Tweet us, twitter. Com booktv. Or post a comment on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Good evening, im chief of Community Programs here at the museum, and its my pleasure to welcome you to an evening with david grinspoon. We help promote understanding of the Natural World and our place in it, and we aim to inspire dialogue around the important scientific issues of our time. Tonights program is one of our after hours offerings. These include film screenings, lectures, conversations like tonight and game nights. In our evening lift series, it features leading researchers and thinkers in conversation with the museums director and paleontologist kirk johnson. Many of you have already joined us for these engaging conversation between kirk and speakers or guests like evolutionary biologist e. O. Wilson, journalist ed young, Science Exchange director ann merchant, philanthropist dade rubenstein David Rubenstein and president of the university of marylandbaltimore college. Our final Evening Program of this season will take place later this spring and will feature Florence Williams as she explores the science of awe and the Important Role that nature plays in our everyday or lives. At this point, id like to thank David Rubenstein not only for participating in the series, but for making this series possible. Thanks to his generous gift, were able to host tonights conversation and continue our Public Engagement programming. Before we get started, id like to take a moment to encourage you to complete and turn in your surveys. We learn a lot from your input, and we use the information to develop our programming. So thank you in advance. Also, please, remember to turn off cell phones. And now id like to introduce our featured gift, dr. David grinspoon. Davids an honesttogoodness astrobiologist, an awardwinning science communicator and a prizewinning author. His latest book, earth this human hands, explores the transformative role humans have played in this period and provides solutions for better due wardship of the earth. Stewardship of the earth. David will start off with a short talk, after which hell be joined on stage by kirk johnson for a short conversation, and then well open the floor to questions from you, the audience. And then well conclude with an opportunity to purchase davids book and have him sign it in the gallery outside the auditorium. So i think youre in for a treat. And now id like to welcome david the stage. Please join me. [applause] thank you so much. Thanks a lot for coming out tonight. Its a thrill to be here at the magnificent smithsonian, and im looking forward to talking with kirk johnson, someone ive known for a couple of decades and whose work ive long admired. So what i want to do now for the next half hour is tell you a little bit about whats in my new book, earth in human hands, why i wrote it, lead you through some of the ideas and then ill stop and well talk and then well hopefully hear what you guys have to say. So why would an astrobiologist write a book about humans on earth . After all, were the people that study the possibility of life elsewhere. Well, i do feel that this perspective, my day job as a planetary scientist, someone who models the evolution of other planets in comparison to earth and thinks about habitability of other environments and how planets gain and lose habitable conditions, i do feel that that gives me a slightly different perspective on earth and even on the human presence on earth that i decided was worth trying to put down in some pages. I want to read you a little bit from the very beginning of the book where i try to address this question of why astrobiology is relevant. First, is this working . Yeah, i want to also tart off with this quotation start off with this quotation from dr. Martin luther king that i just love where dr. King says if we are to have peace on earth which i also take to mean if were to build a sustainable civilization our loyalties must become, hues transcend our must transcend our differences and we must develop a world perspective. I teal that one of the i feel that one of the messages i try to get as cross in this book is that if we really look at ourselves honestly through the lens that science can give us and see where and who and what we are on this planet with the multigenerational and global perspective that Planetary Science naturally leads us to, then that knowledge does lead us towards developing a world perspective. So that is one of the things which if you do read the book, i hope youll take away. Now, why would an astrobiologist write about humans on earth . Going to read you just a little bit from the very intro of earth in human hands. Gazing over the countless fluctuations and transformations in earths multibillion year history, i am struck by the unique strangeness of the present moment. We suddenly find ourselves sort of running a planet, a role we never anticipated or sought. Without knowing how it should be done. Were at the controls, but were not this control. This book is how my view of how we got into this situation and where that leaves us now. We are witnessing and manifesting something unprecedented and completely unpredictable, the advent of selfaware geological change. As an astrobiologist, i study the possible evolutionary relationships between life and the planets that hay host it. I see that may host it. I see the anthropocene as a tricky new step between the earth and the biosphere that has been going on for tour billion years. There are those who object to this name as being too selfaggrandizing and serving a destructive, humancentered viewpoint. But this epoch is well named because it represents a recognizable turn oring point in geological history brought about by one species, an throe. And our growing acknowledgment of this inflexion can be a turning point in our ability to respond to the changes weve set this motion. I believe that more than the extreme and undeniable physical changes to the planet being caused by human influence, it is this daunting selfrecognition that is really fundamentally different and, ultimately, promising about the anthropocene. Many species have changed the planet to the debt criminate or been fit detriment or benefit of others, but there has never been a geological force aware of its own influence. And i have another little snippet here about the planetary perspective. The planet tear perspective allows us to step away from the noise of the immediate present, to see ourselves from a distance in time lapse. When we do, what we see is not just a problem facing our civilization, but an entirely new evolutionary be stage in the development of life. In seeing ourselves as a geological process, we also see the planet entering a phase where cog thinktive processes cognitive processes are becoming a major agent of global change. Earths biosphere gave birth to these thought processes which are now in turn feeding back and reshaping its changing planetary cycles. A planet with brains . Fancy that. Not only brains, but lens with which to manipulate and build tools. We are just beginning to come to grips with this strange new development. Like an infant staring at its hands, we are becoming aware of our powers but have not yet gaped control over them. Gained control over them. The planetary perspective provides us with a kind of outofbody experience, hovering this orbit and watching ourselves sleepwalk through a slow disaster of our own making. Now, can this experience help us to shake ourselves awake . For virtually all of its history, earth has evolved without us, and we have always seen ourselves as autonomous actors on a path of planetary backdrop. But now we are beginning to see that our futures those of humanity and of planet earth are tightly con joined. If human civilization is to persist and thrive, we will need a completely new and different view of our planet and of ourselves in which we acknowledge both our deep dependence and our increasing influence. We need visions of a future in which we have a broader infinite creativity to the task of living on a finite be world where we have embraced our role, become comfortable and proficient as planet shapers and learn to use our technological skills to enhance the survival prospects not just of humanity, but of all life on earth. My name for this vision is terrasapiens or wise earth. A recent scientific breakthrough enriches this story, the excoplanet rev exoplanet revolution. This universe is full of planets orbiting nearly every star. It is close to inconceivable that we could be the only life and only technological intelligence in the universe. An interplanetary perspective on earths current dilemmas incites us to wonder whether parallel dramas may have unfolded on distant worlds. Do other planets also grow invent i brains that end up causing themselves problems . Do other species develop technology and build civilizations that create dangerous instabilities on their planets . How do they cope . Do planetary biospheres become selfaware . The anthropocene leads us to look at another version of intelligence, how we fit into our planet and what kind of future we dare imagine. 100 million years from now what will our time have been . A brief climate spasm that earth shrugged off and largely forgot be, leaving a thin layer infused with bizarre plastic objects . [laughter] or the beginning of a lasting new phase when the biosphere finally woke up and adjusted its grip on the planet. So thats all from the intro. Excuse me, it helps, hopefully, give you the perspective that im advancing, attempting to advance. And then the first part of the book is called listening to the planets. And i trace the, some of the history of this relatively recent ability that earth has to send little bits of itself back out into the universe from whence it all once came and explore. After four and a half billion years of earth evolution, one species evolved this strange ability to start launching little bits of earth stuff circling the planet, observing ourselves canalso visiting the neighbors and also visiting the neighbors and sending signals back. And what have we learned from all that . A lot that can fill books. But what i focus on here is what weve learned about earth from our explorations elsewhere that may be useful in our task to manage ourselves and our relationship with the planet. There are many insights that weve gained into earth, profound, fundamental insights about how our planet works that have only come from leaving and examining other planets, getting other examples, getting some perspective on whats going on here. Its like t. S. Eliot said in that famous poem that i will now slightly mangle about at the end of all our exploring, we return to the place we started and see it as if for the first time. I think t. S. Said it slightly better than that, but you get the idea. [laughter] hey, im an as to biologist, not a poet. [laughter] but there are many, many of these insights. And i have a section in the book where i detail this, but they involve ideas about earths geology and the way the surface relates to the currents moving in the interior and how all that is bound up with climate evolution through these great cycles of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen that unite the atmosphere, the surface and the interior of the planet and the role of the other planets and the rest of the solar system in affecting earths evolution both by impacts the tact that the earth has been hit repeatedly like the famous asteroid that did in the dine stauers 65 million years ago, but many other events as well. And the way in which our climate has been affected by the gravitational twerking from other planets. So many of these connections came out of this, in large view, from interplanetary exploration. But one of the most profound insights has to do with the role of life on earth. By comparing earth to our, apparently, lifeless neighbors venus and mars weve gained an appreciation of the deep and profound extent to which earth has been transformed by life. Early on in its history each of these three planets went through a kind of catastrophe, a catastrophic change. Venus became an oven, mars became a freezer, and earth came to life. And it was completely transformed. Not in obvious ways, the composition of the atmosphere is strange to other planets because of the influence of life, all the oxygen and methane and other things. But the surface of the planet, the composition of the oceans and even the interior of earth we now believe over the long run is affected and maybe even controlled by life. So in a really deep way, its hard to separate the living and nonliving parts of earth. Andearth is, in a sense, a living world. Earth went down a path, a junction that the other neighboring planets didnt take. Were still trying to figure out why completely, although we have some ideas. But earth went through a branching point early on in its history x. Theres a planet theres a chapter in the book where i discuss this, its called can a planet be alive about the profound role of life in determining the nature of our planet. And in a way thats a bit of a setup for the next part of the book where i talk about human influence. Because i contend that we are, in a sense, at another branching point in planetary history, we could be, that may be as equally profound as the origin of life was in transforming our planet. The origin of to cog thinktive life or cognitive life or life that is influencing the planet through cog thinktive systems cog thinktive systems. So the next part of the book is where i sort of summarize human influence from the earths point of view, if you will are. And this sections called monkey with the world. And i want to read you a little bit from the very beginning. Of this section, monkey with the world. Its called something new. It starts off, of course, with a grateful dead quote. [laughter] who can stop what must arrive are now . Something new is waiting to be born. Have you noticed that something strange is happening to earth . Take a good, long look at this world. A dazzling blue orb festooned with spiraling clouds, spinning through starflecked darkness. Dayside glinting in slowly brightening sun. Winter white pulsing between north is north and south as earth ambles through its orbit. Now imagine you are a very patient alien regarding earth over the eons. If youve been watching carefully for, say, the last several billion years you seen a lot happen. The brown continents drifting around the oceanic globe, coalescing and breaking apart, animated pieces in a mayoring spherical morphing spherical puzzle. The polar caps advancing and retreating as climate rocks between ice age and hothouse. Throughout all these changes, the night side remains a nearly unbroken black, and the day side continents are the stark, dull gray of bare rock. After four billion lonely years, a green fringe first edges over the land, and the night starts to sparkle with occasional forest fires. Still, for the longest time the unlit hemisphere remains as black as the starry space surrounding it. The dark interrupted only by these fleeting fires and by occasional flash of lightning or splash of aurora. Until, very recently, in the last few hundred years just a twitch in the life of the planet, whoa. What is this . Something new. Suddenly, the planet lights up in a peculiar spiederring pattern that spiderring pattern that seems to reflect an organic process but Something Else as well, manager cognitive. Starting in a few isolated River Valleys and coastal areas, glowing points appear abruptly dotting the night, then stitching together and spreading along bright beening and widening webs. Hugging the shores and eventually growing in loose pat perps across the interiors of the lands. On the day side, a mesh of dark lines becomes visible, winding between these night lights, each swiftly surrounded by a grid of novel, angular geometry. Soon, regular movements of small wavegenerating objects start crossing the oceans and bright linear clouds start streaking the skies. At the same time, a host of other accelerating changes are observable in the atmosphere, the land, the oceans and the ice. Finally, just 60 years ago a blink and you missed it interval in this fast forward view. A curious antiaccretion with small bits of earth stuff jumping back into space. Little insectlike constructions of refined metal bristling with sensors, thrusters and radio antennae be started leaping back off the planet, first to the nearest worlds and then to those farther afield, sending pictures and other information home to their inquisitive builders. Signaling the arrival on earth of curiosity and gravitydeifying technology. Yes, after gravitydefying technology [laughter] yes, after billions of years of geology as usual, something new and strange is definitely happening here. What is the meaning of these new changes . And then i tell you. [laughter] i make an attempt to characterize whats happening on earth now from a planet point of view. And one thing we learn when we do that if you study the long history of the earth is that earth has been through a lot of catastrophic changes. This is not the first catastrophe to befall earth, whats happening now, and its even true that we are not the first life form, the first species to radically transform the planet. For instance, these little guys about two and a half billion years ago completely transformed the planet, and, you know, they may not look like planet wreckers, but they are. They, these guys discovered a new Energy Source. And in exploiting that Energy Source widely, they polluted the entire atmosphere with a dangerous gas, and they destroyed the climate, led to mass extinction. They look innocent enough, dont they . But what they discovered was solar energy. They perfected photosynthesis and learned how to use solar energy to break apart Carbon Dioxide in water, spit out the oxygen, make organic stuff, and in the process they polluted the planet with this dangerous stuff, o2. Now, of course, we love oxygen. I know i do. [laughter] good stuff, good stuff. [laughter] but thats because weve evolved to power ourselves with these intensely powerful exo thermic energyreleasing reactions that happen when organic molecules meet oxygen. When oxygen first appeared, organic life was defenseless against those reactions until we involved respiration. Youve got a power plant in every cellular body that uses those reactions. Thats how we live. But when it first appeared, not only was it poisonous, but it crashed the climate probably. We think there was a methane greenhouse keeping the planet warm, and the oxygen destroyed that and led to probably the greatest global glacier its the planet has ever known where the planet became completely frozen over. So these guys did a lot of damage. But when we hear this story, of course, we dont say, oh, those irresponsible bacteria. How could they . What were they thinking . Because bacteria dont thi