Generation Anthropocene Is Upon Us: Mike Osborne and Miles Traer at TEDxStanford

not a year ago miles and I started a podcast called generation Anthropocene I'm sure all of you are familiar with the geologic time table and words like Pleistocene and Jurassic the idea with the Anthropocene is that we've entered a new geologic age based on the global footprint of humankind the reason we chose it as a theme for our show is because we want to ask a question are humans a geologic force when most people hear the words geology and geologic forests they probably think of rocks and plate tectonics which is good plate tectonics describes the awesome forces that control the movement and the shape of our continents and our oceans but geologic forces are also part of the climate system and can drive things like ice ages during the last ice age these forces built an ice sheet over huge sections of North America that weighed so much it drove central Canada below sea level we're going to return to the idea that Anthropocene in a second but first we want to highlight the importance of geologic forces by going back in time and talking a couple examples from Earth's history so we're going to start with the great Permian extinction 250 million years ago this is before the dinosaurs this is actually the largest extinction in the history over 90% of species went extinct and this is what the planet looked like that then what we think happened is that geologic forces destabilized during this time we know that there were a series of volcanic eruptions lasting a million years and the lava that spewed from these eruptions flowed over ground that had trapped frozen greenhouse gases as these traps warmed up because of the lava the ground cracked open and the gas is shot into the air totally changing the makeup of our atmosphere and as Mike said over 90 percent of life didn't like it all that much let's go back a little further in time and take a slightly different example for most of us history the planet was in a constant state of flux and life was pretty boring was mostly little microscopic bacteria but then around five hundred and thirty million years ago the planet stabilized and we see this explosion in biodiversity all of a sudden there's organisms like sponges and corals and lobster like creatures crustaceans there's all kinds of evolutionary innovation happening at this time this is the first time that organisms had eyeballs life could sense its environment could see and it was all made possible we think because the planet stabilized so with the Permian we see that when geologic forces destabilize you can get something like a mass extinction and in the Cambrian we see that when these forces stabilize and the overall planet sort of calms down life thrives now the idea that powerful geologic forces like volcanic eruptions can affect life probably isn't new to you but can it work the other way can life itself be a geologic force the answer is well yes round 2,500 million years ago or two and a half billion years ago life totally transformed the planet this is so long ago we don't know where the continents were or even if there were continents but what we do know is that the atmosphere was totally different so if we had a flux capacitor which is what makes time travel possible and we could go back two and a half billion years we'd get there step out of our time machine and suffocate there was no breathable oxygen on the Earth's surface but at some point life little bacteria learned a neat trick they learned how to absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen this was the birth of photosynthesis with nothing to keep them in check these little bacteria ran amok and pump the atmosphere full of oxygen as they were doing this they were also absorbing more and more carbon dioxide out of the air a greenhouse gas and as a result the planet became colder and colder eventually the planet became so cold that the Earth's surface froze over geologists cleverly call this snowball earth and it took millions of years to recover but an oxygen-rich atmosphere has been with us ever since so life can be a geologic force and this brings us back to the Anthropocene in this question are humans of geologic force how into what extent have we changed our surface geology well we've dug a lot of materials out of the earth especially to build our cities all of the stone iron copper cement glass all of that comes from a mine or a quarry somewhere and to power our machines to power our cities we've also dug up a lot of gas oil and coal these rocks are awesome because you can light them on fire and lighting box on fire is how we get most of our energy that's how we power our cities it's how we fly our airplanes and drive our cars on average humans use the energy equivalent of 13 barrels of oil per person every year it's a global average and some of us use more fire than others all seven billion of us consume a lot of water to in the United States alone we use 345 billion gallons of freshwater per day at that rate it's as if we're draining all of Lake Michigan every 10 years over half the world's rivers and streams have dams and the size of our dam project seems to be growing more and more the amount of steel it took to build the Three Gorges Dam in China could build 63 Eiffel Towers and it's not just rocks water and resources humans also affecting biology the total mass of vertebrates on land used to be shared between three hundred and fifty species today it's basically five humans and everything we keep around to eat the cows the pigs the goats and the sheep today only something like five percent are the wild animals the cheetahs squirrels giraffes bears we've transformed well over half the Earth's surface the amount of sediment rock and soil we dig up every year is more than all the world's rivers and streams move combined at that rate it's as if we're digging a Panama Canal from start to finish every four days and moving the weight of all of that sand rock and dirt around is actually changing the shape of the tectonic plates just like the glaciers did during the last ice age we're changing the shape of the plates we've mentioned some striking examples so let's look at how these things have changed over the last 250 years the number of dams is growing exponentially urban population is growing exponentially water consumption is growing exponentially the amount of domesticated land is growing exponentially and there are myriad ways to measure the exponential rate of change to Earth's surface geology today the natural reaction when you look at this is to thank yep so let's be cliff we're not saying that living in the Anthropocene means the end of the world it's not the apocalypse well not it can be invaded by zombies but if we do remove the head and destroy the brain but this is scary it induces an anxiety and the tendency is to want to look away and pretend that the world isn't spinning so fast over the last year on our show generation Anthropocene miles and I have looked at these figures over and over again and what we've discovered is that when you look at the world through the lens of the Anthropocene when you put on the Anthropocene goggles you begin to unearth hidden connections between environmental systems and humanity so let's put on those Anthropocene goggles and look in an example like sea level rise as sea level continues to climb our geographical boundaries are going to change all of our international laws of trade and who owns the resources along coastlines and within the seas themselves were written assuming our environment would be stable which is no longer true as a result in the Anthropocene we have to rethink international laws but we can do that I mean rewriting international laws sounds complex but we have institutions that could do this provided they recognize the changing baseline of our world let's stick with sea-level rise for a second over 80% of all goods move by ship and pass through ports almost everything in your home or apartment was brought to you by a ship and passed through a port so to sea level rise threaten these ports we saw gas prices spiked after Hurricane Katrina so how important is port infrastructure for global trade there's not a mad rush for resources we can probably reinforce our ports but it requires that we first see this vulnerability potential threat we can take these anthropocene goggles and we can look away from the oceans and on to land - as climate changes and the tropics expand tropical diseases like cholera and malaria could spread with them that's kind of a terrifying thought even if it's not zombies but at the same time we understand diseases today better than we ever have and in fact we can map the spread of diseases in real time so if we can identify these connections between populations we can greatly reduce future epidemics in 2010 a giant heat wave hit Russia and decimated about 1/3 of the Russian wheat crop Russia exports wheat all over the world including the northern African countries like Egypt a few months after the heat wave hit global wheat prices spiked then the Arab Spring erupted in Cairo not arguing that the Russian heat wave caused the Arab Spring but events in the modern world have a way of reverberating around the globe even when those events are concentrated somewhere so when we assess the potential for future conflicts factors like food security and water security take on a whole new level of importance many biologists currently warn that we are on the precipice of a mass extinction of many species on earth if this is true can we use our knowledge of DNA genetics and ecology to help pull species back from this ledge or can we develop some Jurassic Park type technology to pull species out of extinction which is part of this whole D extinction conversation you may have heard at Ted events like this or can the threat of a mass extinction finally be the catalyst for us to recognize these trends and reassess our placement within the Earth's system if we humans have modified every corner of the globe what exactly do we consider natural when we watch a iceberg break off an ice sheet and fall into the ocean are we watching nature or are we watching the consequences of humans the more we study the natural world the more we realize that were an integral part of it that our perceived separation from nature is just that a perception these are just some of the connections that we see when we put on the anthropocene goggles humans are a geologic force we are that powerful that's the reality of the Anthropocene then yes our generation and future generations are going to be facing some pretty daunting challenges but if we hope to face those challenges the only way that we can do that is by wearing these Anthropocene goggles these goggles were built by looking back in earth history but the geologic perspective and the geologic imagination also allows us to look into the future and when we wear these goggles it forces us to be honest and ultimately empowered the Anthropocene doesn't mean the end of anything but it means that everything is changing thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 29,472

Keywords: Anthropocene, geology, stanford, Miles Traer, Mike Osborne, tedx, tedx talks, ted talks, university, ted talk, breakthrough, tedx talk, extinction, ted x, climate change, ted

Id: dAozZds7FRs

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2013