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We are headed to a radically new Earth, at least from our perspective. But from the planet's perspective, this is nothing new. As the geologist Peter Ward is fond of pointing out, we are actually heading back to a time kind of like the Miocene. The Miocene ended about 5.5 million years ago, and it was the last time that the planet had no icecaps.

Annalee Newitz

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Annalee Newitz
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 9
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More quotes by Annalee Newitz

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I would want us to start our quest to survive mass extinction by rethinking how we build cities. Cities should be commonplaces of production, rather than consumption - they should be producing food, and fuel.
Annalee Newitz
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I think in the long run, it will be better for us if we solve our problems without suffering through some terrible disaster. I like the idea of change without Apocalypse.
Annalee Newitz
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That said, a lot of people buy products with green in the brand name, but make no attempt to understand what it would really take to live sustainably. I think one of the most pernicious examples of magical environmental thinking is the anti-GMO movement.
Annalee Newitz
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The fact that we have been able to perturb the carbon cycle with our industrial revolution is evidence of how vulnerable we are - because when we destroy our environments, we destroy our food and energy supplies. In short, we destroy ourselves.
Annalee Newitz
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GMO agriculture will probably save the world in this century. But in the developed world, where few people are haunted by the specter of famine, people are free to fetishize heirloom tomatoes and worry about the provenance of what sits on their dinner tables.
Annalee Newitz
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Eventually, humans invented agriculture, which could be understood as a way of turning the natural world into a tool for our use. There's evidence that we have been domesticating crops and animals for at least 15,000 years, adapting ecosystems to our preferred way of life.
Annalee Newitz
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I disagree that we need to contemplate eliminating ourselves in order to move forward. Sure, I think a good dystopian story can serve to steer us on the right path toward a better world. But we also need stories that offer solutions to our problems that are realistic, and workable today.
Annalee Newitz
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Even though I now know that it's likely the Earth will suffer through mega-volcanoes or meteor strikes that could take out millions or billions of people, I feel less anxious about it because I actually understand what the threats are. There's nothing like researching something exhaustively to make it less terrifying.
Annalee Newitz
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Humans are a great survivor species but our survival will be pretty grim if all of the plants and animals we depend on die out. That's why any human survival strategy has to include a plan to maintain our environment roughly in the state that it's in now.
Annalee Newitz
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There are plenty of publicly-funded organizations and nonprofits that are trying to develop GMO crops that could help feed people in developing nations by producing disease-resistant or drought-resistant strains of staple crops like cassava or bananas.
Annalee Newitz
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Survivor species tend to have huge populations, so they can afford to lose many individuals and still survive as a species. They also tend to be small. If you're small, you need less food - which is great in a situation where famine is everywhere.
Annalee Newitz
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In terms of fiction, there are a number of writers who are thinking about the future of the environment whose work complements mine. Kim Stanley Robinson's novel 2312 is a great example, as is Tobias Buckell's novel Arctic Rising.
Annalee Newitz
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I think it's the process of demystification, and realizing that we are not talking about some supernatural nightmare - we're talking about a natural process that the planet has gone through before, and which animals have survived before.
Annalee Newitz
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It's only a slight exaggeration to say we haven't progressed much beyond the invention of agriculture when it comes to our view of the natural world.
Annalee Newitz
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Part of what I wanted to do in my book was point out that we have almost reached the point where we can prevent a mass extinction with the science and technology we have today. We can build carbon neutral cities.
Annalee Newitz
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Sometimes it's hard to take everyday concerns seriously when you think about vanished ecosystems that existed 300 million years ago and were eradicated by giant explosions. My goals haven't changed, because my goal has always been to save the world!
Annalee Newitz
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think we're still stuck in that agricultural mindset, where we imagine that we can shape the Earth. Sure, we can do that. But the Earth has the power to shape us much more powerfully. To survive climate change, we'll have to realize how dependent we are on our ecosystems for our own survival.
Annalee Newitz
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Everything I had read in the fields of fiction and science led me to a single, dark conclusion. Humans are screwed, and so is our planet.
Annalee Newitz
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To be fair, if we are having a mass extinction, we're in the early stages of it. I think it's knowing facts like that which has made me less fearful about the future. Mass extinction is a long, complicated process that we are just now beginning to understand - and likewise, we are just beginning to understand how we might prevent one.
Annalee Newitz
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In fact, the early demographer Thomas Malthus believes that the only way the human population would ever check itself was by running headlong into a disaster, like a pandemic or famine. Sometimes we get so frustrated with the slowness of human political processes that we wish a giant flaming rock would solve the problem for us.
Annalee Newitz