12. Mark Maslin on Human Evolution and the Anthropocene

Challenging Climate

Mark Maslin is a professor of Earth System Science at University College London and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit scholar. Mark is a leading scientist in past global and regional climatic change and its links to human evolution, and has written dozens of popular science articles and popular books, including The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (with Simon Lewis) – just out in paperback.
In this episode, we spoke with Mark about the link between human evolution and climate change, and the debate surrounding the Anthropocene epoch. In discussing human evolution, we touch on topics such as the development of bipedalism and human intelligence. Mark explains the extent of human impact on the Earth, hence creating the Anthropocene. We also cover the political debate on defining the Anthropocene and the evolution of international and national politics surrounding climate change.
Links:

• Mark’s profile, including his recent publications
• The paper by Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis on defining the Anthropocene
• Another paper by Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis on how the Anthropocene began with species exchange
• That Lancet study
• The Anthropocene working group

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1. 12. Mark Maslin on Human Evolution and the Anthropocene (00:00:00)

2. Introduction and background (00:02:26)

3. Human evolution (00:04:38)

4. Dominating mechanisms of human evolution (00:12:13)

5. What is the Anthropocene? (00:23:35)

6. Challenges in defining the Anthropocene (00:33:32)

7. The public and political debate of climate change (00:40:06)

8. Climate anxiety, and the perception of climate doom (00:47:06)