Trump's attacks on climate science; the dark money behind environmental deregulation; and the Anthropocene.
The Trump administration has ordered federal agencies to stop publishing worst-case scenario projections of climate change. This week, On the Media examines the administration’s pattern of attacks on climate science. Plus, a look at the dark money behind environmental deregulation.
1. Kate Aronoff [@KateAronoff], fellow at the Type Media Center, on the White House's suppression of climate warnings. Listen.
2. Jane Mayer [@JaneMayerNYer], staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, on the billionaires supporting the modern conservative intellectual framework. Listen.
3. Jan Zalasiewicz, Anthropocene Working Group Chair, on the traces that today's humans might leave behind for future civilizations, and Benjamin Kunkel [@kunktation] on whether the Age of Capitalism might be a more appropriate term to describe our epoch. Listen.
I sort of like the idea of dating the Anthropocene from the 1950’s with the invention of the atomic bomb as it created a world-wide layer. But then the beginning of agriculture or the start of the industrial revolution also likely had world-wide effects as well.
I remember sitting with Jan Z, David Grinspoon, Clément Vidal, Jim Gates, David Baker, and several others at dinner at the Anthropocene Conference held at The Big History Institute at Macquarie U in Dec 2015.
Jan asked each of us what we thought was a “marker” for the Anthropocene. We all pitched in our ideas. For my money, I thought the radionuclide signature from open-air nuclear testing in the 1950s was so analogous to the iridium anomaly at the K-T Boundary (which my fellow Big History Association Board member Walter Alvarez had co-discovered in 1980), that that was what I thought it should be. I mean, it’s there in the rocks for a VERY long time, right?
Jan said that the Working Group were actually considering that marker seriously. Unfortunately, they were not looking seriously at one of his observations about “Anthropocene Chicken” — that the size of chicken skeletons had markedly increased during recent times, especially the 20th Century CE. He did mention it in his talk the next day, which is the second one in the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF7EX3Gz08g&list=PLRl3LQExZ1f3fUfPmogtZj8YrEYRl54kD