:29.180 --> 01:29:30.640
Others will be able.

01:29:30.640 --> 01:29:31.820
So that is very relative.

01:29:31.820 --> 01:29:33.203
Who are we?

01:29:36.350 --> 01:29:39.888
There will be individual tragedies.

01:29:43.984 --> 01:29:45.692
Maybe there will be collective tragedies.

01:29:50.070 --> 01:29:53.000
But we as a species --

01:29:53.000 --> 01:29:56.994
perhaps in diminished numbers,
perhaps in higher numbers --

01:29:56.994 --> 01:30:01.420
I believe, yes, we will adjust.

01:30:01.420 --> 01:30:03.940
- You said perhaps in diminished numbers.

01:30:03.940 --> 01:30:05.910
- Perhaps.

01:30:05.910 --> 01:30:07.720
I don't have such answers.

01:30:07.720 --> 01:30:09.390
I am a lawyer, after all.

01:30:09.390 --> 01:30:12.680
- I would certainly view it as a tragedy.

01:30:12.680 --> 01:30:17.360
I think if there were another species coming
down from another planet they may see it

01:30:17.360 --> 01:30:21.325
as a comedy, or they may
see it as an incredible...

01:30:23.590 --> 01:30:27.090
an incredible paradox
of a species that could

01:30:27.090 --> 01:30:32.940
learn to manipulate its planet so
much, but didn't have the wisdom

01:30:32.940 --> 01:30:37.690
to understand what that manipulation was
leading to in terms of its own well-being.

01:30:37.690 --> 01:30:40.966
(TYPING)

01:30:44.250 --> 01:30:47.916
- Yes, we've been reading a
lot about the time capsule.

01:30:47.916 --> 01:30:49.040
Could we take a look at it?

01:30:49.040 --> 01:30:49.840
- Why, sure.

01:30:49.840 --> 01:30:51.330
We can get to it this way.

01:30:51.330 --> 01:30:53.350
It's the most prominent exhibit of the fair.

01:30:53.350 --> 01:30:57.034
It will still be here when the rest
of this place is nothing but dust.

01:30:57.034 --> 01:30:59.271
- That's remarkable.

01:30:59.271 --> 01:30:59.770
- All right.

01:30:59.770 --> 01:31:04.310
Let's fast forward, and let's say
we go through the Great Collapse.

01:31:04.310 --> 01:31:06.090
What will the world then...

01:31:06.090 --> 01:31:07.200
how will it proceed?

01:31:07.200 --> 01:31:09.680
What will it look like without humans?

01:31:09.680 --> 01:31:13.180
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:31:23.770 --> 01:31:29.120
- Here on this hillside, the buildings
here, the old ruins along there, that

01:31:29.120 --> 01:31:32.130
hasn't a chance of being
preserved into the record.

01:31:32.130 --> 01:31:33.370
Erosion will knock that away.

01:31:35.980 --> 01:31:39.320
- All these monuments that we've
built, all these huge cities and so on,

01:31:39.320 --> 01:31:41.060
in fact they crumble pretty quickly.

01:31:41.060 --> 01:31:44.670
- The hammer of demolition will be
sure to swing with determination.

01:31:44.670 --> 01:31:48.070
And our progress is certain
to be steady as we clear away

01:31:48.070 --> 01:31:50.510
the structures that block progress.

01:31:50.510 --> 01:31:53.510
They're going to be taken
over by the roots and vines,

01:31:53.510 --> 01:31:56.960
and plants and bricks will be
pulled apart, glass will shatter,

01:31:56.960 --> 01:31:59.410
and things will crumble, and so on.

01:31:59.410 --> 01:32:03.380
We may not even have as much left
to see as the Mayans, or the Angkor

01:32:03.380 --> 01:32:06.614
civilization in Cambodia, and so on.

01:32:06.614 --> 01:32:10.037
(MUSIC PLAYING)

01:32:24.926 --> 01:32:33.206
- But take that building and put it
onto Amsterdam, or onto New Orleans,

01:32:33.206 --> 01:32:36.560
any part of a coastal plane
or a delta that is subsiding,

01:32:36.560 --> 01:32:40.960
that is being pushed down by tectonic
forces and its very own weight --

01:32:40.960 --> 01:32:43.751
that has a very good chance of
being preserved into the far future.

01:32:47.680 --> 01:32:51.270
If we come back, or somebody comes back --
let's say 50 million years or 100 million

01:32:51.270 --> 01:32:58.190
years from now -- humans have long since
disappeared, victims of their own excesses.

01:32:58.190 --> 01:33:01.290
The bits of the cities and the
landscapes that would have been buried,

01:33:01.290 --> 01:33:06.180
those will be seen as a layer, if you
like, an event layer in the strata --

01:33:06.180 --> 01:33:08.570
much as we see in the
Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary,

01:33:08.570 --> 01:33:12.290
meteorite impact layer is an
event layer all around the Earth.

01:33:15.622 --> 01:33:21.070
And that layer will in places,
when we have a fossil delta,

01:33:21.070 --> 01:33:23.246
will have the fossilized cities.

01:33:23.246 --> 01:33:25.250
Maybe not all of it.

01:33:25.250 --> 01:33:26.446
The tops won't be there.

01:33:26.446 --> 01:33:32.056
But the ground floors, the substructures,
all of the metro systems, the sewers,

01:33:32.056 --> 01:33:35.580
that kind of thing -- that has a very good
chance of being preserved into the fossil

01:33:35.580 --> 01:33:36.080
record.

01:33:39.886 --> 01:33:45.320
And around there, of course, there will be
bones... a few of our bones here and there.

01:33:45.320 --> 01:33:47.360
Cats, dogs, pigs, rats, and suchlike.

01:33:47.360 --> 01:33:53.300
And of course, not just an
event layer, but because we've

01:33:53.300 --> 01:33:55.370
changed the course of history.

01:33:55.370 --> 01:33:57.740
That will be the key thing.

01:33:57.740 --> 01:34:04.640
If we come anywhere close to
creating a mass extinction event,

01:34:04.640 --> 01:34:07.200
then the animals and plants --

01:34:07.200 --> 01:34:10.750
that is the fossils that will follow us
-- will be quite different from those

01:34:10.750 --> 01:34:12.550
of the past.

01:34:12.550 --> 01:34:18.740
And so all of that succession will
be different from the Anthropocene

01:34:18.740 --> 01:34:20.180
and pre-Anthropocene rocks.

01:34:20.180 --> 01:34:24.690
It is this transformative character of
the Anthropocene that is likely to form,

01:34:24.690 --> 01:34:27.770
if you like, the broad scale,
the broad brush signal.

01:34:27.770 --> 01:34:32.350
And our future explorers will look on that
and wonder, "Why are they so different?

01:34:32.350 --> 01:34:33.560
What happened?"

01:34:33.560 --> 01:34:38.740
And they will home in on the
Anthropocene layer, on our current layer,

01:34:38.740 --> 01:34:42.660
because that is when the
exciting events happened.

01:34:44.990 --> 01:34:49.915
We do not know how more
remarkable it will get.

01:34:49.915 --> 01:34:57.000
But it is already creating things
I can only look at with some awe --

01:34:57.000 --> 01:34:59.000
looking geologically, of course.

01:35:03.950 --> 01:35:08.830
- If I were a different type of life
form coming from another planet,

01:35:08.830 --> 01:35:17.550
I think I would simply be scratching my head
in amazement at how this particular life

01:35:17.550 --> 01:35:24.580
form could develop, evolve, change
how this planet actually operates --

01:35:24.580 --> 01:35:27.580
move it in a different direction --

01:35:27.580 --> 01:35:30.940
and then lead to its own
extinction, which I think

01:35:30.940 --> 01:35:33.430
is a definite possibility as we go forward.

01:35:33.430 --> 01:35:38.640
I would simply scratch my head
and say, what were they thinking?

01:35:38.640 --> 01:35:41.170
It just would be really strange.

01:35:41.170 --> 01:35:45.270
And perhaps a little bit of
a smile, saying, well, that

01:35:45.270 --> 01:35:48.620
was an interesting spike
in that planet's history.

01:35:48.620 --> 01:35:53.170
Now it's going to go back and into its
nice, easy spinning through space --

01:35:53.170 --> 01:35:59.703
these wonderful types of life, this
strange characteristic that it has.

01:36:03.480 --> 01:36:07.240
But there was something really strange
that happened for a couple thousand years

01:36:07.240 --> 01:36:07.900
in there.

01:36:07.900 --> 01:36:11.775
Being a scientist, I'd be scratching
my head and saying, wow, what was that?

01:36:11.775 --> 01:36:13.719
How could that have happened?

01:36:16.134 --> 01:36:20.765
(MUSIC - NICO & THE VELVET
UNDERGROUND, "I'LL KEEP IT WITH MINE")