Anthropocene (2018) - full transcript
Subtitles by explosiveskull
The Earth
is 4.5 billion years old,
and its history
is recorded in the rocks.
Since 2009,
a group of scientists
has been investigating whether
our 12,000-year-old
geological epoch,
the Holocene, has ended.
After nine years of research,
the evidence shows that
we have left the Holocene
and entered
the Anthropocene epoch,
because humans now change
the Earth and its systems
more than all natural
processes combined.
Six, seven,
eight... nine.
Ten.
I can confirm that this
ivory here is exactly 105 tons.
Ten thousand or so elephants...
Four, five.
I have seen estimates
of 150 million dollars...
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
The street value.
But can you imagine
10,000 elephants.
Two, three, four...
five.
Seven, eight.
We did the inventory:
three months,
to look at every piece
of ivory,
measure the weight,
try and pair them.
Every day the smell of death.
On one of the tusks was written
"Amboseli Elephant".
I've had the privilege of working in
Amboseli National Park for a long time.
And I thought this tusk
represents an elephant
I probably knew.
This tusk will never
hit the market.
It will never make a trinket,
it will never become
a mantlepiece.
I was not able to stop
this elephant from dying,
but I'm certainly able to stop
it from being desecrated further.
Norilsk is 320km
north of the Arctic Circle,
and home to the largest
coloured metal mine
and heavy metals smelting
complex in the world.
It is the most polluted city
in Russia.
Every year,
humans extract between
60 and 100 billion tons of
material from the Earth,
and move more sediment than all
the rivers of the world combined.
We are here
in the middle
of Salar de Atacama,
right in the heart of the
driest desert of the world.
We are producing here, lithium,
and we have a lot of lithium
under our feet.
Lithium has been used for many years
in pharmaceuticals, and aluminum,
glass, and many other
appliances,
but the recent increase
on lithium demands
comes from electric vehicle
batteries.
As you see we have sun everyday
and so we have a really good
evaporation rate here.
And that's what makes
most of the work.
The energy comes from the sun.
And we are proud of how we
contribute to the world,
in the technology industry
with batteries for
electric cars,
for cellphones, for all the
appliances that we use nowadays.
Last Thursday, I think there was
the last house here.
Since Hambach
coal mine opened in 1978,
four towns have been destroyed
to make way for its expansion,
and two more are facing
relocation.
It is the largest open-pit
mine in Germany.
Terraforming is the act of altering
the Earth's surface for human needs.
Humans now dominate over
75 percent of ice-free land
because of mining,
agriculture,
industrialization,
and urban growth.
The Earth's forests
are home to 80 percent
of terrestrial
biodiversity,
and annually absorb 30 percent of
anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Less than 10 percent of old growth
forest remains on Vancouver Island,
and raw log exports have increased
exponentially since 2014.
85 percent of the Earth's
forests have been cleared
fragmented or degraded
for human use.
This business,
it starts from the bush,
from the forest.
We sponsor some people
in the forest,
to cut the wood for us,
the logs.
From Bayelsa State, Rivers,
Edo, Delta, Ondo, Ogun.
The population of
Lagos has grown from 200,000
to 20 million in only
two generations.
The world's population could
reach 10 billion by 2050,
with most people migrating to,
and living in,
large urban centers.
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ When I spend half,
When I spend half ♪
♪ When I spend half ♪
♪ I was born in Pumwani
I grew up in Dandora City ♪
♪ Ah, nobody by my side ♪
♪ Life is to hustle ♪
♪ Education is the key
To success ♪
♪ When I make my future
So bright ♪
♪ I get a B+ in form 4
I dunno what I do ♪
♪ Opportunity first ♪
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ When I spend half ♪
♪ When I spend half
When I spend half ♪
Peace all the time when
you know. I and I Shakur!
Dandora dump, east side.
This is the biggest
dumpsite in Nairobi.
Even in Kenya, it's the
biggest. Even in East Africa.
And I'm proud to be in it.
Some people collect bottles,
and they weigh them in kilos.
They buy for us
one shilling per kilo.
When the bottles have no market,
we just collect plastics.
A quarter
of a million people
live in or around
Dandora Landfill Site,
and 6,000 people mine and work
its grounds every day.
Technofossils are
human-created objects,
such as plastic, concrete
and aluminium,
that persist in the biosphere
and eventually end up
in the rock layers
of the Earth.
The technosphere,
which is the entire aggregate
of human created
or altered material,
is estimated at
30 trillion tons.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we will soon be entering
the Gotthard Base Tunnel.
With a length of 57 kilometers,
this is the longest railway
tunnel in the world.
The journey through the tunnel
is approximately
20 minutes long.
Humans have created
thousands of kilometers
of underground tunnels
for everything from railways,
roads, and subways
to mines, sewers,
parking lots, and reservoirs.
We need to create
new lands,
and we need to establish these
new lands wherever they may be.
Small plots, smallholdings.
And intensifying yields
by doing it
in an environment
that we control.
We're a constant 14 degrees
all year round down here.
We don't use pesticides
or herbicides.
Our water system -
we use 70 percent less
than traditional
open-field farming.
When it comes to other inputs,
they are pretty much
traditional nutrients,
used more effectively.
The only element of technology
is the light spectrum
within the LEDs.
We can give the plants the exact
environment that they require
24/7, 365 days a year.
What we have done is taken an old
World War II air raid shelter,
that was used to protect Londoners
during the Second World War.
We've got these beds
to grow fresh produce,
where there used to be
bunk beds
for people to sleep on
down here.
Agriculture
and animal husbandry
have transformed one third
of the Earth's
ice-free land surface.
Humans have pushed
or surpassed
correlatable boundaries
for nitrogen,
phosphate and potash
because of their use
in fertilizer.
Nitrogen and phosphorus
levels in soil
have doubled
in the last century,
representing the largest impact
on the nitrogen cycle
in 2.5 billion years.
Camera, rec sound?
- Sound?
- Yeah.
- Rec?
- Yeah.
Carbon dioxide levels
in the atmosphere are higher
than at any other time
in the past 66 million years.
This has put our climate
system into a state
that has no analog
for future projections.
Climate change results in
unstable global temperatures,
extreme weather events,
sea level rise
and ocean acidification.
Coral reefs are home to more
than 25 percent of all marine life,
and are considered one of the
planet's most complex ecosystems.
Coral has existed
for 450 million years,
but ocean warming
and acidification
has caused widespread
bleaching,
and could eliminate all coral
from the oceans
before the end
of the 21st century.
Now if you're
standing a little bit further down
towards the other end of
the paddock, we do all sorts
of different, what we call
enrichments for our tigers.
Now that is just a term that
covers everything we can do
for any of our animals here to
encourage their natural behavior
and to keep them happy
and stimulated here at the zoo.
Now they do still tend to spend
lots of time sticking close to mum,
watching her, learning from her
and also learning from play.
So if Melati had had these two
out in the wild, out in Sumatra,
she would have been through a very
difficult few months just now,
because, of course, as well as having to
hunt enough food to feed herself with,
she would also have to cater for
the rapidly growing appetites
of these two youngsters,
Karis and Achilles, as well.
Now this is no mean feat, because out in
the wild they are critically endangered.
However, just by coming along to
the zoo today, you may not realize,
but you are supporting ZSL.
We are a conservation charity
working in over
50 countries worldwide
to protect lots of
animals and their habitats,
and this includes a lot
of work that goes on
out in Sumatra
with wild tigers.
So we are doing things like
working very closely
with the Indonesian government,
to protect the remaining
tiger population out there.
So thank you to each and every
one of you for coming along today
and helping us out with that
just by having a look
at Jae Jae, Melati, and our two
cubs, Karis and Achilles.
We are part of the Kenyan
National Police.
Most of the time we are
deployed during the night
just to make sure that we deter
any poaching activity.
My name is Paul Tereson.
My name is Paul Nderity.
We are allowed by the law
to apprehend anyone
who enters or intrudes
into our protected area.
But in case they pose a danger
to our own lives,
that is the only time we can
at least try to use firearms,
but not to kill,
but to try and effect the arrest.
We are protecting wildlife, and at the
same time we feel like we are the enemies.
Because we are humans and
humans are the poachers.
The Earth has had
five major extinctions.
We are now in the middle of
the sixth great extinction,
this time because of
human impact.
Extinction rates are up to 10,000
times higher than natural rates
from habitat loss,
poaching, pollution,
climate change,
and over-hunting.
One, two, go...
Happy, healthy living.
It is now my humble duty and
pleasure, ladies and gentlemen,
to ask the President of the Republic
of Kenya, Honourable Uhuru Kenyatta,
to make his remarks,
and proceed with the burn.
Thank you very much.
We come from a truly
blessed country.
Blessings however,
come with duties,
and Kenya holds
these great riches
in trust for all humanity.
It falls on us to protect
and to preserve them.
That fundamentally is why
we are here today.
The last decade or so has seen
catastrophic destruction
of the African elephant.
A new generation of poachers,
armed with new weapons
connected to vast new markets
across the world,
threatens to exterminate them.
In destroying the ivory,
we reject once and for all,
those who think that our natural
heritage can be sold for money.
Before you,
ladies and gentlemen,
the largest haul of ivory
ever to be destroyed
in this manner.
Poaching and trafficking
in wildlife,
is now a branch
of international crime.
The fight against it will be won by
alliances across nations and continents.
The principle is clear enough:
Ivory belongs to our elephants.
Kenya has decided that ivory
is an evil commodity.
But Kenya's decision has to be
backed by a global decision.
Let's kill this trade.
The opposite is unimaginable.
The Earth is
4.5 billion years old,
and its history can be read
in the rocks.
Modern human civilization has
developed within just 10,000 years,
yet our success as a species
has tipped the planet's systems
outside their natural limits.
We are all implicated,
some far more profoundly
than others.
But the tenacity and ingenuity
that helped us thrive,
can also help us to pull
these systems back
to a safe place for all
life on Earth.
Recognizing and reimagining
our dominant signal...
is the beginning of change.
Subtitles by explosiveskull
The Earth
is 4.5 billion years old,
and its history
is recorded in the rocks.
Since 2009,
a group of scientists
has been investigating whether
our 12,000-year-old
geological epoch,
the Holocene, has ended.
After nine years of research,
the evidence shows that
we have left the Holocene
and entered
the Anthropocene epoch,
because humans now change
the Earth and its systems
more than all natural
processes combined.
Six, seven,
eight... nine.
Ten.
I can confirm that this
ivory here is exactly 105 tons.
Ten thousand or so elephants...
Four, five.
I have seen estimates
of 150 million dollars...
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
The street value.
But can you imagine
10,000 elephants.
Two, three, four...
five.
Seven, eight.
We did the inventory:
three months,
to look at every piece
of ivory,
measure the weight,
try and pair them.
Every day the smell of death.
On one of the tusks was written
"Amboseli Elephant".
I've had the privilege of working in
Amboseli National Park for a long time.
And I thought this tusk
represents an elephant
I probably knew.
This tusk will never
hit the market.
It will never make a trinket,
it will never become
a mantlepiece.
I was not able to stop
this elephant from dying,
but I'm certainly able to stop
it from being desecrated further.
Norilsk is 320km
north of the Arctic Circle,
and home to the largest
coloured metal mine
and heavy metals smelting
complex in the world.
It is the most polluted city
in Russia.
Every year,
humans extract between
60 and 100 billion tons of
material from the Earth,
and move more sediment than all
the rivers of the world combined.
We are here
in the middle
of Salar de Atacama,
right in the heart of the
driest desert of the world.
We are producing here, lithium,
and we have a lot of lithium
under our feet.
Lithium has been used for many years
in pharmaceuticals, and aluminum,
glass, and many other
appliances,
but the recent increase
on lithium demands
comes from electric vehicle
batteries.
As you see we have sun everyday
and so we have a really good
evaporation rate here.
And that's what makes
most of the work.
The energy comes from the sun.
And we are proud of how we
contribute to the world,
in the technology industry
with batteries for
electric cars,
for cellphones, for all the
appliances that we use nowadays.
Last Thursday, I think there was
the last house here.
Since Hambach
coal mine opened in 1978,
four towns have been destroyed
to make way for its expansion,
and two more are facing
relocation.
It is the largest open-pit
mine in Germany.
Terraforming is the act of altering
the Earth's surface for human needs.
Humans now dominate over
75 percent of ice-free land
because of mining,
agriculture,
industrialization,
and urban growth.
The Earth's forests
are home to 80 percent
of terrestrial
biodiversity,
and annually absorb 30 percent of
anthropogenic carbon emissions.
Less than 10 percent of old growth
forest remains on Vancouver Island,
and raw log exports have increased
exponentially since 2014.
85 percent of the Earth's
forests have been cleared
fragmented or degraded
for human use.
This business,
it starts from the bush,
from the forest.
We sponsor some people
in the forest,
to cut the wood for us,
the logs.
From Bayelsa State, Rivers,
Edo, Delta, Ondo, Ogun.
The population of
Lagos has grown from 200,000
to 20 million in only
two generations.
The world's population could
reach 10 billion by 2050,
with most people migrating to,
and living in,
large urban centers.
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ When I spend half,
When I spend half ♪
♪ When I spend half ♪
♪ I was born in Pumwani
I grew up in Dandora City ♪
♪ Ah, nobody by my side ♪
♪ Life is to hustle ♪
♪ Education is the key
To success ♪
♪ When I make my future
So bright ♪
♪ I get a B+ in form 4
I dunno what I do ♪
♪ Opportunity first ♪
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ My childhood life ♪
♪ When I spend half ♪
♪ When I spend half
When I spend half ♪
Peace all the time when
you know. I and I Shakur!
Dandora dump, east side.
This is the biggest
dumpsite in Nairobi.
Even in Kenya, it's the
biggest. Even in East Africa.
And I'm proud to be in it.
Some people collect bottles,
and they weigh them in kilos.
They buy for us
one shilling per kilo.
When the bottles have no market,
we just collect plastics.
A quarter
of a million people
live in or around
Dandora Landfill Site,
and 6,000 people mine and work
its grounds every day.
Technofossils are
human-created objects,
such as plastic, concrete
and aluminium,
that persist in the biosphere
and eventually end up
in the rock layers
of the Earth.
The technosphere,
which is the entire aggregate
of human created
or altered material,
is estimated at
30 trillion tons.
Ladies and gentlemen,
we will soon be entering
the Gotthard Base Tunnel.
With a length of 57 kilometers,
this is the longest railway
tunnel in the world.
The journey through the tunnel
is approximately
20 minutes long.
Humans have created
thousands of kilometers
of underground tunnels
for everything from railways,
roads, and subways
to mines, sewers,
parking lots, and reservoirs.
We need to create
new lands,
and we need to establish these
new lands wherever they may be.
Small plots, smallholdings.
And intensifying yields
by doing it
in an environment
that we control.
We're a constant 14 degrees
all year round down here.
We don't use pesticides
or herbicides.
Our water system -
we use 70 percent less
than traditional
open-field farming.
When it comes to other inputs,
they are pretty much
traditional nutrients,
used more effectively.
The only element of technology
is the light spectrum
within the LEDs.
We can give the plants the exact
environment that they require
24/7, 365 days a year.
What we have done is taken an old
World War II air raid shelter,
that was used to protect Londoners
during the Second World War.
We've got these beds
to grow fresh produce,
where there used to be
bunk beds
for people to sleep on
down here.
Agriculture
and animal husbandry
have transformed one third
of the Earth's
ice-free land surface.
Humans have pushed
or surpassed
correlatable boundaries
for nitrogen,
phosphate and potash
because of their use
in fertilizer.
Nitrogen and phosphorus
levels in soil
have doubled
in the last century,
representing the largest impact
on the nitrogen cycle
in 2.5 billion years.
Camera, rec sound?
- Sound?
- Yeah.
- Rec?
- Yeah.
Carbon dioxide levels
in the atmosphere are higher
than at any other time
in the past 66 million years.
This has put our climate
system into a state
that has no analog
for future projections.
Climate change results in
unstable global temperatures,
extreme weather events,
sea level rise
and ocean acidification.
Coral reefs are home to more
than 25 percent of all marine life,
and are considered one of the
planet's most complex ecosystems.
Coral has existed
for 450 million years,
but ocean warming
and acidification
has caused widespread
bleaching,
and could eliminate all coral
from the oceans
before the end
of the 21st century.
Now if you're
standing a little bit further down
towards the other end of
the paddock, we do all sorts
of different, what we call
enrichments for our tigers.
Now that is just a term that
covers everything we can do
for any of our animals here to
encourage their natural behavior
and to keep them happy
and stimulated here at the zoo.
Now they do still tend to spend
lots of time sticking close to mum,
watching her, learning from her
and also learning from play.
So if Melati had had these two
out in the wild, out in Sumatra,
she would have been through a very
difficult few months just now,
because, of course, as well as having to
hunt enough food to feed herself with,
she would also have to cater for
the rapidly growing appetites
of these two youngsters,
Karis and Achilles, as well.
Now this is no mean feat, because out in
the wild they are critically endangered.
However, just by coming along to
the zoo today, you may not realize,
but you are supporting ZSL.
We are a conservation charity
working in over
50 countries worldwide
to protect lots of
animals and their habitats,
and this includes a lot
of work that goes on
out in Sumatra
with wild tigers.
So we are doing things like
working very closely
with the Indonesian government,
to protect the remaining
tiger population out there.
So thank you to each and every
one of you for coming along today
and helping us out with that
just by having a look
at Jae Jae, Melati, and our two
cubs, Karis and Achilles.
We are part of the Kenyan
National Police.
Most of the time we are
deployed during the night
just to make sure that we deter
any poaching activity.
My name is Paul Tereson.
My name is Paul Nderity.
We are allowed by the law
to apprehend anyone
who enters or intrudes
into our protected area.
But in case they pose a danger
to our own lives,
that is the only time we can
at least try to use firearms,
but not to kill,
but to try and effect the arrest.
We are protecting wildlife, and at the
same time we feel like we are the enemies.
Because we are humans and
humans are the poachers.
The Earth has had
five major extinctions.
We are now in the middle of
the sixth great extinction,
this time because of
human impact.
Extinction rates are up to 10,000
times higher than natural rates
from habitat loss,
poaching, pollution,
climate change,
and over-hunting.
One, two, go...
Happy, healthy living.
It is now my humble duty and
pleasure, ladies and gentlemen,
to ask the President of the Republic
of Kenya, Honourable Uhuru Kenyatta,
to make his remarks,
and proceed with the burn.
Thank you very much.
We come from a truly
blessed country.
Blessings however,
come with duties,
and Kenya holds
these great riches
in trust for all humanity.
It falls on us to protect
and to preserve them.
That fundamentally is why
we are here today.
The last decade or so has seen
catastrophic destruction
of the African elephant.
A new generation of poachers,
armed with new weapons
connected to vast new markets
across the world,
threatens to exterminate them.
In destroying the ivory,
we reject once and for all,
those who think that our natural
heritage can be sold for money.
Before you,
ladies and gentlemen,
the largest haul of ivory
ever to be destroyed
in this manner.
Poaching and trafficking
in wildlife,
is now a branch
of international crime.
The fight against it will be won by
alliances across nations and continents.
The principle is clear enough:
Ivory belongs to our elephants.
Kenya has decided that ivory
is an evil commodity.
But Kenya's decision has to be
backed by a global decision.
Let's kill this trade.
The opposite is unimaginable.
The Earth is
4.5 billion years old,
and its history can be read
in the rocks.
Modern human civilization has
developed within just 10,000 years,
yet our success as a species
has tipped the planet's systems
outside their natural limits.
We are all implicated,
some far more profoundly
than others.
But the tenacity and ingenuity
that helped us thrive,
can also help us to pull
these systems back
to a safe place for all
life on Earth.
Recognizing and reimagining
our dominant signal...
is the beginning of change.
Subtitles by explosiveskull