coe031_zalasiewicz.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:25] Well, hello, everyone, welcome back to the Cultures of Energy

Speaker2: [00:00:27] Podcast I am Dominic Boyer. I am a co-host. I am here with Simone. How another co-host? Hello, Simone, how?

Speaker3: [00:00:34] Here I am going. Going Cohen, OK. It's the verb for co-hosting when you're a semi-professional podcaster.

Speaker2: [00:00:42] That is quite a verb.

Speaker1: [00:00:44] Well, this week, you know, we were surprised

Speaker2: [00:00:49] Or not surprised, but we I guess we've been expecting it for a while, but we weren't sure exactly when the news would break. The Anthropocene Working Group issued its report and recommendation to the International Union of Geological Sciences. I hope I have that right that the Anthropocene is, in fact a geological era, an epoch worthy of recognition. I guess a final decision has not been made about that, but we thought it was an important enough moment that we should talk to somebody about it. And we were very, very fortunate to have John Shalikashvili, who was the the head of this research group, who's come on the podcast and is talking to us about their process and their sense of, you know, evidence and what they're looking for

Speaker1: [00:01:42] And the dating

Speaker2: [00:01:44] Of the Anthropocene. Why it matters.

Speaker1: [00:01:46] And yeah, a host of interesting observations

Speaker2: [00:01:49] About how geology thinks also or how geologists think about deep time.

Speaker3: [00:01:54] I think that's a really interesting question, because geologists do think about deep time. They work with it all the time. I mean, their lives are sort of built around the science of stratigraphy. But I mean, I think they also maybe have something to offer us in terms of the deep imaginary of the future, not just the historic past that gets captured and in stones and rocks. And so I think it was a real treat actually to be able to to talk to him today, especially because the, you know, the word the declaration just came out yesterday. So it's it's happening now. And it looks as though in terms of the the dating of the Anthropocene, that is when it began officially and we talk about this in the podcast, it looks like it will be the great acceleration post-World War Two and there's lots of reasons to kind of date it there. But I think it's also interesting to think about the other possibilities for when the Anthropocene might have begun.

Speaker2: [00:02:51] Undoubtedly, people are going to argue about this.

Speaker3: [00:02:53] There's going to be, yeah, I think in the societies and

Speaker2: [00:02:58] Historians are going to want their era to be the one where it started.

Speaker3: [00:03:01] Sure. The historian Yeah. Yes. Anyway, absolutely. So don't tell that to us.

Speaker2: [00:03:07] You know what?

Speaker3: [00:03:08] You run us through the options. Ok, so the options really are one beginning about seven thousand years ago, and that is when human beings started converting forests and other natural spaces into croplands and began monoculture to some degree, but at least a more rigorous form of agriculture.

Speaker2: [00:03:28] Our colleague Tim Morton calls agro logistics.

Speaker3: [00:03:30] I was going to say our logistics, but yeah, now that's what Tim is calling agro logistics, and that this might have caused a carbon dioxide spike. So that's a rise in CO2. Or there's a possibility of three thousand years ago when LED smelting began to have an impact again on the streets stratigraphic surface of the planet, or 16:10 when pollen from the new world. Our pollen from the new world appeared in Europe. So that's where you have what I call the first form of globalization under the mantle of colonial and imperial encounter, where you have the transference of goods and people, sometimes for the worse. But you also see these, you know, insects and pollen and other things moving around the planet, and that has a geological impact. And then, of course, there's the James Watt's steam engine. So that's kind of the beginning of the industrial revolution. And so I think that's the one that that we often talk about. Historians are interested in that because of course, we have some purview over

Speaker2: [00:04:41] That, too. But it's interesting that it's shifting now towards this idea of the mid 20th century recently with the massive spike in human population and, you know, nuclear radiation from bomb testing and dropping bombs and other things of that nature and plastics to coming shortly thereafter in the 50s and 60s.

Speaker3: [00:05:02] Well, and one of the things that he mentions in the podcast that's important in terms of placing it at the point of the great acceleration is the presence of radioactive material and radioactive isotopes. And there was actually a recent study published that was based on Arctic research where they were finding these radioactive isotopes in these little divots in glaciers. So they're on the surface. But this radioactivity going back to the 1950s is is showing a. Up in the water, it's like it's like a radioactive tide pool. It's kind of disturbing.

Speaker2: [00:05:42] I wanted to say also that, you know, something about this announcement. It kind of struck us both. Not a funny way. It's exactly exactly the opposite, a kind of a melancholy way. I remember when I told you, you know about the announcement yesterday when it came across, you said you kind of had a moment and said, you know, I'm not sure I feel about that or I'm not going to speak for you. You should tell how you felt, but I feel strangely. Also, on the one hand, there's confirmation and that makes you feel good if you believe this exists to get the confirmation from the geological record. On the other hand, it does make you feel kind of sad, right?

Speaker3: [00:06:15] I described it as woe and dread, woe and dread. Sound is another way of putting it.

Speaker2: [00:06:20] Well, sad is just a commonplace term for woe and dread. I guess

Speaker3: [00:06:24] That's for regular

Speaker2: [00:06:25] Folks, regular folks like me. Not fancy academics like so many.

Speaker1: [00:06:30] No. But I mean, I think that, you know, one of the

Speaker2: [00:06:32] Thing that's nice about talking to John is he's obviously a terrific, terrific guy. In addition to being a great scientist, it's just, you know, the sense of humility that he has in terms of his work and its significance. Whereas I think geologists, because they think about time in such huge spans, right? I do think that, you know, the the Anthropocene designation. On the one hand, it's certainly doesn't read to me as aggrandizement, which is one of the arguments that sometimes is leveled against this is that to think and talk about the Anthropocene is to aggrandize human beings in some way. I didn't get that sense from him at all. Oh no. In fact, quite the opposite. Yeah. In fact, quite the opposite.

Speaker3: [00:07:18] Right. Because this is about the kind of the relics of of rocks and stones and geology and yeah, human effects. But Anthropocene is not exactly at the center of the kind of work that they're doing, actually. It's just our leftovers and the detritus. Yeah.

Speaker2: [00:07:34] And then also at the very end of the podcast, and this is well worth listening through to the end for where we're talking about the folks who might be pushing back, not on the idea that these Anthropocene processes exist, but as to whether they're they can be remedied in a span of time short enough that it's not worth declaring a new epic, right? You know that some of the people who are who are arguing against the Anthropocene as a geological designation are saying, Well, maybe we're going to remediate this carbon within a hundred years and then it's going to look like a really small blip within an epoch. We can return to the Holocene again. And I don't know, there's there's like a there's an element also of wishful thinking in that or maybe just a recognition of our fragility in the face of these processes, both the species that's caused it, but also the species that could stand to lose everything from it at the same time.

Speaker3: [00:08:26] Right? I mean, one of the more valid arguments against designating this epoch as the Anthropocene comes up around questions of security and the kind of tightening of the borders and a more regimented securitisation of populations of movement of people, you know, sort of disallowing the kind of general rights that some of us have come to enjoy that could be quashed in some ways under the aegis of we need to do absolutely everything we can no holds barred, you know, all means necessary to to stop these effects now. There's nothing wrong with that trajectory, but it depends on who is making those demands and who gets to decide what sorts of measures we put into place. So I think that's another that's another interesting question. This is something that the feminist philosopher Isabel Stingers has been thinking about writing about, too, that, you know, the powers that be may take up this mantle and use it, use the Anthropocene in nefarious ways to carry out more of their own predatory capitalism, right?

Speaker2: [00:09:45] Yeah. Or nationalist, you know, kind of defense strategies or whatever else. I mean, it's clear that at some point somebody is going to use this this idea of Anthropocene as part of a strategy to disenfranchise a huge group of other people to save the interests of of a probably a smaller group. And we're not naming any names, but those of you who listen to this podcast probably have some ideas of what our ideas are.

Speaker1: [00:10:10] I mean, anyway, in the end, you know,

Speaker2: [00:10:12] To the many people in our field anthropology who seem to be feeling rather exhausted and with the concept of Anthropocene and feel like it's the big fancy buzzword and everything, I guess I would say to that is because they aren't necessarily going to be happy about this, this announcement. You know, it's less about, I don't know, it's less about sounding the bell or beating the gong of like one. Concept, fancy or not, I do think what it's more about is about restoring some sense of humility and proportion with our relationship to time and environment and, you know, any any word that does that or any discourse that does that narrative, I think, is helpful.

Speaker3: [00:10:50] Yes, I'm optimistic. Then again, if I think about it, you know, how often do people go about talking about the Holocene or, you know, what kind of politics we want to have in our Holocene conditions? Most of us don't think in terms of geologic. Yeah, and that's at a time.

Speaker1: [00:11:09] But that's kind of

Speaker2: [00:11:09] What's nice about Anthropocene is it's gotten us thinking geologically again, like you're saying that the Holocene is no. No one. No one in 1970 used to walk around going like, I'm really enjoying my Holocene at condition. Exactly right. But now we we do have, you know, what seems to be this this something staring over our shoulder or the shadow falling across us that's called Anthropocene. That's just getting us to think in that, you know, in that. Chakrabarti and climate of history, deep time, type of way,

Speaker3: [00:11:39] And I'm sure that having our own species designation right in the front and center doesn't hurt with that either, right? The Anthropocene becomes important,

Speaker2: [00:11:47] But we're not the first. There were the cyanobacteria that oxygenated the Earth's atmosphere back when they were the first ones to change the world anyhow.

Speaker3: [00:11:56] So think about multi-species ethnography.

Speaker2: [00:11:59] You got it.

Speaker1: [00:12:00] So yes, on that. We're not trying to be melancholy this week, but

Speaker2: [00:12:03] Just it felt like it had a significance and a weight to it that we ought to talk about. So. So here is our conversation with John. And he said it was OK if we call him Jay-Z because those are his initials.

Speaker3: [00:12:16] Because he always aspired to be a rap star like Jay-Z, but he's a better kind of rap star now.

Speaker2: [00:12:21] I would say he's a great rapper, but there will be no rap actually in this podcast. Just to be clear, that's OK. Think of it as spoken word. Ok, here we go. Go young.

Speaker3: [00:12:51] Welcome back to the Cultures of Energy podcast, we're so thrilled to have you here, and we're very, very thrilled to have John here with us. John Malkovich, who is going to be speaking to us about the super exciting and really monumental news that came out just yesterday that has to do with the Anthropocene Working Group's declaration and designation about a new geological epoch. And so welcome, John. We're really, really glad that we could meet with you and make this happen.

Speaker4: [00:13:23] Glad to meet you both.

Speaker1: [00:13:24] So, Yan, maybe you could walk us a little bit through the findings of the working group. I mean, you've obviously been working on this with a number of colleagues for some time, and we woke up yesterday, as Simone was saying, to discover that we've actually probably been living in the Anthropocene, our whole lives.

Speaker4: [00:13:43] Yes. You know, at least in what we might regard as a real sense of living in a state, changing and evolving state of the Earth, which is different enough from the standard Holocene to be separated off, you know, as a separate unit, you know, using the time honored, you know, methodology and comparisons of geology and setting of geological time units.

Speaker1: [00:14:17] So, so, so could you tell us a little bit about about, you know, the forms of evidence, perhaps that that are most critical here in terms of how a geologist sees what you know, what constitutes a threshold event such

Speaker2: [00:14:32] That you actually could speak of being in a new geological epoch?

Speaker4: [00:14:37] Ok. We geologists have a kind of a strange way of looking at time. We look at time through rock and look at time, history, event and process through rock. Because for most of Earth's history, it's all we have as a record. So things like episodes of climate change, you know, the the the growth and the destruction of oceans and mountain belts. You know, the appearance of disappearance of different species. You know, all of these only know because they leave traces in rocks and particularly in stratified rocks. You know where the oldest stuff is at the bottom and the youngest is at the top. And as you work from bottom to top, you work up through history. So what we have to do to, if you like, characterize and constrain the Anthropocene, which is a term that was not started in the geological community, it was started in the Earth system science community by Paul Crewdson and his colleagues, who are looking at contemporary global change. You know, using mainly observational evidence, you know, of the atmosphere of of oceans, of biology and and soils and so forth. And they suggested that the Earth changed so much that we were, you know, out of the Holocene and into the Anthropocene. And that phrase took off and got used within that community for quite a while before the geologists, you know, even realized, you know, what was going on. We're often a little bit slow on the uptake like that, but eventually we saw that this term was out there being treated as a geological time unit without having been formally defined as well.

Speaker4: [00:16:35] So then we said, OK, you know, let's discuss this and see if there's any sense in this at all. You know, does it make sense? And if so, should we then try and go on to make it into geological time unit? And there's quite a big step from saying something simply make sense, you know, towards actually working towards a geological time, which is a big step in geology because geologists regard the timescale as something you know, you know. You know, it is a holy of holies. It is the backbone of the science. It is, you know, the way we categorize time, of which we have far too much to to cope with and deal with. So we started looking at, you know, some years ago, even before this working group formed, you know, within the the Geological Society of London, you know, it's a stratigraphic body. I was part of them. And basically we we started taking if like environmental change of different sorts physical, chemical, biological and converting that into geological change and more particularly stratigraphic change stratigraphy being, you know, the science of gleaning Earth history from strata, you know, so a lot of the physical changes, let's say the building of cities, you know, the creating of new rock types such as brick and concrete, you know, from sandstone, mudstone and limestone, the creation of new mineral types, you can say, like glass and plastic and metals, you know, from effectively raw materials and other kinds of rocks, you know, that became aspects of what we call little stratigraphy various types of chemical.

Speaker4: [00:18:26] From pollution, as it's called, you know, you know, whether it's persistent organic pollutants, you know, you know, modern insecticides or going to chlorine, so that kind of thing, whether it's the changes to the chemistry of the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle and so forth, you know, whether it's, you know, the appearance of new radium nucleotides on Earth, you know, from atomic bomb tests, you know, all of those became different types of what we call chemo stratigraphy, you know, ways in which these particles or these chemicals get into strata currently forming, you know, to give them a particularly distinctive signature and biological changes, species extinctions, species modifications, let's say, in, you know, in found animals and also, you know, something that's become very big species invasions, you know, really the crisscrossing of animal and plant species between every continent and between every ocean. You know, this became part of a like a bio stratigraphic signal. So end up first, a rough translation that we made. We came to the conclusion that there was something in this idea and using the typical cautious conservative terminology of, you know, academic geologists. You know, we said, you know, there was merit in this, that it should be examined further.

Speaker4: [00:20:08] And that was the paper that came out in 2008 in the American journal GSA Today. And that really started off the process of examining the Anthropocene, which by then had developed a life of its own know well outside of geology. You know, as a potential geological time unit. After that, people were invited to set up an official working group, you know, attached to the relevant stratigraphic body that deals with that part of the timescale. And so, you know, then we started, we had to set up a body of people of, you know, 30 odd geologists. And for the Anthropocene, of course, you know, we had to include people looking at the modern environment. You know, people like, you know, Will Steffen and Paul Christensen member as well, you know, who are in there from the beginning. You know, we included archaeologists, you know, oceanographers, people who worked on soils, people worked on modern biology. We even have a lawyer, an international lawyer, who is interested in the way that these changes affect societal structures like international law. Because we're already aware, you know, that there was a wider perspective to this that we had better be aware of as we were examining the science. And so we went on looking, you know, examining the data, finding new data. It was quite a voyage of discovery in many ways. You know, we changed our minds about, you know, several quite important aspects of the Anthropocene as we went along.

Speaker1: [00:22:00] I wanted to ask you on, I mean, it's great you're talking about this sort of temporality which geology works and how you're working on a slower scale, whereas in maybe popular culture or even academic culture and other fields, there's a tendency to seize upon a term and run with it. And. But but I love this idea that the timetable sort of sacred. So you're going to make sure before you move ahead so that this the findings of the working group or those especially momentous, I think. And I was curious, you know, a lot of people are going to ask you, Well, when did this begin? And I'm wondering, is that from your view, the right type of question? I mean, how worried should we be or how much should we argue? Or how much did you your your group argue about how to date the precise moment at which we could say the Anthropocene happened? Or is it really just the ensemble of all these different forces you've been describing?

Speaker4: [00:22:48] Well, there are certainly ensembles or intersecting ensembles of different forces that we had to try and deal with. Uh, but the I guess the main thing is that we try to sort out first, the big questions have those in the back of our minds and sometimes the front of the minds, you know, as we examine the case. So one of them is the Anthropocene real, you know, is it a, you know, quite aside from any of the kind of human or social constructions we might place around it? Is it does it have a geological reality? And if so, should it be formalized? That's a separate question because the formalization you have the not just the reality of something, but also the utility for realizing it. And that's a different question. And of course, one of the questions is. Humans knowing that humans are impacting the Earth for thousands of years and tens of thousands of years, dastardly. When would the Anthropocene be set to begin? So that was a question that we had another one was what kind of level in the hierarchy should be, should it be a really big unit like era or on a very small one, an age that could be a part of the Holocene? You know, or as Paul Krugman suggested, in fact, instead of the hypothesis, you know, saying that the Holocene has ended.

Speaker4: [00:24:37] So in part, we were testing that hypothesis, looking at the scene as a potential epoch to follow on from from the Holocene. And also what? Kind of character, should we use to define it? So, you know, all of these questions, you know, we've looked at we've published on in various ways and we've reached a kind of interim, interim and provisional conclusions and recommendations on what the Anthropocene might be. And if so, what should we carry on to do with it? You know, so this is not the end of the road by any means. It's a stepping stone on the way. Um, but we feel with, you know, we've it's kind of stock taking time, you know, to coincide a time with this international geological Congress, you know, this big meeting that takes place every four years. You know, so that the results can be aired there. My colleague Colin Waters has given the talks and he'll be in discussion with interested parties there. And we'll see how things go from there. But it's certainly a kind of it's not. I don't say you say milestone. Well, one of several milestones, I think, along the way.

Speaker3: [00:25:56] Mm hmm. You know, in one of the recent articles that came out about this declaration and about the working group, I know one of the key contenders for the kind of origin point or the beginnings of the Anthropocene was this time of of what people have been calling the great acceleration. So essentially beginning in 1948 or thereabout kind of post-World War Two, when we start to see the acceleration of human populations of the production of petrochemicals and their manipulation and et cetera. You know, we can all imagine how that acceleration is gone because we've seen it and lived a lot of it. So I was wondering if you can talk a bit about whether you think it's that moment will be the quote unquote first moment of the Anthropocene, if that's its origins or if it might be one of these other contenders in the timescale. And if you could talk about what those other possible beginning points might be and how how decisions will be made about when to determine that. So one thing that we heard about was the golden spike. Maybe you could tell us a bit more about that for a, you know, for people who aren't as familiar.

Speaker4: [00:27:10] Yeah, OK, if you can start, maybe with the timing of when the Anthropocene should begin, you know, that's I guess when we started with that, you know, I certainly had the view that what Paul Krugman and Eugene Sturm originally said in their 2000 paper, what Paul Krugman repeated in his 2002 paper, you know, without a, you know, a logical starting point seemed to be around the beginning of the industrial revolution. You know, that's the beginning of the ramping up of, let's say, you know, the carbon dioxide, you know, you know, a lot of the signals to do with industrialization. But as we carried on looking at the evidence and looking for ways to define a beginning and an important thing about the beginning, as it should be recognized in structure that is recent layers of sand and mud lake beds and sea floor. And so. Is that we are able to recognize a horizon, a layer of the same age that you can use a marker that you can track across pretty well, the whole Earth or as much as the Earth as you can manage know because it's what dealing with is the time framework with big units in it. So the Anthropocene is potentially one of these big events, and the important thing is not so much that the the time steps so representing important happenings they usually do, but also that the time steps are even across the Earth and you can replace them.

Speaker4: [00:28:46] The trouble with the industrial revolution and with all of the earlier impacts of humans, which are not small, many of them the early phenomenon. So it's a big impact, is that they took place at different places, at different times around the Earth. They spread around the Earth to give what we call a dire signal, you know? So you know, so if you look for the signal of different things, there are different times in different places. And this doesn't work what we call Kronos Photography stratigraphy, you know, we recognize it. We try and map it out. But to map it out, we need a the rungs which are synchronous, so we need synchronous signals. And it became more clear that the signals associated with the great acceleration, which Paul credited himself with Stephan McNeill, all of them are on the working group had published on even before the working group in two thousand seven. They would work rather better, you know, things like the big change in nitrogen chemistry reflected in nitrogen isotopes. There's a rather sharp upswing in, you know, carbon chemistry because of the greatly increased use of hydrocarbons at that stage and in particular, the use of fly ash via she comes in or does an upswing pretty well in the mid 20th century.

Speaker4: [00:30:17] Again, that's the paper that came out. Only a couple of papers came out only last year saying that iridium nuclei, of course, and which are not. If you like, you know, environmentally, if you like, it's the Earth system is important to the carbon or nitrogen chemistry yet, but they form a very good marker so you can trace plutonium, an increased rate of carbon from about the very early 1950s from the big thermonuclear explosions around the world. And that if you like an ensemble, that array of signals around the mid-20th century, you know, seemed to make the post war interval rather characteristic, rather distinctive, combining both large change to the health system. And also, if you like stratigraphic definition distinctive, that's, you know, characterize the ability. And so most of us by a fairly large majority, we're plumping for somewhere in the mid 20th century that great acceleration as representing the start of what we call stratigraphic Anthropocene, not the start of human impact know, but the setting of the Earth on a different accelerated trajectory of different signals which have got a reflection in the strata

Speaker3: [00:31:43] And that we know. That we see that we see papered across the world in more or less even distribution to so so that you could put down the golden spike sort of any terrestrial place on the planet and pull out some similar stratigraphic material. It sounds like, right?

Speaker4: [00:32:01] Well, yes. I mean, we we can recognize that that kind of unit, the war unit, various ways. But I think there are other signals as well. Plastics, plastics, microplastics, the concrete concrete is as opposed to mid-20th-century, you know, most aluminium cigarette papers, things like that. So there's a wide range of markers that we can use. Now the golden spike is is. If you like the would be the mark and finding instead of a golden spike, you know, you know, a single reference level somewhere on Earth, you know, is. Always traditionally a slow and complicated business, because you want to try and get the best possible direction, you know, off strata and within the best possible level. So to find that and to find it in such a way as to have a section which is as convincing as possible. You know, to the people who are going to make the decisions and all the struggles, but it's above us, you know, who'll be looking at this, you know, this proposal skeptical, conservatively, you know, and critically closely, we're going to need, you know, first a range of sections to demonstrate this. And then half a dozen sections we can see represent this around the world and then from that, select one of them. And the data has got to be very good, very closely spaced to have, you know, if we can annual resolution on the history of these markers. So there's a very good deal of spade work still to do on this. Mm hmm.

Speaker3: [00:33:50] Right. This question I wanted to ask you actually almost sort of ebbs into the uncanny, I think, and it has to do with the longer human history and the presumed influence over Earth's systems. And so I know that one of the scientists that you've written about and been thinking about was a late 18th century scientist named Buffon, who who believed that the world was cooling at the time, and he believed that human burning of coal was actually helpful in terms of keeping the Earth at a livable temperature, right, so that that human activity to warm the Earth was actually a positive thing for the Earth system. And so there's been this kind of reaction for some time, at least to I don't know what we would call it, sort of human conceit or human arrogance about our ability to manipulate or systems. And yet one of the claims of modern geology has been that in fact, Earth's systems are are much more powerful and much more consequential than our human imprints. So when we think about tectonic plates and volcanoes and these natural geo formations, we have a very powerful set of processes that that might overweening man's ability to to make changes. So I guess the question is really, is there something that we can learn from this longer genealogy of, of human belief about our ability to to either positively or negatively influence our planet? Is there something that we can sort of take from that history or something that we can pull forward into the present to help us navigate the questions of the Anthropocene better?

Speaker4: [00:35:39] Yes, I think yes, I'm quite interested in it in a very amateur way in the history of scientific thought and particularly geological thought in that, you know, including you perform, convey and Lyle and others. And certainly as you look on them, even if you look them in a kind of present is to say, you know, judging what they have done by modern standards. You know what, we now know it does. All of that does bring on a certain, if you like humility, you know, and enforced modesty about what we know now and what we may be capable of doing to influence Earth processes in general or to try and undo whatever damage in inverted commerce that we might think to have done, you know? You know, to the Earth system. So, yes, I think that kind of context is important. It's complicated, but it's yeah, yeah, it does, I think, help promote a wider understanding.

Speaker3: [00:37:00] Yeah, because I mean, there's there's a singularity to to the declaration here, and I think it's a very important one also politically. But then of course, we want to, you know, look back to our history and understand how to how to navigate all of those human presumptions that we've had in the past, which now are backed up by much more solid evidence than Buffon ever had on hand.

Speaker4: [00:37:24] Right? Yes. Yes, I think so. I think we're, you know, I think unlike before, what we're not really saying is that, you know, are we trying to avoid very much we're trying to clean very closely, you know, do the the stratigraphy, the little, you know, is to try and describe what is going on rather to give any prescriptions for altering, you know, what we might be doing or, you know, even altering the system, you know, to try and remedy, you know, any effects that we make on it. You know, in our day job, some of us do on this kind of thing, you know, Paul criticism does and will Steffen and others. But for this exercise, we are simply trying to objectively, you know, perhaps, you know, dispassionately, some people say over dispassionately, you know, at this simply to try and establish what is going on within this particular kind of geological context and framework.

Speaker3: [00:38:34] Yeah, and that kind of meticulous, diligent even at, you know, even if it is slow moving at times in terms of the geological scales is so important to because we live in a world of of doubters to some degree. So I mean, any any antidote to that is,

Speaker4: [00:38:52] I think, one useful to think in general, you know, we're all aware of the, you know, the the problems involved in, you know, convincing large sections of the population, you know, across the world that there really is such a thing as global warming. It is happening and would likely accelerate because these things, if you like, are beyond, you know, we're not designed really to cope with ideas like that, you know, planetary scale ideas, you know, we're designed to, you know, gather it's, you know, it's the vulnerable of ours. That's what we write. But in the sense that. Looking at it geologically, you're looking not just to the president, but also past and that particular patterns of evidence in strata. And I have a, you know, a good colleague and it was president of the Geological Society of London, Brian Lovell, who was both a very good oil geologist and a very good environmental challenges. And he says the rocks don't lie. You know, in 95 particular patents, you know, that represents as far as we can judge it, particular events, you know, cause and effect is harder to judge. But nonetheless, you know, there is a succession there, which is easier to demonstrate, easy for people to accept and assimilate, you know, than, let's say, computer projections. You know of where climate might, might take us. So, you know, there's a grounding to it. And the other thing about the Anthropocene is it is not the current description of the Anthropocene. Only has climate change, it's a relatively small part. We are still essentially in interglacial temperatures now reaching the high end of the interglacial temperatures. But it was still within that because we haven't yet caught up with the very large CO2 rise that we've had. So because we're looking at all these other things, you know, the plastics, the aluminium, you know, the fly ash and so on, which are incontrovertible signals, you know of generalised, if you like human impact upon the geology of the Earth, you know that I think again is is easier to assimilate. So it's a done deal rather than some future prognosis.

Speaker1: [00:41:40] So, yeah, and I wanted to ask, you know, in terms of the work of the the working group itself or looking ahead? Or are you concerned at all that that the conservative or skeptical forces in your field might actually win out in the end? Or do you think the body of of evidence is is strong enough at this point that really it's very unlikely that the the union as a whole won't in the end decide to to ratify your proposal? And I don't know if this is a related question or not, but it sort of brings up the question of what constitutes an epoch making transformation. And it isn't that often that one species gets singled out, although we wouldn't be the first because I believe there was a great oxygenation event some two two point four billion years ago where a bunch of hardy cyanobacteria also changed the world to suit them,

Speaker4: [00:42:34] Suit themselves making a not just epoch making. Yes, for sure.

Speaker1: [00:42:38] So, you know, I guess that's a question. And if you could maybe respond to that and just let us little know a little bit more about what makes an epoch, but then also whether you think there are counterfactuals out there that could challenge the Anthropocene diagnostics?

Speaker4: [00:42:54] Okay. Yeah, it's certainly within the Anthropocene is nothing, if not complicated. The timescale is hard to change, and it's meant to be hard to change. It's meant to be stable. You know, it's meant to be something that is readable not, you know, a century hence by geologists and not just now. And I can certainly read timescales from a sanctuary back, you know, pretty well recognized them, you know, in smaller as well as larger units. So it's, you know, the rules to change it are difficult. I don't at the moment, it's not a particular worry or concern whether the the Anthropocene will become formalized or not, you know, partly because I have little more control over that. You know, it is all the bodies, you know, you know, above us on the working group and also. Because that's the kind of distraction from simply trying to do the science as best as we can to build a case, not as a pressure group. So we're not trying to, you know, but to build up the evidence, invite other people to throw bricks at it, threw bricks at it ourselves. When we feel it needs doing that, you know, see, all of the evidence is left standing up, you know, after that process, you know, and then carry on with it to try and understand what is going on, you know, in this generalized real thing. You know, it is a real thing called the Anthropocene.

Speaker4: [00:44:33] So, you know, say, I don't lose sleep over that. I'm heartened that. It seems to be, you know, as we've been progressing and it has been we've been working with, you know, different people corresponding, we're working more closely with the Quaternary Sub Commission itself. We are evolving. You know, you know, you know, a way of working, you know, including though this is close focus on the golden spike that is increasing the dialogue. So you know that I think is the main thing. It will be a slow process, you know. So far, we've been working, you know, effectively, you know, rather like this, you know, in the evenings and weekends. On this, you know, none of us are funded for this work. We have no travel budget or analytical budget. You know, like most geographic bodies don't have this sort of thing, you know, so it's very much a kind of labor of love and enthusiasm and persuasion, you know, whether we can manage it. And luckily, we have a very good atmosphere. The working group, it's, you know, a lovely bunch of people. You know, there is a wide range of backgrounds and opinion among us, including people who think the Anthropocene should not be formalized. But you know, the you know, the you know, the the exchanges, you know, have been, you know, an education and a pleasure to be part of.

Speaker1: [00:46:12] And can I ask about the people who think that it shouldn't be formalized again? It's not doubting the reality of it, but it's just that it doesn't rise to the level of a new a new geological marker. Am I understanding that correctly?

Speaker4: [00:46:25] Yes, I think so. Yes, I think there's a little doubting if you like the change, you know the changes to, you know, key parts of the Earth system, you know, the doubling of the Earth's reactive nitrogen in the last 70 years or so? You know, the the the 100+ ppm rise in CO2, you know, the large change in carbon isotopic values of the surface, you know, all of, you know, plastics, all these sorts of things. If you're looking, you know, from another direction, you might say, well, you know, that's fine, but it is still only 70 years or so know if we take a 20th century, you know, and that is a lifetime, not millions of years. We do not know what will happen in the future. So there are many different outcomes to this. Whatever is starting now, and some people will say simply, well, that is, wait a bit longer. We have no idea how this will turn out or how this can be described. We don't know whether it will end up with rapid decarbonisation and setting up of large nature parks with a, you know, something still relatively Holocene like, you know, or whether we will zoom off into the +4 degree plus six degree world. You know, with, you know, acidified oceans under six, mass extinction and all that. So one can see where the caution is coming from. And there's also the other question of where you still hear me.

Speaker1: [00:48:08] Oh yeah, we can hear you. Don't worry.

Speaker4: [00:48:10] Ok, good. Just something of some people saying, OK, well, we know all of this and this is fine and we accept it all. But still, do we really need a formalized Anthropocene rather than, you know, an informal word to describe this kind of stuff? You know, so these are all valid. Arguments, which we we listen to and we invite you to come up with which then we have to discuss, you know, as a group and see if reasonable responses can be made, you know, to that. Right. You know, so it is, you know, a kind of long, drawn out process, you know? You know, two steps forward, three steps back, you know, four and a half step sideways kind of thing.

Speaker3: [00:49:06] Well, yeah. And before before we let you go, I wanted to turn to an earlier project this wonderful, beautiful little book that you've written called The Planet and a Pebble. And it's just a wonderful story. And it's about a pebble, right? It's the kind of it's the story.

Speaker4: [00:49:24] Be the protagonist, the hero stroke heroine. Yes. Is a pebble.

Speaker3: [00:49:28] Yeah, this little Welsh pebble. And through this little Welsh Pebble, as your colleague says, stones and rocks don't lie. So then you get to see the birth of the Solar System. You get to see the formation of Earth itself. You get to see these waterways and these creatures that evolve out of those waterways, all captured in in this little pebble. And it's a wonderful story and it's beautifully written. And so I wanted to read just a few lines from the book and then also ask you a question that relates to the lines that you have here. So you write that landscapes are transient. This is a concept that does not come easily to us in our brief lifetimes. We see the Earth's land masses as things of massive permanence, the bedrock of passing civilisations. And yet, even in these human lifetimes, we can see masses of rock debris piled up beneath mountain crags and as we walk nearby here, the fall of new scree fragments dislodged from rock faces by wind and water. And so I wanted to turn to the question of the kind of possibility of understanding the massive permanence that we're talking about. When we when we think about things like the Anthropocene and the future of the Earth and what your thoughts are on how well human beings can actually take up that imaginary to imagine ourselves geologically, you might say, to both see ourselves as as agents of that geology, but also to be able to imagine into a future forward that is, you know, is so unimaginable. It's so distant that that one wonders whether we humans, frail creatures that we are actually have the capacity to do that kind of work.

Speaker4: [00:51:22] Well, it is it doesn't come naturally. This kind of thinking, but because we're flexible and adaptable creatures, you know, we can develop these and I guess it's a particularly geological way of thinking of, you know, thinking through what we called deep time, you know, and that kind of process where mountain belts and oceans are transient. Phenomena, you can adapt that, and this is in fact part of if you like. You know, the thinking in exploring the Anthropocene, you know, for instance, one of the things we're doing now, particularly with, you know, Colin Waters is out in Cape Town at the moment, you know, presenting this work. You know, Mark Williams and other colleagues, you know, is to look at, let's say, a city like New York or London or Amsterdam or Shanghai, whatever, you know, not just as a city, but as a transient sedimentary system. So it is taking, you know, clay and sand and limestone and other materials, you know, metals and hydrocarbons, which are converts into plastics and circulation, putting them construct in one place. And of course, you know, the city has a metabolism that's coming out. And of course, the city at the beginning and an end, you know, so part of that city may be buried part of it, then may be eroded.

Speaker4: [00:52:54] Part of it is being, you know, when you knock down a building, it often goes to be hard core of a road, you know, 15 kilometers away from you. And of course, part of that will then be eroded and will form some sort of detritus, you know, in, you know, in some sedimentary basin, in a lake or the sea somewhere, which yet might have distinctive features, little pebbles of brick concrete, you know, little fragments of artificial glass and such like, you know, microplastics and stuff like in there. So I think that kind of thinking and it's it varies in scale from the animal to the decadence of the centennial to the millennial to the millions of years, and you can kind of zoom in and out. But I think it would be useful to try and think of human constructions in that kind of the way, you know, not just where we are now, but where they've come from and where they somehow must go to in the future. Yeah, it's yeah, it's not. It can kind of fund this thinking can be, you know, a different kind of sedimentary system.

Speaker3: [00:54:09] Mm hmm. Well, it's it's where geologists and and paleo biologists can can really help us, I think, and kind of imagining that that possibility of this long term horizon.

Speaker4: [00:54:22] That's right. Yes. And also the paleontologists in the Pilbara and the geologist also need help need to put the people, you know, the architects and engineers and the panel and the historians, you know, you know, philosophers you know of this. So you know, this kind of combined vision as it develops, you know, is is, I think, more fruitful than than, you know, one set up simply with a single discipline and simply exported. Well, that is the good part of this kind of work.

Speaker3: [00:54:57] Well, you couldn't have created a more perfect diamond for the work we're trying to do here at sends with that last description.

Speaker1: [00:55:03] Yeah. Yeah, I don't. I think we should probably end. And just but also just to thank you so much for, well, for the work you've done and obviously you've done it out of love and you've done it out of humility. But I think it's it's given all of us great inspiration and also a greater sense of how we need to think about the world in terms of deep time

Speaker2: [00:55:25] In order to to have a viable future as a species. So, you know, I

Speaker1: [00:55:30] Hope that that not only will your colleagues soon be on board with this, but but skeptics included, but that the world as a whole will

Speaker2: [00:55:38] Take notice and begin to shift how we think about our society's future in terms of deep time.

Speaker4: [00:55:45] Okay, well, thanks for your interest in this and this and well, good luck with all your endeavors with the, you know, the Anthropocene and everything else that you're working with.

Speaker3: [00:55:57] Thank you so much. It was such a treat to talk to you.

Speaker4: [00:56:00] Really fun. Likewise.