"And what's very interesting is that at the moment there is this mass movement of people to our cities, making them megacities. And so we are actually depopulating the rural areas. So the very strange thing is that the Earth, it's becoming a wilder place. And therefore there are so many opportunities where people are leaving to go to the big cities where we can rewild, we can reforest, and we can bring back nature to actually keep those services that we absolutely rely on.

We are so powerful as a planetary species, not individually, but collectively, that we have had that impact, that we have changed the geological destiny of the planet through changing the environment, changing the climate, and changing the evolutionary destiny - because we're already causing lots of extinctions - but also lots of new organisms to be evolving. And we are creating them in labs as well."

Can we imagine a world where we leave half the earth to the natural environment and use the other half for ourselves? Can we change history and protect the Indigenous, the vulnerable, and the very poorest in society?

Mark Maslin is a Professor of Earth System Science at University College London. Maslin is a leading expert in understanding the anthropocene and how it relates to the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. He has written a number of books on the issue of climate change, his most book is How to Save Our Planet: The Facts.

www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/people/academic-staff/mark-maslin
www.penguin.co.uk/books/320155/how-to-save-our-planet-by-maslin-mark/9780241472521

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Image courtesy of Mark Maslin