FROM THE EDIACARAN TO EXXON: USING DEEP TIME TO UNDERSTAND OUR PRESENT MOMENT IN EARTH HISTORY

The magnitude of the global chemistry experiment currently being carried out by industrial society can best be appreciated by cultivating a deep time perspective. By this light, the anthropogenic perturbation to the Earth system is both extreme in its magnitude and rapidity, but of a piece with similar disruptions of the planet’s geochemical cycles in the fossil record, some of them driven by biological revolutions. While the upheaval of industrial civilization might seem novel in Earth history, it shares many characteristics with these disruptions, in particular the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary: from the expansion of energy use and complexity, ecosystem engineering on a global scale, and mass extinction. But whether the “epoch” of humanity will ultimately come to resemble the legacy left by the Cambrian—disrupting the world that came before, but ultimately enabling an eon of flourishing that followed—or instead will resemble far more ignominious chapters in Earth history, will depend on the next few decades. Drawing from my experience as a science journalist and author I will discuss how transitions in Earth history can help better inform our understanding of the extraordinary, and extraordinarily precarious, present moment in time.