TEACHER:
Good afternoon. This has been such a
fun and interesting meeting. I've
been learning a lot meeting
wonderful people and I really
appreciate being included. As was
just mentioned, we're going to go
out to some slightly longer
timescales now briefly. I'm an
astrobiologist and I'm going to give
you an astrobiologist's perspective
on the INAUDIBLE. At least one
astrobiologist's perspective.
Astrobiology is in a certain sense
largely an effort to understand the
relationship between life and
planets in the universe. Arguably
our own planet is a very interesting
and novel juncture in its
relationship with life. That is
something I want to talk about for
the next half an hour. What is the
nature of that transition seen in a
cosmic perspective. As Bob Marley's
saying, "We know where we're going
because we know where we're from."
This is where we're from. At least
our local story arguably begins here
in the pre-solar nebula from which
the planets of our solar system
formed. They formed by a process of
accretion, a gravitational
gathering. Clumping together and
larger and larger chunks colliding
with more and more violence until we
were left finally with the current
planets.
TEACHER:
Everything fell from the sky
ultimately in this process of
accretion. Now we're going to fast
forward through the next 4.5 billion
years. Imagine you were a patient,
an inquisitive alien, watching our
planet for the past several billion
years. What would you have seen?
Obviously you would have seen the
continents drifting around the
surface. Collecting and splitting
apart and shifting puzzle pieces.
You would have seen the polar caps
growing and shrinking in the
polyrhythmic, quasi rhythmic pattern
as the earth shifted between ice
house and greenhouse conditions.
About 400 million years ago you
would have started to notice the
greening of the continents but the
night side, the dark side, of the
earth would have stayed a deep,
unbroken black for almost all that
time. OK. Maybe the occasional flash
of lightning, the occasional meteor
flash, a little splash of aurora now
and then. Then starting about 400
million years ago, some forest fires
occasionally but pretty dark on the
night side until wow, what is this?
Something very new.
TEACHER:
These bright points starting out in
certain coastal areas and then
spreading in these weird webs with
these forms that are pretty organic
looking but suggest some other kind
of geometry as well. Along with
this, you would notice changes in
the atmosphere composition, changes
in the ocean, changes in the nature
and geometry of the land on the
continents. Then very recently, in
just the last 50 years, a blink of
an eye in this cosmic view, you
would have noticed something else.
Little bits of the earth leaping
back off into space, buzzing around
the nearby space and even some of
them zipping off to the other
planets and sending radio messages
back in a curious anti-accretion.
Everything fell from the sky in
accretion and now 4.5 billion years
later, we have this curious
anti-accretion. It's curious because
it's weird, it's strange but it's
also the hallmark of a certain
curiosity, technological curiosity
arriving on this world. This is all
very new. Very, very new. This all
happened in my lifetime. I know I'm
not that young but still.
TEACHER:
The very first of these missions to
another planet, the Mariner 2
mission to Venus, launched when I
was 2 years old. Just this week the
Akatsuki Mission, the Japanese Space
Agency, arrived and orbit around
Venus and just this year, we finally
got to Pluto. This is a brand new
effort. My career has been spent
doing what we call comparative
planetology, being involved in space
craft missions to the other planets
and then trying to use the
perspective we get and comparing the
stories of those planets. Finally,
hopefully also revealing some new
aspects to the earth story. As TS
Elliot said, "At the end of our
exploring to come back to where we
started and see it as if for the
first time." The particular
application of this field to the
anthropocene that I got involved in
for the last few years came about as
a result of an opportunity that I
want to tell you about because it's
an opportunity I think some of you
might be able to take advantage of.
TEACHER:
The Library of Congress established
in 2012 a new chair in astrobiology
which specifically was for somebody
to undertake sustained research at
the intersection between
astrobiology and wider societal
questions. I applied and was the
first person to get this chair. I
was the inaugural chair of
astrobiology. My project that was
selected was astrobiology in the
anthropocene. I also mention this
because it's still very new and
they're looking for look candidates.
Almost everything I've heard at this
meeting would potentially fill that
role. Big history definitely
applies. It's astrobiology at large.
I think the earth's story and many
of the concerns we've heard would
fit. It's a great deal. They pay you
well and they give you amazing
support and they're looking for
interdisciplinary scholars. They're
not just looking for astrobiologist.
They're looking for people from the
humanities as well as the other
scientists who want to think about
the broad questions of astrobiology
which really is the evolution of
life, the universe and everything.
Think about applying some of you.
What I'll tell you about for the
next 20 minutes or so is some of the
major conclusions or thoughts that I
reached through this activity.
TEACHER:
As I mentioned, I do comparative
planetology and of course, one can
give many lectures on that. I'll try
to avoid giving many lectures on
that but the specific thing that I
do is climate modelling. I'm a
climate modeller. I model climates
of other planets mostly although
I've done some Paleo-Earth. We use
the same models and same techniques
and of course, the same laws of
physics. Some of this has given us
new perspective on the long-term
evolution of our home planet. If I
could sum up a lot of what we've
learned on one slide, it would be to
say that although Venus and Mas, our
2 closest siblings to the Earth,
have obviously evolved in
erratically different directions.
This seems to represent a divergence
from much more similar origins and
early environments. We have reason
to believe that both Venus and Mars
had much more Earth-like conditions
when they were young and quite
possibly we're both homes for life.
That's still something we're
searching for evidence of.
TEACHER:
It maybe that on planets in the
universe the persistence of
habitable environments over
cosmological timescales is what
could be more rare, not the
conditions for the origin of life.
At least the local ... Looking
around the neighbours, that's one of
the impressions we get. Then we can
see there was this early branching
point when we compare Earth's story
to those of neighbours. There was
this early divergence for nearly,
now for nearly 4 billion years, our
planet has been evolving under the
influence of major forces that have
apparently not been at work on the
neighbouring planets. Really this
may have been 2 divergences. I think
the origin of life is a separate
event from the origin of a planetary
biosphere, the time when life
becomes deeply integrated as a
global property of the planet.
That's an interesting question. It's
become clear that the defining
characteristic of earth is planetary
scale life. In other words, life is
not just something that happened on
a planet here, it's something that
happened to the planet. Life is
something that a planet becomes.
It's a property of the planet deeply
embedded in the workings of Earth.
TEACHER:
The more we study Earth and the
history of life, the more we realize
this that it's not just an
afterthought or a condiment placed
on top. Life has become deeply
integrated in the functioning of the
planet. We seem to be possibly at
another branching point in the
history of this planet. More
recently the Earth has come under
the influence of a new geological
force, what we've been talking about
at this meeting. The global
activities of humanity defining the
anthropocene. This perspective makes
me wonder, could intelligence like
life become a planetary property?
Could there be planets that in some
sense, as a planet can in some sense
become alive can a planet in some
sense become aware and conscious?
Can the functioning of intelligence,
awareness, consciousness, what have
you, become deeply integrated in a
stable way in the functioning of a
planet in a way that life apparently
can. As we've heard, we are not the
first species to come along and
radically change the Earth.
TEACHER:
We've heard about the great
oxygenation events, somebody called
it a holocaust where cyanobacteria
came along, poisoned the Earth, the
atmosphere with oxygen led to mass
INAUDIBLE 00: 10:48 many, probably
most of the species that had evolved
up to that time. They had to adapt
or die. Not only that but it led to
a huge climate catastrophe. All that
oxygen destroyed the methane
greenhouse that was keeping Earth
warm up to that point, collapsed the
climate that Earth went into a deep
freeze of snowball Earth. It is
probably a close call to
irreversible planetary destruction
or it could have been. In other
words, once things get really frozen
over, it may be hard to get out of
that state because you're reflecting
so much sunlight, it keeps it
frozen. All those cyanobacteria
we're doing were innocently
exploiting a new energy resource to
the greatest extent they could.
Solar energy. Yet, those
irresponsible bacteria caused a
global environmental catastrophe.
Now of course, we don't really think
of them as irresponsible. They're
just bacteria. It does raise an
interesting question then, what is
the difference between them? We see
ourselves behaving in much the same
way and we're horrified.
TEACHER:
It seems deeply irresponsible. What
have we got that the cyanobacteria
didn't? This also could be a long
discussion and I'll keep it to one
slide here. These so called human
qualities and they're all ... Each
one controversial and arguable
language tool use, our technology
but together we can consider them
the human qualities which are
obviously new on this planet. I love
the description that David Christian
gave on the first day of this
meeting of cumulative knowledge. I'm
going to have to start borrowing
that. Don't worry I'll cite you.
That's a really, really nice way to
describe what is new in this
interesting development on Earth.
Now we can ask though and I think
the discussion right before lunch
forces us to ask, are these
qualities adaptive or is this an
evolutionary dead end on a planet?
Could this possibly be a potential
gateway to really great longevity?
If civilization "is now a planetary
and even geological process, what
are it's prospects both here and
elsewhere in the universe?" To try
to get a handle on that, I've looked
at different transitions that can
happen t planets.
TEACHER:
I got into this by looking at
climate catastrophes on Venus and
Mars. I've extended this now looking
back at Earth and the different
climate catastrophes that can happen
here. I would like to suggest that
there are writ large 4 categories of
planetary change. Classified with
respect to the role of life on the
planet. The role of life in these
different catastrophes. These are 1,
random, 2, biological catastrophes,
3, inadvertent catastrophes, and 4,
intentional changes. I'll briefly
describe each of these to you now.
Random catastrophes are just when
... As the bumper sticker says,
"Stuff happens." Bad things
happening to good planets. The
obvious canonical example is an
asteroid striking a planet as one
did 65 million years ago. In fact,
has happened repeatedly on Earth and
we know throughout the solar system
and the universe, there's a lot of
stray material moving at high
velocities, planets get hit. This is
not the only kind of random
catastrophe. There are also things
like large igneous provinces that is
massive impulses of volcanic
resurfacing that do extreme
makeovers of the climate. This has
happened many times in Earth's
history.
TEACHER:
For example, these Siberian traps
with voluminous outpouring of flood
basalts 250 million years ago in
what is now Northern Russia, led to
the great dying, the largest mass
extinction ever on Earth, the permo
triassic extinction, 250 million
years ago. Several other of these
larger igneous provinces are
associated with mass extinctions and
major changes in climate. That's
what I mean by random catastrophes.
These obviously will happen to some
degree on all planets in the
universe. They'll probably happen
more often on the better planets,
that is the more interesting
planets, with the geological flows
that will lead to life. I actually
think the planets that are good for
life will have more of these natural
disasters. The second category of
planetary change is what I call
biological catastrophes. We already
heard about, not just from me but
other speakers, about the oxygen
catastrophe and that's a great
example where just the evolution of
species doing what species do leads
to a massive change in the global
environment that causes mass
extinction. I mentioned the
cyanobacteria and the snowball
Earth. There are other examples too.
For the sake of brevity, I won't go
into that.
TEACHER:
Other examples I just wanted to
establish the category. The third
category of planetary change is what
I call inadvertent change. That is
where one species becomes very
adapted. A certain solution to local
problems. Technological solutions.
They're really good at applying
technological solutions to local
survival problems. They become so
successful at that that they begin
to have global influence without
having any idea that they are doing
so. This is what I call the
anthropocene dilemma having global
influence without any global
control. It's symbolized here by
this traffic in California. Each one
of these cars is being driven by a
driver who has agency and can see
obstacles, see dangers and if
necessary, steer around it. Yet, if
you look at the global
transportation system as a whole, is
anybody driving it? Not really. It's
happening by some other mechanism.
This is what I mean when I talk
about inadvertent planetary changes.
Some obvious examples a lot of what
we've heard about in the last couple
of days, the Keeling Curve, sea ice,
all the associate changes associated
with climate change and also the
ozone hole we just heard about.
TEACHER:
That's an example certainly of
inadvertent change one by the way
that we discovered because we were
exploring the planet Venus and
noticing some strange things were
happening in the upper atmosphere
when chlorine was attacking oxygen
species and some smart people said,
"Oh, wait a minute. Aren't we
putting chlorine in Earth's
stratosphere?" That's a very
concrete example of the value of
comparative planetology. Anyways,
this ozone hole is an example of the
third kind of planetary change but
it's also a good example of the
fourth kind of planetary change as
we heard about from David this
morning. Intentional planetary
change. As a heard a good news
story, the scientist sounded the
alarm. The world got together to
some degree and had conversations
and decided to take action, passed
laws, made treaties and it's
working. It's on a path to be
getting fixed. Yay. Go humanity. Go
Earth. Of course, we have other
challenges as we've been hearing a
lot about but I want to suggest is
that there are many other kinds of
changes that ought to go in the same
category of intentional change.
TEACHER:
Obviously fixing global warming is
still something we're, as we've been
discussing, just getting a handle on
but it certainly at this point an
intentional change. I would also put
the category defence against
asteroids and comets. If we're going
to talk about the long-term and
survival, we're going to talk about
human beings intervening
technologically to save ourselves
and other species. In the long run,
this could even be a kind of
payback. We may be causing a mass
extinction. Now we may be able to
prevent the next mass extinction.
Then also on the long run, we have
to remember that climate is not
always by itself left alone in a
benign state. We've been lucky for
the last 10,000 years. We have lived
through this warm, stable climate
state but if we're around for
10,000, 100,000, millions of years,
then we're not going to want to sit
back and watch another Ice Age
happen. There's no way our
civilization and most of the species
we share the Earth with now today
could survive that. In the long run,
climate intervention takes on a
different tone than the one we heard
about this morning.
TEACHER:
Just to list a few of these what I
call planetary changes of the fourth
kind, intentional global changes, we
have ozone replenishment, as I
mentioned, already underway.
Intentional halting or reversal of
industrial global warming which at
this point would be a kind of
climate intervention in the sense
that we need to get together and
talk about intentionally changing
our relationship with the planet. In
that overall sense, this is a kind
of geoengineering. It's a different
benign and softer geoengineering.
Planetary defence asteroids is
currently a work in progress. We are
not going to go the way of the
dinosaurs. We don't have to and the
other species we share the planet
don't have to. Geoengineering is
rightfully controversial but I put
it in this category of kinds of
purposeful interventions. I very
much share the view we heard this
morning that at present we don't
know enough about the Earth's system
and it would be real folly to
attempt a cure that could very well
be much worse than the disease. The
terraforming of Mars is currently
being modelled.
TEACHER:
Although I'm a planetary scientist
and an astrobiologist, I'm not a
proponent of terraforming Mars on
any kind of certainly nearby
timescale but I'm very glad people
are modelling it and have been
modelling and thinking about it. It
increase our ability to think about
how we would intentionally change a
planetary climate thoughtfully
instead of unintentionally stumbling
into a change in climate. I think it
goes in this category. It raises a
bunch of really interesting ethical
and technical questions that I won't
go into now but I think it does
belong here in the category of
intentional change. As I mentioned,
eventually we're going to want to,
assuming we or some descendants of
us is here for the next 50,000,
100,000 of years, we will want to
prevent future Ice Ages. They would
be much nastier actually than any,
even any climate change that's
approaching us this century. It's
something we'll eventually, if we're
to survive, have to think about. As
we're going to really long timescale
since we're being cosmological here,
the sun is heating up.
TEACHER:
Earth will experience and inevitable
global runaway greenhouse that will
go the way of Venus in a couple
billion years again left to its own
devices. If we're here or anybody
INAUDIBLE 00: 22:24 and
technological and thoughtful is here
that long, they'll have plenty of
time to think of ways to solve this
problem. If we wanted to get nerdy,
we can put all this on one plot.
This is logarithmic and timescale. I
didn't mention this but in a way
global health is part of these
global solutions I'm talking about.
We have some problems that are
solved, some that are on track, one
that is currently requiring serious
effort, and then there are these
other ideas on different timescales.
Planetary defence I think will be up
and working anyways so we need to
worry about it maybe certainly on
the thousand year timescale. Ice Age
interference we need to worry about
in the 10,000 year timescale and
then eventually, if anybody's around
for billions of year, they need to
worry about the evolution of the sun
and how to either fix it or move.
TEACHER:
To summarize these kinds of changes
and where they may happen in the
universe, random planetary changes
will happen everywhere in the
universe on all planets. It's just
part of the nature of the universe
we live in. Biological catastrophe
will happen on all planets with life
I think because it's ... We can
argue and astrobiologist love to
about how to define life and what's
its properties are but I think basic
things we can agree: life multiplies
and life alters its environment.
Therefore, I think that any planet
with a sustained biosphere will
experience these biologically
induced catastrophes. These 2 other
categories of change, 3 and 4, what
I call the cognitive planetary
changes where ... We got to be
careful with the word intelligence
because it's broader than what I'm
what I'm talking about but
technologically enhanced
intelligence alters the planet and
either inadvertent or intentional
ways, what about those? Do those
exist elsewhere in the universe?
That leads us into the territory of
study, the search for
extra-terrestrial intelligence.
TEACHER:
It also leads us to think about the
long-term longevity of civilization
because when you do the math of
SETI, you realize that longevity is
the real question. If civilizations
last for a long time, then there
should be a lot of them to find. If
they only last as long as we've been
technological arguably hundreds of
years, well, depending on how you
define it. If you define it by radio
telescopes, then we've been
technological less than a century.
If all civilizations last that long,
then we would never find another
one. Longevity comes up a lot when
you do the math of SETI searches.
This leads to the question of what
is the anthropocene in terms of its
persistence? In terms of the kind of
geological change it is? Is it just
an event? Is it going to be just an
event which will leave a layer in
the strata like what we used to call
the KT, the KTG boundary. The
dinosaur extinction that left a
centimetre thick clay layer and then
things went on after that? Is it an
EPOC?
TEACHER:
That's what it's been proposed at
which implies that it will be
something a little bit more
sustained or could it even be
something else? A planetary
transition, a fundamental change in
the planet of which they've only
been a few in the history of the
planet. Changes like the origin of
life or the Cambrian explosion when
life suddenly became complex. If
could be that the story of humanity
is such that it will just be an
event and my friend, John Lomburg,
drew a cartoon representing that
possibility where the goldilock zone
is too hot, too cold and too dumb.
I'd like to think that we'll be able
to do better than that but that's
certainly, as we've been hearing,
one possibility. It really comes
down to this question: is human
style intelligence adaptive? In some
way can it be adaptive or is it
inherently self limiting? When we
look at the long-term history of the
Earth, we've talked a lot about the
anthropocene as a possible new EPOC.
TEACHER:
That's what's it been proposed at. I
also think we may be on the verge of
or seeing hence of or at least the
possibility of a very different kind
of change. If you go over to the
left side of the geological column,
you see the eon boundaries and there
have only been 4 eons as geologists
discuss them. Sorry this is a little
fuzzy. This slide. Each of these
boundaries represents a fundamental
change in the role of life on the
planet. Roughly speaking, and don't
throw anything at me geologists, but
... Getting out the chainsaw.
Roughly speaking, the boundary
between the Hadean and the Archean
is the origin of life. Roughly
speaking, the Archean led to the
protozoa are right around the time
of the great oxygenation and all the
major changes that that caused in
the Earth. The boundary between the
Proterozoic and the Phanerozoic,
this is the origin of complex life,
the Cambrian explosion.
TEACHER:
It seems to me that we are
potentially on the edge of an eon
boundary because if cognitive
technological life is going to be,
can possibly become a stable part of
the way the Earth operates, that is
as significant as any of these other
changes. We've heard a lot of
speculation of what will these
archaeologists of the future find
when they come and dig up our
strata? Maybe there'll be ants
trying to hold rock hammers. I'm not
sure how to do that without
opposable thumbs but I would like to
know. It is an interesting thought
exercise for putting our time in
perspective to imagine us not at the
end of the column, but somewhere
deep down and imagine what might be
further. I like to think that we
could be at the beginning of a new
eon which I call the Sapiozoic.
That's an aspirational title because
sapiens mean wise. We perhaps
foolishly or arrogantly call
ourselves homo sapiens which means
wise apes.
TEACHER:
Nonetheless, if there is to be a
long geological eon where
intelligent life becomes a stable
part of the operating system of the
planet, then I think that would
require what we can define as
wisdom. A longer and wider view of
the role ... An awareness of the
role that is being played. We've
heard a lot about the dangers
confronting us and they're of
course, very real. Some people have
construed this as a 21st bottleneck.
People like Martin Reese is a really
smart guy, famous astrophysicist in
England, he gives us 50-50 for
making it through the 21st century.
EO Wilson has similarly discussed
this notion of a bottleneck. I don't
want to go into it in great detail
here because I'm limited on time.
There are many possible threats to
our continued survival. I think this
afternoon we're going to hear a
little bit more about some of these
new, both the potential and threats
of some of these new technology.
TEACHER:
It's clear I think to many of us
that with the acceleration of
technology and with the expansion of
population and everything we've been
talking about, that the 21st century
is a time when a lot of trends can
come to a head. It's a very
frightening prospect but there's
this also the idea of a bottleneck
also implies that there's another
end that if you get to it, things
could be very different. As I've
described, there are aspects of our
technology that are maybe in their
infancy which could have the
opposite effect which could lead to
very long survival. We can have
chances to survive that no species
has ever had because the dinosaur
couldn't, we can see that asteroid
coming. We can see that Ice Age
coming. If we can get a handle on
ourselves, there's at least the
possibility of making it through
that bottleneck and becoming a very
long lived phenomena on the planet.
To make things worst, there's even
the threat of zombies. This implies
the possibility of a bifurcation in
the lifetime of civilizations. If
there's a bottleneck, it maybe that
most civilizations at our stage are
short lived.
TEACHER:
Yet, it maybe that there's a
possibility of what I call quasi
immortality defined thusly that if
you get that deep understanding of
nature and of yourself as a species,
as a civilization, then in fact, you
may have access to a kind of
longevity that no species has ever
had. It may not be likely but I
contend that it's possible. That
leads to some really interesting
possibilities. As far as SETI goes,
if you do the math and I'm actually
going to skip a little bit here
because I'm running low on time, I'm
not going to do the math now. I'll
give you the metaphor that it maybe
that civilizations are like seahorse
babies. Seahorses have the
reproductive strategy where they
make a whole lot of them. Almost all
of them do not survive very long.
They almost all die when young and
yet, there are seahorses. It maybe
that if there's this bottleneck
model that young civilizations at
our stage are like baby seahorses.
TEACHER:
It maybe that our chances for
long-term survival are not closely
coupled to the probability of
advance civilizations elsewhere in
the universes or as Franz Kafka put
it, there is an infinite amount of
hope in the universe but not for us.
I don't really believe that. I'm
full of hope for the human future. I
think we're in for a very rough
century but I think our long-term
prospects can still be seen as good.
We just have to find the right path.
When did the anthropocene start?
This is my favourite candidate for
the type, the stratigraphic
signature of the anthropocene, the
footprints and equipment left at the
sea of tranquility on the moon. I
know that's not very helpful for Yan
and his commission. It's not a very
pragmatic suggestion for the
anthropocene strata and yet, it's
symbolically potent and unmistakably
the mark of a new kind of species on
this planet. That's still my
proposal. I don't expect it to be
accepted but I proposed it. Boot
prints on the moon are the beginning
of the anthropocene.
TEACHER:
I think that there's an important
way in which the anthropocene has
not started yet or maybe it's just
getting started. Thinking in terms
of these categories of planetary
change, I think the anthropocene
begins with the end of our
innocence. With our mass awareness
of our role as world changers.
That's what allows us to have the
feedback between the effects we see
globally of our behaviour and our
behaviour. We're like those drivers
avoiding obstacles rather than
sleepwalking, sleep driving into
them. What makes the anthropocene
unprecedented and worthy of the name
as our growing knowledge of what we
are doing to this world? Up to this
point we have been unconscious world
changers. I call that the proto
anthropocene where we're making
changes of the third kind. It's the
species doing powerful things having
no idea that it is even doing them
and then it starts to become aware.
I think we're in the early stages of
that. We have to bring it about as
quickly as possible.
TEACHER:
Obviously some of us in this room
are aware of it and a lot of
individuals are but when I say we,
we have to do our best to promote a
global awareness. I think this is
something that is actually rapidly
spreading and rapidly changing and
that's why I have hope. We can
define a new phase which I call the
mature anthropocene changes of the
fourth kind where our actions are
defined by feedback between
awareness and our global actions.
Whereas an intelligent individual
behaves based on sensory input from
their surroundings, we as a global
intelligence need to develop that
basic property of intelligence. I
think we are developing it. This
self-aware global change is then a
completely new kind of phenomenon in
the planet. Looked at in this way,
the anthropocene is actually
something to aspire to. It's
something that is just getting
started. If we create a mature
anthropocene, then this EPOC could
be the first EPOC in the Sapiozoic
eon or there could be a Sapiozoic
eon even if we don't make it. Some
other species could start to behave
this way or even some other
civilization of humans.
TEACHER:
I would like to think we have a
fighting chance so let's fight for
it. If we are successful, then we
are trying to create what I call
terrasapiens or a wise Earth. This
would be a human race, a planet
dominated by planetary changes of
the fourth kind, a mature
anthropocene and ... In order for a
civilization to survive, we need to
become a new kind of entity on the
planet. We need to learn to live
comfortably over the long haul with
world changing technology. That's
not going away. We're not going to
stop having world changing
technology. We have to develop a new
relationship with it. I actually
think this is happening. Is it
happening quickly enough? I don't
know but can we do it? I think we
can. If you look at the deep history
of our species, you see a lot of
what makes us human is our ability
to work collectively and use our
imagination and solve problems, tell
stories and find solutions. During
TEACHER:
This is the final paragraph in the
going to tell you the end.
getting started on this planet and
I'll end on that note.
TEACHER:
Drawing pictures on the walls and
TEACHER:
They miss the game changers. This
