Popular in Natural Sciences

Biology

Plasticity and microevolution of diatoms

University of Technology Sydney Martina Doblin

Chemistry

Statistical Mechanics for Chemistry and Materials Science

Indian Institute of Science Biman Bagchi

Chemistry

Polyfluorene-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes Decorated with Photocleavable Side-Chains

McMaster University Alex Adronov

Biology

Analysis of rare coding variants reveals novel genetic risk factors for type 2 diabetes

University College London David Curtis

Life Sciences

The Mouse Cortical Connectome Maintains Specificity by Distinct Connectivity Profiles

Monash University Răzvan Gămănuţ

Life Sciences

Neural control of three-dimensional gaze shifts

York University

Books

The Joy of Science

University of Surrey

Elemental

View more insights in Books - Sciences - Earth Sciences - Natural Sciences

View more figures from Brown University

View the page of Stephen Porder

Read the Study

Next in Books

Queer Lasting: Ecologies of Care for a Dying World

Sarah Ensor | University of Wisconsin Madison

The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert

John W.I. Lee | University of California Santa Barbara

Elemental examines how hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus have changed Earth’s temperature, trajectory, past, present, and future. Stephen Porder analyzes these factors’ development.

Image courtesy of interviewee. February 21, 2024

Log-in or Sign-up to Faculti
Currently viewing this subject insight as a guest. You have insight(s) remaining for this month. Login to view 8000+ figures on the platform.

Generating Workspace...

Export as PDF

This video video outlines the motivations and key themes of a book that addresses the urgent need for a sustainable future in the face of pervasive environmental challenges. It emphasizes the lessons that can be learned from the geological past, specifically focusing on five essential elements: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These elements are crucial not only for life but also for regulating the planet's climate.

The author discusses the historical impact of organisms like cyanobacteria and land plants, which played significant roles in altering the Earth's atmosphere and enabling the proliferation of life through innovative methods of photosynthesis and nutrient acquisition. In contrast, humans are presented as the latest world-changing organisms, utilizing fossil fuels derived from ancient plant life to drive industry and agriculture, which in turn is altering the atmosphere rapidly.

This video video stresses that humanity must manage these elements wisely to mitigate the consequences of our actions, highlighting solutions for transitioning to sustainable practices, including renewable energy and agricultural innovations. The author acknowledges past successes and expresses cautious optimism about the future, noting that while challenges remain, pathways toward sustainability are becoming more apparent. Ultimately, it calls for collective action and a commitment to understanding and nurturing these fundamental elements for a sustainable future.

Language:

Export as PDF

Export as PDF
Here are some key quotes extracted from the video, which discusses the relationship between elements essential for life, their role in environmental change, and pathways towards sustainability:

1. **Existential Environmental Challenges**:
- "We live in a time of existential environmental worry and challenges that feel, uh, both unprecedented and unsolvable."

2. **Elements and Life**:
- "We are all built out of these five elements. They're the five most abundant elements in our bodies: hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus."

3. **The Importance of Elements**:
- "These five elements... also control the climate of the planet."

4. **Innovation and Evolution**:
- "If you evolve a way of doing that more efficiently... your numbers can wildly proliferate."

5. **Historical Impact of Cyanobacteria**:
- "Cyanobacteria... combined a novel way of doing photosynthesis that was very efficient... and changed the atmosphere in a way that plunged the planet into a deep freeze."

6. **Human Connection to Past Innovators**:
- "We’ve found the dead bodies of our world-changing plant ancestors dug them up and started to burn them for energy."

7. **Future Sustainability**:
- "If modern society is built on the use of these elements, we can actually understand how to use them more wisely to mitigate the consequences."

8. **Rate of Change**:
- "Humans are doing this same scale of thing in a hundred years, a million times faster."

9. **Importance of Transition**:
- "Transitioning from the state that we are in now... that's the part that's gonna be rife with untold suffering."

10. **Cautious Optimism**:
- "I'm cautiously optimistic... I can see solutions at every turn... and that is incredibly encouraging."

11. **Path to Sustainability**:
- "I can see 70% of the path to get there... I can see most of the path, then you can start and you can run and you can figure out the path as you go."

These quotes encapsulate the essence of the video, focusing on the importance of understanding elemental relationships, historical biological innovations, current environmental challenges, and hopeful pathways toward a more sustainable future.

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.125 --> 00:01.405
A couple things motivated the book.

00:01.625 --> 00:04.085
Uh, one is that we live in a time

00:04.105 --> 00:07.205
of existential environmental worry

00:07.545 --> 00:11.125
and challenges that feel,

00:11.125 --> 00:13.285
both unprecedented and unsolvable.

00:14.115 --> 00:18.415
And by looking back at the geologic past

00:18.835 --> 00:21.295
and the thread, the elemental thread

00:21.295 --> 00:24.455
that connects all world changing organisms across billions

00:24.455 --> 00:28.055
of years of earth history, we can learn something about how

00:28.055 --> 00:29.575
to build a more sustainable future.

00:29.995 --> 00:33.295
And so in the book, which centers around these five elements

00:33.295 --> 00:34.895
that are the building blocks of life,

00:34.955 --> 00:38.015
but are also the key to regulating the climate

00:38.115 --> 00:41.775
of the planet, the book focuses on those five elements

00:41.775 --> 00:43.135
as a way of connecting humans

00:43.235 --> 00:45.255
and what we're doing to organisms

00:45.255 --> 00:47.335
that have changed the world in the past,

00:47.795 --> 00:49.415
of which there are actually very few.

00:50.075 --> 00:53.495
Um, and then use that knowledge to move forward

00:53.595 --> 00:56.295
and think about how we can build a more sustainable future.

00:57.155 --> 00:59.175
We are all built out of these five elements.

00:59.175 --> 01:01.455
They're the five most abundant elements in our bodies.

01:01.895 --> 01:04.855
Hydrogen first, oxygen second, carbon, third, nitrogen,

01:04.855 --> 01:06.095
fourth, phosphorus, fifth.

01:06.965 --> 01:09.415
They're absolutely essential for our all life.

01:09.415 --> 01:11.775
There are other elements that are also essential for life.

01:11.955 --> 01:14.895
But the thing about these five elements, as I said,

01:14.895 --> 01:17.175
before, is that they also control the climate.

01:18.155 --> 01:22.575
And so, and in addition, they control

01:22.675 --> 01:24.815
how much life on earth there can be.

01:25.235 --> 01:27.895
So if you think about it, living organisms,

01:27.955 --> 01:29.495
all living organisms are all built

01:29.495 --> 01:31.695
to these five elements roughly in the same proportions.

01:32.315 --> 01:37.175
So one, one way of thinking about what life itself is, is

01:37.195 --> 01:40.415
to think about life as a constant struggle

01:40.515 --> 01:42.655
to gather these elements from the environment,

01:42.655 --> 01:44.775
from the water that you live in, from the land

01:44.775 --> 01:46.655
that you live on, from the air that you're in.

01:46.765 --> 01:47.775
Somehow you have

01:47.775 --> 01:50.135
to pull those elements in the right proportions

01:50.925 --> 01:53.135
from the environment to build your body

01:53.675 --> 01:54.775
or to build your cells.

01:56.755 --> 02:00.735
If you evolve a way of doing that more efficiently

02:01.195 --> 02:05.215
or better, the your, your numbers can wildly proliferate.

02:05.815 --> 02:08.315
But at the same time, if that happens,

02:08.855 --> 02:10.955
you can then change the chemistry of the,

02:11.335 --> 02:12.555
of the earth itself,

02:12.555 --> 02:15.155
because you're pulling these elements out of the water, out

02:15.155 --> 02:17.035
of the air, out of the rock,

02:17.415 --> 02:19.155
and changing the amount of life on earth

02:19.155 --> 02:20.755
and changing the amount that's left.

02:20.775 --> 02:22.995
And where that really plays out in the history

02:22.995 --> 02:25.875
of life on earth is in changes to the atmosphere.

02:26.255 --> 02:28.315
So when organisms figure out ways

02:28.335 --> 02:33.035
to use carbon in a different way and pull enough nitrogen

02:33.035 --> 02:35.515
and phosphorus from the environment to replicate

02:35.655 --> 02:36.755
and have enough food

02:36.815 --> 02:40.275
to build out their population enormously, you can then start

02:40.275 --> 02:41.275
to change the chemistry

02:41.275 --> 02:43.195
of the atmosphere in a way that changes climate.

02:43.895 --> 02:46.515
And so it's the interaction between living organisms

02:46.515 --> 02:50.875
and the unliving world that is the key, to understanding

02:50.895 --> 02:52.275
how these elements change the world.

02:52.895 --> 02:55.915
So I'll give an example from the very, very deep past.

02:56.655 --> 02:58.555
Uh, the first and biggest,

02:59.315 --> 03:00.885
Most, not biggest in size,

03:00.945 --> 03:03.045
but most important world changing organism

03:03.625 --> 03:04.965
are called cyanobacteria.

03:05.965 --> 03:09.765
Cyanobacteria are ocean dwelling, organisms

03:09.875 --> 03:11.205
that photosynthesize.

03:11.745 --> 03:16.445
Um, and they combined deep in evolutionary time,

03:16.765 --> 03:18.725
probably somewhere around 3 billion years ago.

03:18.995 --> 03:21.925
They combined a novel way of doing photosynthesis

03:22.115 --> 03:23.405
that was very efficient.

03:23.585 --> 03:26.525
So it allowed them to capture a lot of carbon dioxide

03:27.065 --> 03:29.645
for a given amount of sunlight relative to other methods

03:29.665 --> 03:31.045
of photosynthesis.

03:31.265 --> 03:35.605
And they evolved a way to pull nitrogen, which is a key,

03:35.655 --> 03:39.245
piece of the photosynthetic machinery from the atmosphere.

03:39.385 --> 03:41.365
Our atmosphere is 80% nitrogen,

03:42.025 --> 03:44.365
but it's in a form that we can't access

03:44.465 --> 03:47.725
and cyanobacteria, incorporated away into their cells

03:47.745 --> 03:50.285
to access that incredibly abundant pool of nitrogen.

03:50.625 --> 03:53.445
So now they have a very efficient way

03:53.445 --> 03:54.685
of doing photosynthesis.

03:55.315 --> 03:58.525
They have enough nitrogen to build a lot of machinery,

03:58.525 --> 03:59.845
to do more photosynthesis.

03:59.845 --> 04:02.445
So you can think of it as like they're the best electric

04:02.445 --> 04:04.085
cars, and they have the best battery factory

04:04.145 --> 04:05.725
to produce the most batteries, right?

04:06.805 --> 04:08.945
And so they wildly proliferate across the oceans,

04:10.025 --> 04:11.825
a byproduct of their chemistry,

04:12.645 --> 04:14.265
change the atmosphere in a way

04:14.265 --> 04:16.385
that plunged the planet into a deep freeze.

04:16.485 --> 04:17.625
It actually froze the earth.

04:17.685 --> 04:19.465
It broke down the global greenhouse,

04:20.725 --> 04:23.385
but that byproduct was oxygen.

04:23.445 --> 04:27.145
And it actually set the stage for all multicellular life

04:27.145 --> 04:29.545
that depends on oxygen in the atmosphere.

04:29.565 --> 04:31.025
So for 2 billion years,

04:31.685 --> 04:34.105
the earth had no free oxygen in the atmosphere.

04:34.125 --> 04:35.265
You and I would've suffocated

04:35.685 --> 04:38.865
and the cyanobacteria by innovating new ways

04:38.865 --> 04:41.665
of gathering carbon and new ways of getting nutrients

04:42.495 --> 04:44.465
changed the atmosphere so much that it,

04:44.465 --> 04:45.625
they oxygenated the planet.

04:45.625 --> 04:48.145
They were the first and biggest world changing organisms.

04:49.615 --> 04:54.545
That was about 2.2, 2.3 billion years ago.

04:54.695 --> 04:56.345
Halfway through earth history,

04:56.445 --> 04:59.105
it took another almost 2 billion years

04:59.645 --> 05:03.225
before the next big world changing organisms emerged

05:03.405 --> 05:04.505
and literally emerged.

05:04.605 --> 05:06.345
The land plants came out of the ocean.

05:06.735 --> 05:09.065
They brought the photosynthetic machinery of

05:09.585 --> 05:10.825
cyanobacteria with them.

05:11.375 --> 05:14.265
They solved the challenge of getting water on land.

05:14.575 --> 05:18.865
They, they began to mine the rocks, beneath their roots

05:19.085 --> 05:20.585
and pull phosphorus,

05:20.585 --> 05:23.385
which is a nutrient I haven't talked about yet from the,

05:23.495 --> 05:25.145
from the nascent soils.

05:25.485 --> 05:28.385
And they too changed the atmosphere so much

05:28.495 --> 05:30.465
that they precipitated a global ice age

05:30.465 --> 05:31.705
or a near global ice age.

05:32.445 --> 05:35.585
So again, we see this story of innovation,

05:35.725 --> 05:38.505
of gathering energy in a new way in the case

05:38.505 --> 05:41.265
of cyanobacteria or from a new place in the ca case

05:41.265 --> 05:43.425
of land plants who move into the sunlight on land

05:43.425 --> 05:46.265
that was previously being unused, A new way

05:46.385 --> 05:49.345
of gathering hydrogen and oxygen and phosphorus

05:49.345 --> 05:52.145
and nitrogen to support that photosynthesis.

05:52.845 --> 05:56.225
And then you're a wild proliferation that changes the world.

05:57.515 --> 06:00.055
So moving to the last world changer,

06:00.275 --> 06:02.015
or the, the most recent world changer,

06:02.015 --> 06:03.935
which is us, what have we done?

06:04.795 --> 06:06.505
We've found the dead bodies

06:06.645 --> 06:09.585
of our world changing plant ancestors dug them up

06:09.585 --> 06:10.865
and started to burn them for energy.

06:11.205 --> 06:14.185
That's coal. We use that energy

06:14.525 --> 06:18.065
to store water in reservoirs, to irrigate, to drill,

06:18.215 --> 06:19.865
into aquifers and pull water up.

06:20.045 --> 06:21.665
That's what plants did with their roots.

06:22.285 --> 06:24.745
We used that energy to pull nitrogen from the air

06:25.005 --> 06:26.665
to feed a growing population.

06:27.565 --> 06:29.625
We could only feed about half

06:29.625 --> 06:31.025
of the people on the planet without

06:31.075 --> 06:32.465
using nitrogen fertilizer.

06:32.765 --> 06:35.465
That's just what the cyanobacteria, they figured out a way

06:35.465 --> 06:36.585
to pull nitrogen outta the air.

06:36.925 --> 06:39.105
And we use our fossil energy to mine

06:39.125 --> 06:41.465
for phosphorus in the way that plant roots mine

06:41.465 --> 06:44.625
for phosphorus to also fertilize our farm fields.

06:45.125 --> 06:47.345
As a result, we're wildly proliferating,

06:47.685 --> 06:49.585
and as a result, we're changing the atmosphere.

06:50.045 --> 06:52.465
We are the, the, the true successors

06:52.925 --> 06:54.585
of those world changing organisms.

06:54.685 --> 06:57.825
How can we learn to, how can

06:57.825 --> 07:00.145
that information help us build a more sustainable future?

07:00.935 --> 07:03.865
Well, if modern society is built on the, on the use

07:03.865 --> 07:07.025
of these elements, we can actually understand how

07:07.025 --> 07:10.665
to use them more wise wisely to mitigate the consequences.

07:11.285 --> 07:12.985
So unlike cyanobacteria

07:13.045 --> 07:16.585
and unlike plants, we can actually sort of end run

07:16.645 --> 07:19.265
around some of these, problems

07:19.615 --> 07:22.905
because we can figure out other ways to get energy

07:22.965 --> 07:26.785
to run our society that don't perturb,

07:26.785 --> 07:28.185
the atmosphere in the same way.

07:28.965 --> 07:32.105
And so, pardon me, that's, I thought I had that silenced.

07:32.565 --> 07:35.585
Um, and so that's the key in my opinion,

07:36.065 --> 07:38.785
a sustainable future is built on the foundation

07:39.125 --> 07:41.425
of these five elements and their wise management.

07:41.765 --> 07:45.465
The first lesson is that you can't radically innovate

07:46.125 --> 07:49.535
in your use of these elements and not change the world.

07:50.075 --> 07:51.775
So it is completely expected

07:52.365 --> 07:55.895
that we would be running into this problem at the moment.

07:56.715 --> 07:58.455
But we have one key advantage,

07:58.635 --> 08:01.175
and that is that the vast majority of energy

08:01.175 --> 08:04.415
that we use is used to power our society, not our bodies.

08:05.115 --> 08:08.655
So we don't, we can't, for example, if you

08:08.655 --> 08:11.775
or I eat something, we break down the chemical bonds in

08:11.775 --> 08:15.135
that food and we breathe out CO2, that's inevitable.

08:15.315 --> 08:17.775
And if there are two of us that's twice as much CO2,

08:17.775 --> 08:20.405
we breathe out than if there's one of us that,

08:20.785 --> 08:22.005
so we're gonna have an imprint

08:22.005 --> 08:23.045
on the atmosphere because of that.

08:23.045 --> 08:25.405
But that's a teeny little imprint compared to

08:26.365 --> 08:28.725
powering our planes, running our factories,

08:28.725 --> 08:30.885
driving our cars, mining,

08:31.065 --> 08:33.365
and you know, all of the industrial activity that we do.

08:33.865 --> 08:37.685
And so if we can substitute a different energy source

08:37.745 --> 08:40.165
for all that stuff, our footprint on the atmosphere

08:40.165 --> 08:41.365
will actually be pretty small.

08:42.025 --> 08:46.405
And so we have a, a sort of a way out relative

08:46.405 --> 08:47.925
to our world changing predecessors.

08:47.985 --> 08:51.965
It just re re it just requires us understanding that

08:51.965 --> 08:56.125
what we want is energy, not CO2 emissions, right?

08:56.315 --> 09:00.505
What we want is warm houses be able to be able to move

09:00.505 --> 09:02.745
around to have food that we want, that we can eat.

09:02.765 --> 09:03.865
And there are solutions

09:03.865 --> 09:07.105
that have emerged over the past couple of decades, really,

09:07.805 --> 09:10.425
not only for the management of carbon, of course,

09:10.425 --> 09:12.625
everybody's heard of what wind power and solar power,

09:12.725 --> 09:15.265
and there are still challenges there, but those exist.

09:15.265 --> 09:17.185
But there are agricultural solutions as well

09:17.185 --> 09:20.225
that will allow us to keep nutrients like nitrogen

09:20.225 --> 09:22.625
and phosphorus in place on the farm field

09:22.625 --> 09:25.465
where we want them, as opposed to spilling into our rivers

09:25.465 --> 09:28.225
as opposed to spilling into our oceans where they have,

09:28.505 --> 09:30.385
negative consequences for, for us

09:30.485 --> 09:32.785
and for all the other organisms that depend on those,

09:33.005 --> 09:34.065
on those ecosystems.

09:34.325 --> 09:37.985
So we can use what we know,

09:38.485 --> 09:40.425
to manage these elements more wisely.

09:40.765 --> 09:42.145
And that's really our path forward.

09:42.205 --> 09:43.945
And I think the other thing that's really important

09:43.965 --> 09:46.945
to understand that's really concerning

09:47.565 --> 09:48.905
is the rate of change.

09:49.685 --> 09:53.425
So when I say cyanobacteria oxygenated the planet, they did

09:53.425 --> 09:55.705
that over the course of hundred

09:55.965 --> 09:58.865
or maybe hundreds of millions of years.

09:59.655 --> 10:02.585
When I say the land plants radically changed the atmosphere,

10:02.975 --> 10:04.905
they did it over about a hundred million years.

10:05.825 --> 10:09.365
Humans are doing this same scale of thing

10:10.185 --> 10:14.215
in a hundred years, a million times faster, right?

10:15.115 --> 10:18.935
And the problem with that is not so much the end state.

10:19.045 --> 10:21.175
Like if we were to warm the planet so much

10:21.175 --> 10:23.135
that it was tropical from pole to pole,

10:23.505 --> 10:26.455
human society could probably exist in that state.

10:27.475 --> 10:30.735
But transitioning from the state that we are in now

10:30.735 --> 10:33.895
with coastal cities and agriculture where it is,

10:34.195 --> 10:37.015
and you know, injustice

10:37.155 --> 10:39.295
and poverty spread around the world, right?

10:39.555 --> 10:42.935
And imagining the transition between the world as it is now

10:42.955 --> 10:45.375
and the world as it would be in that future state,

10:45.795 --> 10:48.975
that's the part that's gonna be, rife with,

10:49.315 --> 10:50.775
untold suffering.

10:50.775 --> 10:53.055
And so it's really incumbent upon us both to

10:53.655 --> 10:56.135
minimize the amount of the transition and try

10:56.135 --> 10:58.295
and slow that transition down as much as possible.

10:58.605 --> 10:59.815
Because,

11:00.075 --> 11:01.335
and I use this analogy often,

11:01.335 --> 11:03.495
if you're gonna drive your car into a tree, it's better

11:03.495 --> 11:05.295
to do it at one mile an hour than it is

11:05.295 --> 11:07.535
to do it at a hundred miles an hour, right?

11:07.715 --> 11:09.895
And right now we're doing it at a hundred miles an hour.

11:10.355 --> 11:13.255
Um, and so we really need to say, look, these are,

11:13.255 --> 11:15.255
these are giant changes to the earth system.

11:15.715 --> 11:16.935
We wanna minimize them

11:16.995 --> 11:19.055
and we wanna slow them down if they have to happen.

11:19.555 --> 11:21.255
Um, because we need time to adapt

11:21.255 --> 11:23.455
that everything else on the planet needs time to adapt.

11:24.115 --> 11:26.095
I'm much more optimistic than I was when I

11:26.095 --> 11:27.255
started studying this stuff.

11:27.475 --> 11:31.095
You know, my, I did my PhD between 2000 and 2005,

11:31.355 --> 11:34.175
and it really felt like there were just no answers,

11:34.565 --> 11:36.375
that were gonna be deployable at scale.

11:37.155 --> 11:39.895
And what I say now is that,

11:39.935 --> 11:42.335
I see several major successes along

11:42.335 --> 11:43.535
with a couple of challenges.

11:43.715 --> 11:47.335
So the first major success, if you had asked me in 2005,

11:47.995 --> 11:50.055
how much warmer do you think the planet will be by the end

11:50.055 --> 11:52.855
of the century, I would've said four to four

11:52.855 --> 11:54.135
And a half degrees Celsius,

11:54.545 --> 11:57.535
which is an unimaginably warmer world with a,

11:57.535 --> 11:58.535
with a pretty high chance

11:58.535 --> 11:59.855
that it was gonna be higher than that.

12:01.175 --> 12:04.195
If you ask me now, I would say the consensus is somewhere

12:04.195 --> 12:05.435
around three degrees Celsius

12:05.435 --> 12:06.915
warmer relative to pre-industrial.

12:07.545 --> 12:09.045
That's really dangerous

12:09.145 --> 12:11.645
and not going to be a pretty transition,

12:11.825 --> 12:13.725
but it's a lot better than four and a half.

12:14.225 --> 12:15.805
So we've made enormous progress.

12:16.305 --> 12:18.085
We haven't made as much progress as I'd like,

12:18.085 --> 12:19.405
but we've made enormous progress.

12:20.145 --> 12:22.565
The other thing that's really encouraging is that

12:23.105 --> 12:26.445
we now are most of the way there on figuring out how

12:26.445 --> 12:29.365
to run our energy system without fossil fuels.

12:29.385 --> 12:31.045
The transition will take a while.

12:31.585 --> 12:33.885
Uh, there are still gonna be power plants that get built.

12:33.885 --> 12:35.725
There are still gonna be power plants that take a while

12:35.725 --> 12:38.525
to shut down, but solar is now the cheapest source

12:38.525 --> 12:40.165
of energy in most electricity markets.

12:41.125 --> 12:43.405
Electric vehicles are beginning to dominate gas cars.

12:43.405 --> 12:44.965
They're just better. And they're, they're,

12:45.075 --> 12:47.445
they're like the cell phone of 2004.

12:47.995 --> 12:50.045
Like, it's better than a landline,

12:50.045 --> 12:51.845
but nowhere near as good as the iPhone,

12:51.865 --> 12:53.325
and not nearly as, nearly as good

12:53.325 --> 12:55.325
as the iPhone, whatever number we're up to.

12:55.825 --> 12:59.005
Um, right? So it's in the exponentially getting better

12:59.005 --> 13:01.245
phase, whereas internal combustion cars are just gonna

13:01.485 --> 13:03.005
continue to be the same thing they've been for decades.

13:03.625 --> 13:05.885
Um, so EVs are just better.

13:06.065 --> 13:07.605
So we have a good source of energy,

13:07.605 --> 13:09.445
we have a better source of transport.

13:09.585 --> 13:12.405
People are making radical innovations to agriculture

13:12.405 --> 13:13.445
that are really impressive.

13:13.625 --> 13:16.125
Not, not going back to,

13:16.125 --> 13:17.925
everybody digging up their own turnups,

13:18.025 --> 13:21.565
but, you know, modifications of large scale agriculture

13:21.565 --> 13:24.525
that really reduce the environmental impact that

13:24.545 --> 13:25.605
that's possible to do.

13:26.545 --> 13:30.485
So I can see, if I think about a, a,

13:30.645 --> 13:33.525
a sustainable world built on the sustainable management

13:33.525 --> 13:34.645
of these five elements,

13:36.565 --> 13:40.445
I can see 70% of the path to get there.

13:40.755 --> 13:43.085
Like, it's, it doesn't require a,

13:43.525 --> 13:45.285
a imagination or science fiction.

13:45.525 --> 13:46.565
I can't see the whole way.

13:47.025 --> 13:48.885
So there's a huge amount of work to be done.

13:48.885 --> 13:50.965
There's a, this is an all hands on deck.

13:51.505 --> 13:52.965
We all need to be working on this,

13:52.965 --> 13:55.685
and we all have something to contribute at every

13:55.785 --> 13:56.805
aspect of society.

13:57.305 --> 14:00.245
But I can see a path most of the path.

14:00.345 --> 14:03.205
And if you can see most of the path, then you can start

14:03.625 --> 14:06.645
and you can run and you can figure out the path

14:06.785 --> 14:08.325
as you go at the very end.

14:08.745 --> 14:12.685
But 15 years ago, I couldn't really even see the path.

14:13.105 --> 14:17.205
And so it's for that reason that I'm cautiously optimistic,

14:17.325 --> 14:19.605
I would not say I am Pollyanna about this.

14:19.685 --> 14:21.645
I don't think we're headed for an easy time,

14:22.305 --> 14:24.725
but I can see solutions at every turn.

14:25.225 --> 14:27.165
Uh, and that is incredibly encouraging

14:27.225 --> 14:31.325
and motivating to, work for those solutions.

14:32.195 --> 14:33.925
Some of them will work, some of them will not.

14:34.345 --> 14:36.125
But if we keep the principles in mind

14:36.125 --> 14:37.685
that we need these five elements

14:37.685 --> 14:39.245
and their wise management at the base

14:39.245 --> 14:42.805
of a sustainable society, that will be a guiding light to us

14:42.865 --> 14:44.805
as we figure out the details of the path.

Elements of Change: A Sustainable Future

00:00:00 - A couple things motivated the book. one is that we live in a time of existential environmental worry and challenges that feel, both unprecedented and unsolvable. And by looking back at the geologic past and the thread, the elemental thread that connects all world changing organisms across billions of years of earth history, we can learn something about how to build a more sustainable future. And so in the book, which centers around these five elements
00:00:34 - but are also the key to regulating the climate of the planet, the book focuses on those five elements as a way of connecting humans and what we're doing to organisms that have changed the world in the past, of which there are actually very few. and then use that knowledge to move forward and think about how we can build a more sustainable future. We are all built out of these five elements. They're the five most abundant elements in our bodies. Hydrogen first, oxygen second, carbon, third, nitrogen,
00:01:06 - They're absolutely essential for our all life. There are other elements that are also essential for life. But the thing about these five elements, as I said, before, is that they also control the climate. And so, and in addition, they control how much life on earth there can be. So if you think about it, living organisms, all living organisms are all built to these five elements roughly in the same proportions. So one, one way of thinking about what life itself is, is
00:01:40 - to gather these elements from the environment, from the water that you live in, from the land that you live on, from the air that you're in. Somehow you have to pull those elements in the right proportions from the environment to build your body or to build your cells. If you evolve a way of doing that more efficiently or better, the your, your numbers can wildly proliferate. But at the same time, if that happens,
00:02:11 - of the earth itself, because you're pulling these elements out of the water, out of the air, out of the rock, and changing the amount of life on earth and changing the amount that's left. And where that really plays out in the history of life on earth is in changes to the atmosphere. So when organisms figure out ways to use carbon in a different way and pull enough nitrogen and phosphorus from the environment to replicate and have enough food to build out their population enormously, you can then start
00:02:41 - of the atmosphere in a way that changes climate. And so it's the interaction between living organisms and the unliving world that is the key, to understanding how these elements change the world. So I'll give an example from the very, very deep past. the first and biggest, Most, not biggest in size, but most important world changing organism are called cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria are ocean dwelling, organisms that photosynthesize.

Cyanobacteria: Earth's First Atmosphere Innovators

00:03:16 - probably somewhere around 3 billion years ago. They combined a novel way of doing photosynthesis that was very efficient. So it allowed them to capture a lot of carbon dioxide for a given amount of sunlight relative to other methods of photosynthesis. And they evolved a way to pull nitrogen, which is a key, piece of the photosynthetic machinery from the atmosphere. Our atmosphere is 80% nitrogen,
00:03:44 - and cyanobacteria, incorporated away into their cells to access that incredibly abundant pool of nitrogen. So now they have a very efficient way of doing photosynthesis. They have enough nitrogen to build a lot of machinery, to do more photosynthesis. So you can think of it as like they're the best electric cars, and they have the best battery factory to produce the most batteries, right? And so they wildly proliferate across the oceans, a byproduct of their chemistry,
00:04:14 - that plunged the planet into a deep freeze. It actually froze the earth. It broke down the global greenhouse, but that byproduct was oxygen. And it actually set the stage for all multicellular life that depends on oxygen in the atmosphere. So for 2 billion years, the earth had no free oxygen in the atmosphere. You and I would've suffocated and the cyanobacteria by innovating new ways of gathering carbon and new ways of getting nutrients changed the atmosphere so much that it,
00:04:45 - They were the first and biggest world changing organisms. That was about 2.2, 2.3 billion years ago. Halfway through earth history, it took another almost 2 billion years before the next big world changing organisms emerged and literally emerged. The land plants came out of the ocean. They brought the photosynthetic machinery of cyanobacteria with them. They solved the challenge of getting water on land.
00:05:19 - and pull phosphorus, which is a nutrient I haven't talked about yet from the, from the nascent soils. And they too changed the atmosphere so much that they precipitated a global ice age or a near global ice age. So again, we see this story of innovation, of gathering energy in a new way in the case of cyanobacteria or from a new place in the ca case of land plants who move into the sunlight on land that was previously being unused, A new way
00:05:49 - and nitrogen to support that photosynthesis. And then you're a wild proliferation that changes the world. So moving to the last world changer, or the, the most recent world changer, which is us, what have we done? We've found the dead bodies of our world changing plant ancestors dug them up and started to burn them for energy. That's coal. We use that energy to store water in reservoirs, to irrigate, to drill,

Elemental Solutions for a Sustainable Future

00:06:20 - That's what plants did with their roots. We used that energy to pull nitrogen from the air to feed a growing population. We could only feed about half of the people on the planet without using nitrogen fertilizer. That's just what the cyanobacteria, they figured out a way to pull nitrogen outta the air. And we use our fossil energy to mine for phosphorus in the way that plant roots mine for phosphorus to also fertilize our farm fields. As a result, we're wildly proliferating, and as a result, we're changing the atmosphere.
00:06:52 - of those world changing organisms. How can we learn to, how can that information help us build a more sustainable future? Well, if modern society is built on the, on the use of these elements, we can actually understand how to use them more wise wisely to mitigate the consequences. So unlike cyanobacteria and unlike plants, we can actually sort of end run around some of these, problems because we can figure out other ways to get energy
00:07:26 - the atmosphere in the same way. And so, pardon me, that's, I thought I had that silenced. and so that's the key in my opinion, a sustainable future is built on the foundation of these five elements and their wise management. The first lesson is that you can't radically innovate in your use of these elements and not change the world. So it is completely expected that we would be running into this problem at the moment.
00:07:58 - and that is that the vast majority of energy that we use is used to power our society, not our bodies. So we don't, we can't, for example, if you or I eat something, we break down the chemical bonds in that food and we breathe out CO2, that's inevitable. And if there are two of us that's twice as much CO2, we breathe out than if there's one of us that, so we're gonna have an imprint on the atmosphere because of that. But that's a teeny little imprint compared to powering our planes, running our factories,
00:08:31 - and you know, all of the industrial activity that we do. And so if we can substitute a different energy source for all that stuff, our footprint on the atmosphere will actually be pretty small. And so we have a, a sort of a way out relative to our world changing predecessors. It just re re it just requires us understanding that what we want is energy, not CO2 emissions, right? What we want is warm houses be able to be able to move
00:09:02 - And there are solutions that have emerged over the past couple of decades, really, not only for the management of carbon, of course, everybody's heard of what wind power and solar power, and there are still challenges there, but those exist. But there are agricultural solutions as well that will allow us to keep nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus in place on the farm field where we want them, as opposed to spilling into our rivers as opposed to spilling into our oceans where they have, negative consequences for, for us and for all the other organisms that depend on those,

Managing Change for a Sustainable Future

00:09:34 - So we can use what we know, to manage these elements more wisely. And that's really our path forward. And I think the other thing that's really important to understand that's really concerning is the rate of change. So when I say cyanobacteria oxygenated the planet, they did that over the course of hundred or maybe hundreds of millions of years. When I say the land plants radically changed the atmosphere, they did it over about a hundred million years.
00:10:10 - in a hundred years, a million times faster, right? And the problem with that is not so much the end state. Like if we were to warm the planet so much that it was tropical from pole to pole, human society could probably exist in that state. But transitioning from the state that we are in now with coastal cities and agriculture where it is, and you know, injustice
00:10:39 - And imagining the transition between the world as it is now and the world as it would be in that future state, that's the part that's gonna be, rife with, untold suffering. And so it's really incumbent upon us both to minimize the amount of the transition and try and slow that transition down as much as possible. Because, and I use this analogy often, if you're gonna drive your car into a tree, it's better to do it at one mile an hour than it is to do it at a hundred miles an hour, right?
00:11:10 - and so we really need to say, look, these are, these are giant changes to the earth system. We wanna minimize them and we wanna slow them down if they have to happen. because we need time to adapt that everything else on the planet needs time to adapt. I'm much more optimistic than I was when I started studying this stuff. You know, my, I did my PhD between 2000 and 2005, and it really felt like there were just no answers, that were gonna be deployable at scale. And what I say now is that,
00:11:42 - with a couple of challenges. So the first major success, if you had asked me in 2005, how much warmer do you think the planet will be by the end of the century, I would've said four to four And a half degrees Celsius, which is an unimaginably warmer world with a, with a pretty high chance that it was gonna be higher than that. If you ask me now, I would say the consensus is somewhere around three degrees Celsius warmer relative to pre-industrial. That's really dangerous and not going to be a pretty transition,
00:12:14 - So we've made enormous progress. We haven't made as much progress as I'd like, but we've made enormous progress. The other thing that's really encouraging is that we now are most of the way there on figuring out how to run our energy system without fossil fuels. The transition will take a while. there are still gonna be power plants that get built. There are still gonna be power plants that take a while to shut down, but solar is now the cheapest source of energy in most electricity markets. Electric vehicles are beginning to dominate gas cars.

Path to a Sustainable Future

00:12:45 - they're like the cell phone of 2004. Like, it's better than a landline, but nowhere near as good as the iPhone, and not nearly as, nearly as good as the iPhone, whatever number we're up to. right? So it's in the exponentially getting better phase, whereas internal combustion cars are just gonna continue to be the same thing they've been for decades. so EVs are just better. So we have a good source of energy, we have a better source of transport. People are making radical innovations to agriculture that are really impressive.
00:13:16 - everybody digging up their own turnups, but, you know, modifications of large scale agriculture that really reduce the environmental impact that that's possible to do. So I can see, if I think about a, a, a sustainable world built on the sustainable management of these five elements, I can see 70% of the path to get there. Like, it's, it doesn't require a, a imagination or science fiction.
00:13:47 - So there's a huge amount of work to be done. There's a, this is an all hands on deck. We all need to be working on this, and we all have something to contribute at every aspect of society. But I can see a path most of the path. And if you can see most of the path, then you can start and you can run and you can figure out the path as you go at the very end. But 15 years ago, I couldn't really even see the path. And so it's for that reason that I'm cautiously optimistic,
00:14:42 - I don't think we're headed for an easy time, but I can see solutions at every turn. and that is incredibly encouraging and motivating to, work for those solutions. Some of them will work, some of them will not. But if we keep the principles in mind that we need these five elements and their wise management at the base of a sustainable society, that will be a guiding light to us as we figure out the details of the path.

Faculti AI can make mistakes

Faculti

Popular in Natural Sciences

Plasticity and microevolution of diatoms

Statistical Mechanics for Chemistry and Materials Science

Polyfluorene-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes Decorated with Photocleavable Side-Chains

Analysis of rare coding variants reveals novel genetic risk factors for type 2 diabetes

The Mouse Cortical Connectome Maintains Specificity by Distinct Connectivity Profiles

Neural control of three-dimensional gaze shifts

The Joy of Science

Elemental

Next in Books

Guide

Platform and Category Pages

Contact Us

FAQs

What is Faculti?

How do you select interviews?

Interview Process

Page Structure

Popular in Natural Sciences

Guide

Platform and Category Pages

Contact Us

FAQs

What is Faculti?

How do you select interviews?

Interview Process

Accessibility Options

Contrast Adjustment

Text Size Adjustment

Text Spacing Adjustment

Line Height Adjustment

Cursor Size Adjustment

Page Structure Options

Page Structure