Thinking in Planetary Time

Disrupting traditional western understandings of time that separate human history from natural history, Planetary Temporality recognizes that these two modes of history are now inseparable, and that meeting planetary challenges will require that we go beyond our lived experience of time, to think instead in terms of our deep-time embeddedness in the Earth system.

In contrast to anthropocentric “global” issues, “planetary” issues such as climate change and biodiversity operate on vastly different and ultimately ahuman timescales - encompassing geological epochs, evolutionary processes, and the deep history of life on Earth. How can we incorporate these larger, longer systems into our human experience of the planet, and make wiser choices now that support the flourishing of all life for millennia to come?

Speaker: Nils Gilman, Berggruen Institute