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Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils
A profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene and an urgent search for the fossils—industrial, chemical, geological—that humans are leaving behind
What will the world look like in ten thousand years—or ten million? What kinds of stories will be told about us?
In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to reveal much about how we lived in the twenty-first century.
Crossing the boundaries of literature, art, and science, Footprints invites us to think about how we will be remembered in the myths and stories of our distant descendants. Traveling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice-core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world’s biggest cities, Farrier describes a world that is changing rapidly, with consequences beyond the scope of human understanding. As much a message of hope as a warning, Footprints will not only alter how you think about the future; it will change how you see the world today.
What will the world look like in ten thousand years—or ten million? What kinds of stories will be told about us?
In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for 100,000 years, and the remains of our cities will still exist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to reveal much about how we lived in the twenty-first century.
Crossing the boundaries of literature, art, and science, Footprints invites us to think about how we will be remembered in the myths and stories of our distant descendants. Traveling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice-core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world’s biggest cities, Farrier describes a world that is changing rapidly, with consequences beyond the scope of human understanding. As much a message of hope as a warning, Footprints will not only alter how you think about the future; it will change how you see the world today.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2020
54 people are currently reading
1473 people want to read
About the author
David Farrier
20 books23 followersDavid Farrier teaches at the University of Edinburgh. In 2017, Footprints won the Royal Society of Literature's Giles St Aubyn Award for Non-Fiction. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 88 reviews
June 8, 2020
In May 2013 a set of fossil human footprints was found at Happisburgh in Norfolk, England. At 850,000 years old, they were the oldest outside of Africa. In the same month, atmospheric carbon dioxide passed 400 ppm for the first time. It’s via such juxtapositions of past and future, and longevity versus precariousness, that Farrier’s book – a sophisticated lattice of human and planetary history, environmental realism and literary echoes – tells the story of the human impact on the Earth.
Unusually, Farrier is not a historian or a climate scientist, but a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Edinburgh specializing in nature and place writing, especially in relation to the Anthropocene. That humanities focus allowed him to craft a truly unique, interdisciplinary work in which the canon both foreshadows and responds to environmental collapse. On a sabbatical in Australia, he also gets to hold an ice core taken by an icebreaker, swim above coral reefs and visit a uranium mine exempted from protection in a national park.
He travels not just through space, but also through time, tracing a plastic bottle from algal bloom to oil to factory to river/landfill to ocean; he thinks about how cultural memory can preserve vanished landscapes; he imagines propitiatory rites arising around radioactive waste to explain poisoned lakes and zinc-lined coffins; and he wonders how to issue appropriate warnings to the future when we don’t even know if English, or language in general, will persist (a nuclear waste storage site in Carlsbad uses a combination of multilingual signs, symbols, monoliths and planned oral tradition, while one in Finland is unmarked).
Each chapter is an intricate blend of fact, experience and story. For example, “The Insatiable Road” is about cars and the concrete landscapes they zip through – all made possible by oil. Farrier wins a chance to be among the first to cross the new Forth Bridge on foot and finds himself awed by the human achievement. Yet he knows that, in a car, the bridge will be crossed in seconds and soon taken for granted. Whether as a driver or a passenger, we have become detached from the journey and from the places we are travelling through. The road trip, a standard element of twentieth-century art and literature, has lost its lustre. “Really, we have conceded so much,” he writes. “Most of us live and wander only where road networks permit us to, creeping along their edges and lulled into deafness by their constant roar.” Ben Okri’s legend provides the metaphor of a famished road that swallows all in its path.
What will the human species leave behind? “The entire atmosphere now bears the marks of our passage … Perhaps no one will be around to read our traces, but nonetheless we are, everywhere, constantly, and with the most astonishing profligacy, leaving a legacy that will endure for hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of years to come.” That legacy includes the concrete foundations of massive road networks, the remnants of megacities on coastal plains, plastics that will endure for many centuries, carbon and methane locked up in permafrost, the 2300-km fossil of the dead Great Barrier Reef, nuclear waste in isolation plants, jellyfish-dominated oceans and decimated microbial life.
Thinking long term doesn’t come naturally. In the same way that multiple books of 2019 (Time Song, Surfacing, Underland) helped us think about the place of humanity in reference to deep time, Footprints offers an invaluable window onto the deep future. Its dichotomies of hubris and atonement, and culpability versus indifference, are essential to ponder. It was always going to be sobering to read about how we have damaged our only home, but I never found this to be a needlessly depressing book; it is clear-eyed and forthright, but also meditative and beautifully constructed. Life on the planet continues in spite of our alterations, but all the diminishment was unavoidable, and perhaps some of it is remediable still.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Unusually, Farrier is not a historian or a climate scientist, but a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Edinburgh specializing in nature and place writing, especially in relation to the Anthropocene. That humanities focus allowed him to craft a truly unique, interdisciplinary work in which the canon both foreshadows and responds to environmental collapse. On a sabbatical in Australia, he also gets to hold an ice core taken by an icebreaker, swim above coral reefs and visit a uranium mine exempted from protection in a national park.
He travels not just through space, but also through time, tracing a plastic bottle from algal bloom to oil to factory to river/landfill to ocean; he thinks about how cultural memory can preserve vanished landscapes; he imagines propitiatory rites arising around radioactive waste to explain poisoned lakes and zinc-lined coffins; and he wonders how to issue appropriate warnings to the future when we don’t even know if English, or language in general, will persist (a nuclear waste storage site in Carlsbad uses a combination of multilingual signs, symbols, monoliths and planned oral tradition, while one in Finland is unmarked).
Each chapter is an intricate blend of fact, experience and story. For example, “The Insatiable Road” is about cars and the concrete landscapes they zip through – all made possible by oil. Farrier wins a chance to be among the first to cross the new Forth Bridge on foot and finds himself awed by the human achievement. Yet he knows that, in a car, the bridge will be crossed in seconds and soon taken for granted. Whether as a driver or a passenger, we have become detached from the journey and from the places we are travelling through. The road trip, a standard element of twentieth-century art and literature, has lost its lustre. “Really, we have conceded so much,” he writes. “Most of us live and wander only where road networks permit us to, creeping along their edges and lulled into deafness by their constant roar.” Ben Okri’s legend provides the metaphor of a famished road that swallows all in its path.
What will the human species leave behind? “The entire atmosphere now bears the marks of our passage … Perhaps no one will be around to read our traces, but nonetheless we are, everywhere, constantly, and with the most astonishing profligacy, leaving a legacy that will endure for hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of years to come.” That legacy includes the concrete foundations of massive road networks, the remnants of megacities on coastal plains, plastics that will endure for many centuries, carbon and methane locked up in permafrost, the 2300-km fossil of the dead Great Barrier Reef, nuclear waste in isolation plants, jellyfish-dominated oceans and decimated microbial life.
Thinking long term doesn’t come naturally. In the same way that multiple books of 2019 (Time Song, Surfacing, Underland) helped us think about the place of humanity in reference to deep time, Footprints offers an invaluable window onto the deep future. Its dichotomies of hubris and atonement, and culpability versus indifference, are essential to ponder. It was always going to be sobering to read about how we have damaged our only home, but I never found this to be a needlessly depressing book; it is clear-eyed and forthright, but also meditative and beautifully constructed. Life on the planet continues in spite of our alterations, but all the diminishment was unavoidable, and perhaps some of it is remediable still.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
June 10, 2021
My non-fiction reading has been sparse lately and 'Footprints' further supported my theory about this. It seems I cannot cope with straight-up social science at present. The pandemic has made reality, which was already pretty horrifying prior to it, too alarming to apply economic, political or social analysis to. However, I can still cope with books on subjects like environmental destruction if they are written from a disciplinary perspective outside the social sciences. Recent examples are Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, which combines indigenous history and plant science, and 'Footprints', which is written by an English Literature professor. Ostensibly, the topic of what evidence of human civilisation will survive for hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years, is something of a downer. Areas of focus include the destruction of coral reefs, disposal of nuclear waste, volumes of plastic and other slow-decaying materials, and sea level rise due to climate change. I was reminded of several extremely depressing things that had slipped my mind, including the extent to which we have fucked up the nitrogen cycle. Yet I kept reading and finished the whole book in an evening.
I do not mean to say that 'Footprints' trivialises its subject matter, however it does aestheticise it. The fact that anecdotes and facts about environmental destruction are recounted with literary allusions for context shapes the reading experience significantly. The same material would probably have devastated me if contextualised with political or economic theory and supported by statistics, whereas Farrier's writing gives the reader distance. Although he appears sincere in his environmental concern, it is refracted into elegant fragments via Borges, Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Barthes. The specific experiences he describes, such as diving on the Great Barrier Reef and visiting a Finnish repository for nuclear waste, appear as fascinating curiosities. The tone of the book is not angry at all, rather it is curious and keen to find beauty and interest in decay and destruction. This is not entirely dissimilar to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, although there is much less distance there and more determined hope of renewal. Of course, 'Footprints' is fundamentally concerned with extremely long timescales, so temporal and emotional distance are integral to the project.
Farrier writes beautifully and 'Footprints' contains many arresting images and memorable details. I enjoyed it, while feeling keenly aware of its limitations. By focusing on objects, substances, and environmental changes that will last thousands or millions of years, Farrier sidesteps the human side of things and tacitly assumes that by that time people will be long gone. Human extinction as a result of capitalism-driven environmental destruction is a subject that should invoke outrage, horror, and a desire for change. Not every book about the environment can or should deal with that head-on. Yet when I read those that don't, I feel guilty about the more hard-hitting unread books on my shelf that I can't face right now, like Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future and Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century. I can appreciate the aesthetics of ice cores, dying coral, and architecture for the long term storage of nuclear waste, but only with a certain ambivalence. What human civilisation leaves behind will be shaped not only by our economic, social, and political past, but also our immediate future. I think it's important not to step too far back from that, while also being aware that there's only so much existential fear one can confront and still be able to function as a person. 'Footprints' is gentle enough to be suitable reading during Year 2 of The Great Plague, however it is not sufficient. Angrier and more analytical social science writing on such topics is very much needed as well.
I do not mean to say that 'Footprints' trivialises its subject matter, however it does aestheticise it. The fact that anecdotes and facts about environmental destruction are recounted with literary allusions for context shapes the reading experience significantly. The same material would probably have devastated me if contextualised with political or economic theory and supported by statistics, whereas Farrier's writing gives the reader distance. Although he appears sincere in his environmental concern, it is refracted into elegant fragments via Borges, Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Barthes. The specific experiences he describes, such as diving on the Great Barrier Reef and visiting a Finnish repository for nuclear waste, appear as fascinating curiosities. The tone of the book is not angry at all, rather it is curious and keen to find beauty and interest in decay and destruction. This is not entirely dissimilar to Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, although there is much less distance there and more determined hope of renewal. Of course, 'Footprints' is fundamentally concerned with extremely long timescales, so temporal and emotional distance are integral to the project.
Farrier writes beautifully and 'Footprints' contains many arresting images and memorable details. I enjoyed it, while feeling keenly aware of its limitations. By focusing on objects, substances, and environmental changes that will last thousands or millions of years, Farrier sidesteps the human side of things and tacitly assumes that by that time people will be long gone. Human extinction as a result of capitalism-driven environmental destruction is a subject that should invoke outrage, horror, and a desire for change. Not every book about the environment can or should deal with that head-on. Yet when I read those that don't, I feel guilty about the more hard-hitting unread books on my shelf that I can't face right now, like Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future and Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century. I can appreciate the aesthetics of ice cores, dying coral, and architecture for the long term storage of nuclear waste, but only with a certain ambivalence. What human civilisation leaves behind will be shaped not only by our economic, social, and political past, but also our immediate future. I think it's important not to step too far back from that, while also being aware that there's only so much existential fear one can confront and still be able to function as a person. 'Footprints' is gentle enough to be suitable reading during Year 2 of The Great Plague, however it is not sufficient. Angrier and more analytical social science writing on such topics is very much needed as well.
February 5, 2022
Este libro es el producto refinado que sale de la cabeza de un experto en literatura pero que al mismo tiempo entiende las complejas narraciones científicas sobre nuestro pasado, presente y futuro. ¡Y que buen producto sale de esta combinación única!
Y es que la combinación de buena ciencia positiva (para usar un término con el cual referirme a las ciencias "naturales"... aunque todas las ciencias son naturales... es difícil hacer divisiones aquí) y de humanismo y literatura, crea un producto maravilloso.
Así de la misma manera en la que su autor, David Farrier introduce al lector en ideas tales como el concepto griego de la "enárgeia", es decir, la capacidad de un@ orador@ de ver más allá del momento, o "la brillante e insoportable realidad" como la llamara la poetisa Alice Oswald (tal y como se aprende en el libro), y que presenta como una habilidad que necesitamos para pensar en el mundo cambiante en el que vivimos (¡una brillante adaptación de un concepto relativamente ajeno a las ciencias naturales!), así mismo te introduce sesudos resultados de la investigación de frontera sobre el medio ambiente, o te describe con detalles científicos asombrosamente detallados, la historia de una botella de plástico desde el momento en el que es aire hasta que la botas en una caneca (¡y que historia se arma David el literato!)
Es difícil precisar muy bien de qué trata exactamente "Huellas".
A veces es sobre el presente, sobre los cambios que estamos realizando a nuestro mundo a una velocidad sin precedentes, a veces muy conscientemente pero las más sin percatarnos de ellas.
En otras ocasiones es sobre el pasado, sobre las huellas de mundos ya desaparecido y que quedaron atrapadas en los hielos de la Antártida, en el maldecido petroleo o en un reactor nuclear natural. O habla sobre la memoria que algunos pueblos guardan de un mundo lejano y que ha sido transmitida de generación en generación, aún el presente, usando solo el poder de la palabra, sin las muletas de la escritura.
Podría decirse, sin embargo, que "Huellas" es un libro sobre el futuro. Es lo más fácil. Pero no estoy completamente convencido de ello, o tal vez finalmente entendí el mensaje de su autor: no es posible pensar el mundo como algo que ocurrió o que ocurrirá. Las huellas del pasado dan forma al presente que a su vez deja huellas en el futuro en un continuo sin solución.
El contenido de "Huellas" es un buen ejemplo de lo que podríamos llamar un nuevo "ambientalismo". Uno que es consciente de que el problema de nuestro lugar en el mundo y de las huellas que dejamos en él, es más que un problema científico y tecnológico. En este nuevo ambientalismo nuestra huellas sobre el mundo se convierten en algo más profundo. Algo que, tal vez, le interesa a todo el mundo, incluyendo a quiénes prefieren las narraciones humanas, el arte y la literatura.
¡Un gran libro para leer y releer!
Y es que la combinación de buena ciencia positiva (para usar un término con el cual referirme a las ciencias "naturales"... aunque todas las ciencias son naturales... es difícil hacer divisiones aquí) y de humanismo y literatura, crea un producto maravilloso.
Así de la misma manera en la que su autor, David Farrier introduce al lector en ideas tales como el concepto griego de la "enárgeia", es decir, la capacidad de un@ orador@ de ver más allá del momento, o "la brillante e insoportable realidad" como la llamara la poetisa Alice Oswald (tal y como se aprende en el libro), y que presenta como una habilidad que necesitamos para pensar en el mundo cambiante en el que vivimos (¡una brillante adaptación de un concepto relativamente ajeno a las ciencias naturales!), así mismo te introduce sesudos resultados de la investigación de frontera sobre el medio ambiente, o te describe con detalles científicos asombrosamente detallados, la historia de una botella de plástico desde el momento en el que es aire hasta que la botas en una caneca (¡y que historia se arma David el literato!)
Es difícil precisar muy bien de qué trata exactamente "Huellas".
A veces es sobre el presente, sobre los cambios que estamos realizando a nuestro mundo a una velocidad sin precedentes, a veces muy conscientemente pero las más sin percatarnos de ellas.
En otras ocasiones es sobre el pasado, sobre las huellas de mundos ya desaparecido y que quedaron atrapadas en los hielos de la Antártida, en el maldecido petroleo o en un reactor nuclear natural. O habla sobre la memoria que algunos pueblos guardan de un mundo lejano y que ha sido transmitida de generación en generación, aún el presente, usando solo el poder de la palabra, sin las muletas de la escritura.
Podría decirse, sin embargo, que "Huellas" es un libro sobre el futuro. Es lo más fácil. Pero no estoy completamente convencido de ello, o tal vez finalmente entendí el mensaje de su autor: no es posible pensar el mundo como algo que ocurrió o que ocurrirá. Las huellas del pasado dan forma al presente que a su vez deja huellas en el futuro en un continuo sin solución.
El contenido de "Huellas" es un buen ejemplo de lo que podríamos llamar un nuevo "ambientalismo". Uno que es consciente de que el problema de nuestro lugar en el mundo y de las huellas que dejamos en él, es más que un problema científico y tecnológico. En este nuevo ambientalismo nuestra huellas sobre el mundo se convierten en algo más profundo. Algo que, tal vez, le interesa a todo el mundo, incluyendo a quiénes prefieren las narraciones humanas, el arte y la literatura.
¡Un gran libro para leer y releer!
January 16, 2022
Mi primera impresión de este libro es que, lo disfruté demasiado por las posibilidades de reflexión que aporta.
¿Por qué? Porque fue un libro que, como pocas veces, entré a conocerlo sol por el título.
La palabra 'Huella' me parece potente, porque habla de que algo o alguien dejó una impresión sobre otro (ya sea superficie, lugar o ser)
Es un libro reflexivo, pero que no presenta reflexiones culposas sino explicaciones tranquilas sobre las acciones en el ambiente, todo bajo 3 líneas diferentes, como la literatura, la ecología y la geología.
Otro punto bastante valioso del libro es el mensaje que transmite sobre la importancia de la ecología y la búsqueda de alternativas a la manera en que se consume en la actualidad.
Un punto encontra, por aquello que no llega a las 5 estrellas, es que hay ocasiones en que hay términos técnicos que no se comprenden si no es ayudado por internet. O por ejemplo cuando se habla de lugares, que haya una imagen que lo referencie.
También me faltan las notas bibliográficas mejor organizadas (un problema más editorial que de escritura)
Mi top de los 8 ensayos es:
1. La botella como héroe
2. La biblioteca de Babel
3. El momento bajo el momento
4. Donde debería haber algo, no hay nada
5. Un pequeño dios
6. Ciudades sutiles
7. La mirada de Medusa
8. La carretera insaciable
En definitiva, lo más valioso de este libro es las reflexiones que genera en los lectores para comprender cuál es el rol del Homo Sapiens dentro de llamado 'tiempo profundo'
Disfruté todos los ensayos, pero los 4 de mi top son de mis favoritos.
El 2022 inicia fuerte en lecturas 🤓
¿Por qué? Porque fue un libro que, como pocas veces, entré a conocerlo sol por el título.
La palabra 'Huella' me parece potente, porque habla de que algo o alguien dejó una impresión sobre otro (ya sea superficie, lugar o ser)
Es un libro reflexivo, pero que no presenta reflexiones culposas sino explicaciones tranquilas sobre las acciones en el ambiente, todo bajo 3 líneas diferentes, como la literatura, la ecología y la geología.
Otro punto bastante valioso del libro es el mensaje que transmite sobre la importancia de la ecología y la búsqueda de alternativas a la manera en que se consume en la actualidad.
Un punto encontra, por aquello que no llega a las 5 estrellas, es que hay ocasiones en que hay términos técnicos que no se comprenden si no es ayudado por internet. O por ejemplo cuando se habla de lugares, que haya una imagen que lo referencie.
También me faltan las notas bibliográficas mejor organizadas (un problema más editorial que de escritura)
Mi top de los 8 ensayos es:
1. La botella como héroe
2. La biblioteca de Babel
3. El momento bajo el momento
4. Donde debería haber algo, no hay nada
5. Un pequeño dios
6. Ciudades sutiles
7. La mirada de Medusa
8. La carretera insaciable
En definitiva, lo más valioso de este libro es las reflexiones que genera en los lectores para comprender cuál es el rol del Homo Sapiens dentro de llamado 'tiempo profundo'
Disfruté todos los ensayos, pero los 4 de mi top son de mis favoritos.
El 2022 inicia fuerte en lecturas 🤓
June 26, 2021
There is a template out there for impassioned cultural studies or English literature specialists who want to "seriously" engage with climate change and biodiversity loss. It's modeled on the classic journalistic spread: visit a number of locations that you imbue with literary, historical, and mystical/natural intrigue, survey a number of points of environmental or climate change, briefly note that you were present and spoke with a local authority of some kind in each location, and ensure that you hit the appropriate tonal notes of grave wonder, hidden anguish, and sage warning. I've read this book more times than I can count. Farrier has written it again.
The thing about this book is that it's not bad per se, but it is also quite boring, once you have read it a number of times, and quite frankly it is superfluous, which makes its desired aura of "seriousness" questionable if not sadly laughable. Quite frankly, I would like to stop these people from the self-abuse of feeling as if they have to travel to all these places for the benefit of others. Set up some zoom calls with the academics who you will meet anyway, forgo the dubious honour of touching an ice core or visiting a nuclear silo or whatever - use pictures, heck, please put the damn pictures in your book (Farrier does not do this and it is frustrating), and write these books without the carbon budget that they must cost otherwise. Or, you know what? Just have a vacation and don't try to turn the thing into a sophisticated moral lesson for everyone else.
In the various iterations of this book that have been written, Farrier's can be distinguished for its commitment to aesthetic values over any engagement with reality or statistical representations. Are you interested in ice cores? Well, Farrier would like to start with Borges' infinite library, quote some Foucault, and then muse about glaciers being a kind of library. OK. Are you interested in plastic? Well, you're in luck, because Farrier remembers that Barthes had some witty things to say about it, and then he's also read some statistics about how much plastic there is in the world, and how long it will take to break down until it chokes every last living organism on the planet. (Farrier's chapter on plastics is probably one of the better ones, actually, given his imaginative tracing of the lifespan of plastic decomposition.) Are you interested in the extent of roads on the planet? Well, you're in luck, because Farrier would like you to know that Ben Okri wrote this book called The Famished Road where there is a myth about a road that devours everything...
You get the picture: we're in the realm of culture and it's handy that reality provides a reason to engage with it now and again. Here are the things this book is not: an actual search for fossils; a systematic survey of human remains in the Anthropocene; a study of footprints. Here is the thing I wish Farrier would stop writing: that he takes his classes out to a beach across from which is a nuclear dumping site. OK, we got it the first time, and the second, and the third, and what's the point of this again?
If a book called Footprints about an Edinburgh literary professor's thinking regarding climate chance and environmental issues sounds interesting to you, I'm glad! If it hews a little too close to mystification and indulgence, well, avoid, and maybe pick up something a little more hard-nosed, you cheerless philistine.
(About some things, I have become a philistine.)
The thing about this book is that it's not bad per se, but it is also quite boring, once you have read it a number of times, and quite frankly it is superfluous, which makes its desired aura of "seriousness" questionable if not sadly laughable. Quite frankly, I would like to stop these people from the self-abuse of feeling as if they have to travel to all these places for the benefit of others. Set up some zoom calls with the academics who you will meet anyway, forgo the dubious honour of touching an ice core or visiting a nuclear silo or whatever - use pictures, heck, please put the damn pictures in your book (Farrier does not do this and it is frustrating), and write these books without the carbon budget that they must cost otherwise. Or, you know what? Just have a vacation and don't try to turn the thing into a sophisticated moral lesson for everyone else.
In the various iterations of this book that have been written, Farrier's can be distinguished for its commitment to aesthetic values over any engagement with reality or statistical representations. Are you interested in ice cores? Well, Farrier would like to start with Borges' infinite library, quote some Foucault, and then muse about glaciers being a kind of library. OK. Are you interested in plastic? Well, you're in luck, because Farrier remembers that Barthes had some witty things to say about it, and then he's also read some statistics about how much plastic there is in the world, and how long it will take to break down until it chokes every last living organism on the planet. (Farrier's chapter on plastics is probably one of the better ones, actually, given his imaginative tracing of the lifespan of plastic decomposition.) Are you interested in the extent of roads on the planet? Well, you're in luck, because Farrier would like you to know that Ben Okri wrote this book called The Famished Road where there is a myth about a road that devours everything...
You get the picture: we're in the realm of culture and it's handy that reality provides a reason to engage with it now and again. Here are the things this book is not: an actual search for fossils; a systematic survey of human remains in the Anthropocene; a study of footprints. Here is the thing I wish Farrier would stop writing: that he takes his classes out to a beach across from which is a nuclear dumping site. OK, we got it the first time, and the second, and the third, and what's the point of this again?
If a book called Footprints about an Edinburgh literary professor's thinking regarding climate chance and environmental issues sounds interesting to you, I'm glad! If it hews a little too close to mystification and indulgence, well, avoid, and maybe pick up something a little more hard-nosed, you cheerless philistine.
(About some things, I have become a philistine.)
February 17, 2021
O melhor livro que li em 2020, e um dos melhores de não-ficção de sempre. Escrita simples, profunda e culta. Só comparável a Nick Lane, Harold Morowitz ou Stephen Jay Gould.
Um livro que nos atordoa e do qual necessitamos algum distanciamento para sobriamente se refletir. Para já ainda estou atordoado.
Um livro que nos atordoa e do qual necessitamos algum distanciamento para sobriamente se refletir. Para já ainda estou atordoado.
May 8, 2020
Thought-provoking meditations on the Anthropocene and the future, yet for whatever reason the book and I didn't click, and by the time I reached the halfway point of each chapter I'd find myself wishing to skim. That's why 3 stars.
March 22, 2024
One of the best books I've ever read - seriously poetic and delightful, whilst also contemplative and philosophical. The author put in a FUCK TONNE of work and deserves every possible bit of praise for their effort!
March 16, 2022
This is loaded with fascinating information.
English: https://elifthereader.com/books/footp...
Türkçe: https://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/f...
English: https://elifthereader.com/books/footp...
Türkçe: https://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/f...
February 15, 2022
A little frustrating. Ultimately I'm probably not really the target audience, and this is in a category I generally avoid (suffering lifelong Monbiotphobia since my twenties), but I seem to have found it inviting enough to pick it up - being in that genre of 'after us' books that also features that 'Abandoned Places' book I've still yet to read.
With several exceptions (the Finnish nuclear material burials, the idea of having to consider how to tell people coming millions of years after you that a place / substance is dangerous - answer: priesthood - and some of the locations), most of the book and its core question never grabbed me or felt that interesting.
Yes, cities will just be a streak of toxic grit in the geological record...roads too...plastic is everywhere...the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching and aren't we all awful...but I kind of knew that. The reflection on how it will all look in a hundred thousand years is all a bit 'whatever'. I can barely relate to people twenty years younger than me -the humans of 2500 AD interest me no more than I was of interest to the witchburners and freaks of 1521. To get me (and most lay observers) on these questions, matters like the growth rates of jellyfish and the height of Venice feel, well, obtuse.
And then enter Siebald. I enjoyed lots of Siebald over the years (maybe it was because it all felt so new in English), but there's a grade of beard-stroking wittering around literature and Fucking Classics that really grates with me, and feels like so much LRB whimsy. Borges, of course, has to make several appearances (that stupid fucking library he pulled out of his arse that something something magical liminal essences), followed by a bit of Barthesian timewasting; Ballard when Ballard isn't just great panoramas, but on 'places that imagined themselves' or some such wordgames, followed by Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking observations that in Paris, shitty shops in the early C19th would, like, be selling all sorts of random junk and I for one shall never look at a charity shop in the same way. It's that elevated turn of phrase that psychogeographers delight in, whereby a mouldly sandwich somehow evokes magic and is Telling Us That It Is Mouldy, in all of its liminal mouldiness-ness. When something is 'this, but at the same time - paradoxically THIS, hiding, unseen. But seen'. Borges above all - run for the hills at the mention of that name.
Another thing that takes the urgency out of these longitudinal speculations is that, having heard about how in one period that the seas were more acidic than Jeremy Corbyn's saliva, that the Baltic was landmass and that Greenland was hotter than St Tropez, I find it harder, not easier to lose that much sleep about sea levels rising in the lives of grandchildren I will never have or great-great-great-great-great grandchildren to the power of 70 with graphene wings and telepathic intercoms who I will never have. If looking at 'future fossils' is supposed to shake me out of my composting comfort zone, it didn't.
So, locations: good. Tone: genial. Agenda: decent. But central question: frustrating, with double Borges.
With several exceptions (the Finnish nuclear material burials, the idea of having to consider how to tell people coming millions of years after you that a place / substance is dangerous - answer: priesthood - and some of the locations), most of the book and its core question never grabbed me or felt that interesting.
Yes, cities will just be a streak of toxic grit in the geological record...roads too...plastic is everywhere...the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching and aren't we all awful...but I kind of knew that. The reflection on how it will all look in a hundred thousand years is all a bit 'whatever'. I can barely relate to people twenty years younger than me -the humans of 2500 AD interest me no more than I was of interest to the witchburners and freaks of 1521. To get me (and most lay observers) on these questions, matters like the growth rates of jellyfish and the height of Venice feel, well, obtuse.
And then enter Siebald. I enjoyed lots of Siebald over the years (maybe it was because it all felt so new in English), but there's a grade of beard-stroking wittering around literature and Fucking Classics that really grates with me, and feels like so much LRB whimsy. Borges, of course, has to make several appearances (that stupid fucking library he pulled out of his arse that something something magical liminal essences), followed by a bit of Barthesian timewasting; Ballard when Ballard isn't just great panoramas, but on 'places that imagined themselves' or some such wordgames, followed by Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking observations that in Paris, shitty shops in the early C19th would, like, be selling all sorts of random junk and I for one shall never look at a charity shop in the same way. It's that elevated turn of phrase that psychogeographers delight in, whereby a mouldly sandwich somehow evokes magic and is Telling Us That It Is Mouldy, in all of its liminal mouldiness-ness. When something is 'this, but at the same time - paradoxically THIS, hiding, unseen. But seen'. Borges above all - run for the hills at the mention of that name.
Another thing that takes the urgency out of these longitudinal speculations is that, having heard about how in one period that the seas were more acidic than Jeremy Corbyn's saliva, that the Baltic was landmass and that Greenland was hotter than St Tropez, I find it harder, not easier to lose that much sleep about sea levels rising in the lives of grandchildren I will never have or great-great-great-great-great grandchildren to the power of 70 with graphene wings and telepathic intercoms who I will never have. If looking at 'future fossils' is supposed to shake me out of my composting comfort zone, it didn't.
So, locations: good. Tone: genial. Agenda: decent. But central question: frustrating, with double Borges.
February 1, 2021
I don't know what to do with this one. It's an important book, and it's an honestly well-written one, about things I care about, but at about halfway I just started skimming. Found it nearly impossible to really engage with it. Maybe I expected something else. You should still read it, probably - your mileage may vary.
August 9, 2022
Mind blowing visit into deep time as possible future fossils are explored. Leaves me with a mix of both wonder and fear of the Anthropocene age and our outsized impact on the future. Each chapter in the book covers a different area of impact that we have on the Earth and it’s species. Can see myself picking it up for a read again whenever I am searching for specific information.
January 16, 2021
This is a book that can be read and reread with undiminished enjoyment and wonder. Although it deals with the impact of human beings on the planet, a topic that has been and is being covered extensively, it does so in an enganging style that enlists literary and artistic works, myth, history and travel for research. The author takes us far and wide, on a visit to the nuclear waste facility in Finland, to the ice village in Greenland, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and many more places we would not normally visit. David Farrier teaches English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, his outlook is that of a polymath, which would explain the vast range of his thought and references, as well as his compelling writing.
I first heard David Farrier speak about the subject of his book in a BBC radio programme. It intrigued me, and when I read it I was immediately hooked. I was as aware as anyone of the harm we are doing to various species of life, the ecology and the environment. Many of the observations in the book, backed by research and facts, tied in with my thoughts. One passage in the book reminded me of the time I sat down sorting my belongings prior to a house move, when the objects in front of me appeared like a lesson in futility. Why oh why had I bought them? Some chapter titles are taken from literary works, such as Thin Cities in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Other titles are equally evocative: Medusa’s Gaze, the Library of Babel. This is from Thin Cities: David Farrier wanders round the underground mall in ‘Shanghai, noticing the things of little or no value:
bright pink nylon wigs and the plastic heads wearing them, the leather handbags, make up stations with their dozens of tiny bottles and implements, miniature models of the oriental pearl tower.
Footprints starts with, well, footprints. How amazing to find what are called Trace fossils - In May 2013 a spring storm uncovered the oldest human traces outside Africa on Happisburgh’s foreshore. 850,000old fossil footprints left by early humans Homo antecessor, moving along the banks of an ancient river. They were identified as mixed footprints, adults and children of different ages. This is also mentioned in a wonderful book, Time Song by Julia Balckburn. I like it when one book reference leads to another, or takes me back to something I've read.
I find it interesting to find connections everywhere. With the resurgence of interest in women writers, artists etc, Mary Shellley and her famous work Frankenstein are as relevant as ever. On the chapter on ice and snow, The Library of Babel, DF writes:
Some traces braid human and geological histories together. Since the polar wastes so captivated the imagination of Romantic writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley, the ice has been represented as a zero landscape, a region outside time – trackless, life less and mindless. But the origins of some of the greatests works of the Romantic era are also recorded in the Greenland ice., in a layer of tephra - particles of volcanic rock and ash – that marks the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount ~Tambora in 1815. The catastrophe disrupted weather patterns across the globe , casting a pall over Europe the following year that inspired Byron’s Darkness and Shelley’s Frankenstein, which begins and ends on the Arctic ice.
We go with him on a journey through deep time. From this journey we can imagine what humans in deep future time, if they exist at all, will make of what survives as fossils. I am struck by the growing interest in the deep past, in works of fiction and non fiction. We are becoming aware of our long lasting impact on the planet as never before.
Do you remember when we were asked at school to write the life history of a penny? DF tells us the extaordinary life story of a plastic bottle. It’s enough to make you shun every bottle in sight. The life of plastic bottles is a sorry story, encompassing oceans and much else, an unimaginable journey. Of course it starts with the villain, oil. No, first we dig deeper to the phytoplancton blooms which eventually decay and are worked on by bacteria, forming deposits in a constant transformation taking 150million years. So the bottle’s sinister ancestor is oil emerges from these deposits Who can wonder then that this ingenious invention comes with a fatal flaw?
An extract from The Bottle as Hero.
every invention that we take for granted follows from that first rock that became a tool…. that leap towards a plastic world.
The language he uses when exploring the properties of plastic is fascinating:
we can bend it to the shape of our desire......where the old gods demanded praise, plastic’s divinity is a self-effacing presence in everyday life, so ubiquitous in fact that we have become accustomed to not seeing it.
To put it in immediate context, he starts thinking of the number of objects made of plastic he used that morning.
It is this referral to our ordinary daily lives that heightens the reality of what we’re told.
The most striking and frightening aspect of global warming is what happens to the ice. DF goes in search of scientific evidence in Camp Century. The ice in Greenland holds stories of the earth. As often it all starts with the US military. They set about building a city under the ice. 140 km providing accommodation for over 200 soldiers along with a main street, hospital, chapel, post office laboratory, radio stations, dark room cinema, skating rink, laboratory. It arose from fear during the Cold War. Scientists are able to to date the ice by examining the isotopic density of each layer of ice.
I can only cite certain sections that strike me vividly, not only by their stark message but also because they evoke works of art. In the chapter Medusa's Gaze about coral reefs, which we all know are endangered, David Farrier takes us to Paul Klee's Sunken Landscape. It’s a joyful scene, surging with life – except in one detail, like a dark twin to the sun-daisy, a black sun hangs , slighty decentred in the idle ground of the picture. In Chroma, a colour memoir he wrote as aids related illness was blinding him, Derek Jarman wrote of how each colour possessed its own sense of time, ‘Passing centuries are evergreen ….Red explodes and consumes itself. Blue is infinite'.
That's not all. Here is a wonderful passage about the sorry state of corals that will stay with me:
Corals polyps are the planet’s builders, continually constructing new structures on the fossils of older corals. ......They have a symbiotic relationship with photosynthesizing algae called zooanthellae. The algae also provide corals with their vivid pigmentation from honey brown or peach to a lysergic array of flamboyant yellow blues and pinks when the water gets too warm, however, the coral expels its symbonts, vomiting the algae and with it the spectacular colours, leaving behind a stripped and starving skeleton.
If you're not struck with this, then the description of methane gas trapped in the permafrost is certainly chilling - thawing spells disaster:
Methane is a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. And while it lingers twelve years in the atmosphere, it has the potential to do long lasting damage.
already the permafrost is softening...a Siberian heatwave in 2016 exposed the remains of an anthrax infected reindeer releasing spores of 75 year old bacteria into the air water and food chain and killing a ten year old boy. And that is apart from the risk of severe flooding in the future, which we have witnessed in our lifetime.
We all know that language evolves and changes, but what about this statement about our English language? All words have a half life.
How sobering to think that English, if it is still spoken, will retain only 12 percent of basic words currently in circulation. So what is so fascinating is that the burying of nuclear waste does not only pose the obvious safety problems, it also poses problems of commuicating the dangers to our deep time successors. The written word may not suffice because of what palaeolinguists call semantic or phonetic erosion. So what method can be used?
Nuclear semiotics was devised by Thomas Sebeok in 1984 (!) he proposed that the best way to protect a message against the erosive effects of deep time was to form what he called an atomic priesthood.He put his faith in the continuity and the power of myth. Superstitions should be allowed to accumulate around sites wreathing irradiated landscapes in an aura of illness and threat to discourage the curiosity of the unitinitiated. An annual ritual would guard the sites, and it would be passed on from generation to generation.
Other initiatiatives are mentioned in the book.
Farrier visits Onkalo the Finnish depository.
great holes deep in the earth filled with long lived radioactive by-products hold more than the residue of our atomic adventures. We are buried there as well – or at least an image of ourselves that we would like forgotten. We bury the idea that we are an unprecedented threat to the future. Like Oedipus, we hope instead that what remains of us will find rest far from the city, that the dust will cover us and our sins fall out of memory. And somewhere deep within is the hope that the world we made – of multiplying Sickness Countries and death that visits unseen, and the flickering moment under the moment – can be safely buried and left behind as well.
And what about the amazing world of microbes? They will last longer than words, it seems. It's an extraordinary thought! What is more, they can be coopted as writing partners – in theory. Some have tried. In the chapter called The Little God D radiodurans was discovered in 1956 living inside a tin of corned beef. In 2003 Christian Bok began to wonder if he could use bacterian DNA as a surface to write upon and also as a writing partner. The result was "Eternal poems. Euridece". Unfortunately, the organism is not cooperating. No matter what they try. “It’s like trying to appease a little god,” he said.
There are too many stories to pack into a review. You’ll just have to read it for yourselves to get the full impact of this brilliant perspective on our lives on this planet.
.
I first heard David Farrier speak about the subject of his book in a BBC radio programme. It intrigued me, and when I read it I was immediately hooked. I was as aware as anyone of the harm we are doing to various species of life, the ecology and the environment. Many of the observations in the book, backed by research and facts, tied in with my thoughts. One passage in the book reminded me of the time I sat down sorting my belongings prior to a house move, when the objects in front of me appeared like a lesson in futility. Why oh why had I bought them? Some chapter titles are taken from literary works, such as Thin Cities in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Other titles are equally evocative: Medusa’s Gaze, the Library of Babel. This is from Thin Cities: David Farrier wanders round the underground mall in ‘Shanghai, noticing the things of little or no value:
bright pink nylon wigs and the plastic heads wearing them, the leather handbags, make up stations with their dozens of tiny bottles and implements, miniature models of the oriental pearl tower.
Footprints starts with, well, footprints. How amazing to find what are called Trace fossils - In May 2013 a spring storm uncovered the oldest human traces outside Africa on Happisburgh’s foreshore. 850,000old fossil footprints left by early humans Homo antecessor, moving along the banks of an ancient river. They were identified as mixed footprints, adults and children of different ages. This is also mentioned in a wonderful book, Time Song by Julia Balckburn. I like it when one book reference leads to another, or takes me back to something I've read.
I find it interesting to find connections everywhere. With the resurgence of interest in women writers, artists etc, Mary Shellley and her famous work Frankenstein are as relevant as ever. On the chapter on ice and snow, The Library of Babel, DF writes:
Some traces braid human and geological histories together. Since the polar wastes so captivated the imagination of Romantic writers like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mary Shelley, the ice has been represented as a zero landscape, a region outside time – trackless, life less and mindless. But the origins of some of the greatests works of the Romantic era are also recorded in the Greenland ice., in a layer of tephra - particles of volcanic rock and ash – that marks the eruption of Indonesia’s Mount ~Tambora in 1815. The catastrophe disrupted weather patterns across the globe , casting a pall over Europe the following year that inspired Byron’s Darkness and Shelley’s Frankenstein, which begins and ends on the Arctic ice.
We go with him on a journey through deep time. From this journey we can imagine what humans in deep future time, if they exist at all, will make of what survives as fossils. I am struck by the growing interest in the deep past, in works of fiction and non fiction. We are becoming aware of our long lasting impact on the planet as never before.
Do you remember when we were asked at school to write the life history of a penny? DF tells us the extaordinary life story of a plastic bottle. It’s enough to make you shun every bottle in sight. The life of plastic bottles is a sorry story, encompassing oceans and much else, an unimaginable journey. Of course it starts with the villain, oil. No, first we dig deeper to the phytoplancton blooms which eventually decay and are worked on by bacteria, forming deposits in a constant transformation taking 150million years. So the bottle’s sinister ancestor is oil emerges from these deposits Who can wonder then that this ingenious invention comes with a fatal flaw?
An extract from The Bottle as Hero.
every invention that we take for granted follows from that first rock that became a tool…. that leap towards a plastic world.
The language he uses when exploring the properties of plastic is fascinating:
we can bend it to the shape of our desire......where the old gods demanded praise, plastic’s divinity is a self-effacing presence in everyday life, so ubiquitous in fact that we have become accustomed to not seeing it.
To put it in immediate context, he starts thinking of the number of objects made of plastic he used that morning.
It is this referral to our ordinary daily lives that heightens the reality of what we’re told.
The most striking and frightening aspect of global warming is what happens to the ice. DF goes in search of scientific evidence in Camp Century. The ice in Greenland holds stories of the earth. As often it all starts with the US military. They set about building a city under the ice. 140 km providing accommodation for over 200 soldiers along with a main street, hospital, chapel, post office laboratory, radio stations, dark room cinema, skating rink, laboratory. It arose from fear during the Cold War. Scientists are able to to date the ice by examining the isotopic density of each layer of ice.
I can only cite certain sections that strike me vividly, not only by their stark message but also because they evoke works of art. In the chapter Medusa's Gaze about coral reefs, which we all know are endangered, David Farrier takes us to Paul Klee's Sunken Landscape. It’s a joyful scene, surging with life – except in one detail, like a dark twin to the sun-daisy, a black sun hangs , slighty decentred in the idle ground of the picture. In Chroma, a colour memoir he wrote as aids related illness was blinding him, Derek Jarman wrote of how each colour possessed its own sense of time, ‘Passing centuries are evergreen ….Red explodes and consumes itself. Blue is infinite'.
That's not all. Here is a wonderful passage about the sorry state of corals that will stay with me:
Corals polyps are the planet’s builders, continually constructing new structures on the fossils of older corals. ......They have a symbiotic relationship with photosynthesizing algae called zooanthellae. The algae also provide corals with their vivid pigmentation from honey brown or peach to a lysergic array of flamboyant yellow blues and pinks when the water gets too warm, however, the coral expels its symbonts, vomiting the algae and with it the spectacular colours, leaving behind a stripped and starving skeleton.
If you're not struck with this, then the description of methane gas trapped in the permafrost is certainly chilling - thawing spells disaster:
Methane is a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide. And while it lingers twelve years in the atmosphere, it has the potential to do long lasting damage.
already the permafrost is softening...a Siberian heatwave in 2016 exposed the remains of an anthrax infected reindeer releasing spores of 75 year old bacteria into the air water and food chain and killing a ten year old boy. And that is apart from the risk of severe flooding in the future, which we have witnessed in our lifetime.
We all know that language evolves and changes, but what about this statement about our English language? All words have a half life.
How sobering to think that English, if it is still spoken, will retain only 12 percent of basic words currently in circulation. So what is so fascinating is that the burying of nuclear waste does not only pose the obvious safety problems, it also poses problems of commuicating the dangers to our deep time successors. The written word may not suffice because of what palaeolinguists call semantic or phonetic erosion. So what method can be used?
Nuclear semiotics was devised by Thomas Sebeok in 1984 (!) he proposed that the best way to protect a message against the erosive effects of deep time was to form what he called an atomic priesthood.He put his faith in the continuity and the power of myth. Superstitions should be allowed to accumulate around sites wreathing irradiated landscapes in an aura of illness and threat to discourage the curiosity of the unitinitiated. An annual ritual would guard the sites, and it would be passed on from generation to generation.
Other initiatiatives are mentioned in the book.
Farrier visits Onkalo the Finnish depository.
great holes deep in the earth filled with long lived radioactive by-products hold more than the residue of our atomic adventures. We are buried there as well – or at least an image of ourselves that we would like forgotten. We bury the idea that we are an unprecedented threat to the future. Like Oedipus, we hope instead that what remains of us will find rest far from the city, that the dust will cover us and our sins fall out of memory. And somewhere deep within is the hope that the world we made – of multiplying Sickness Countries and death that visits unseen, and the flickering moment under the moment – can be safely buried and left behind as well.
And what about the amazing world of microbes? They will last longer than words, it seems. It's an extraordinary thought! What is more, they can be coopted as writing partners – in theory. Some have tried. In the chapter called The Little God D radiodurans was discovered in 1956 living inside a tin of corned beef. In 2003 Christian Bok began to wonder if he could use bacterian DNA as a surface to write upon and also as a writing partner. The result was "Eternal poems. Euridece". Unfortunately, the organism is not cooperating. No matter what they try. “It’s like trying to appease a little god,” he said.
There are too many stories to pack into a review. You’ll just have to read it for yourselves to get the full impact of this brilliant perspective on our lives on this planet.
.
May 1, 2024
Fascinating, but moving and deeply unsettling. Combining social sciences with geology, geography, etymology and paleontology makes for a unique take on the anthropocene, one which will stay with me for some time.
September 4, 2022
Footprints is a good introduction, if slightly shallow, to several modern issues relating to the climate crisis including biodiversity collapse, plastic pollution, ocean ecology, and energy production.
Farrier's glittering descriptions are captivating and ease the reader through a journey of Earth's future, serving a nice invitation to consider how our present actions may impact the Earth in the millennia to come.
The lack of depth becomes grating further into the book. Few insights are actually offered to the pages filled, sometimes oddly, with facts that seem unconnected. I think this is at its worst between chapters: few links are drawn between the many ecological issues discussed in the book.
Farrier's glittering descriptions are captivating and ease the reader through a journey of Earth's future, serving a nice invitation to consider how our present actions may impact the Earth in the millennia to come.
The lack of depth becomes grating further into the book. Few insights are actually offered to the pages filled, sometimes oddly, with facts that seem unconnected. I think this is at its worst between chapters: few links are drawn between the many ecological issues discussed in the book.
August 5, 2020
It is very well written. My key takeaway was that despite liking to think that we are masters of nature, mankind has and is taking many actions while totally clueless about the implications. That has been discussed often in regards to climate change but Mr. Farrier outlines numerous other examples with the potential for similarly disastrous outcomes.
April 18, 2022
Un bon llibre, que tot i no ser exhaustiu planteja algunes preguntes i reflexions ben interessants. Ben escrit. Recomanable.
Read
January 12, 2025Ugh - terrible start to the year. Two 2 star books followed by a DNF, and we are not even through the first half of January. 😵💫
I didn't realise this book was written by a Professor of Literature, so there are so many references to poets, stories and myths and I am only on page 60. Even flicking through it, it seems like every page or so there is a reference to some literature/poetry. I hoped for something a bit more 'hard-sciencey' but I am not seeing it after 20% through. Much preferred Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.
I think I need to read some easy fiction next, and also shorter. Out of the last 3 books I have read, 2 have been 1,000+ pages.....I have to revert to something 'easier' for a while.
I didn't realise this book was written by a Professor of Literature, so there are so many references to poets, stories and myths and I am only on page 60. Even flicking through it, it seems like every page or so there is a reference to some literature/poetry. I hoped for something a bit more 'hard-sciencey' but I am not seeing it after 20% through. Much preferred Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.
I think I need to read some easy fiction next, and also shorter. Out of the last 3 books I have read, 2 have been 1,000+ pages.....I have to revert to something 'easier' for a while.
November 18, 2025
An interesting science book, but it was written by a Literature professor, so a lot of the interesting science was interspersed with literary asides and colorful descriptions of locations. I found myself skimming sections of name-dropping authors and quotes to get back to the topic of each chapter.
July 22, 2025
huellas que pensar y cultivar para que los fósiles hablen bien de nosotros
May 16, 2021
This is an interesting subject to me (what, exactly, will be left behind by us and become fossils in the future), but I just wasn't into the author's writing style. He tended to ramble and go off on tangents that had very little to do with the subject at hand (such as pages dedicated to various authors' descriptions of a solar eclipse, which was included in the chapter about the increasingly scarce biodiversity - it just didn't fit well into the chapter at all). I'm glad that I borrowed this one from the library.
October 12, 2021
Ten reportaż ma moc, ma siłę oddziaływania na wyobraźnię, na czytelnika, ma myśli i oby i na czyny. Nie spodziewałam się tak świetnej lektury, która w sposób głęboko literacki, a jednocześnie ściśle naukowy opisuje nam to, co zostawimy Ziemi. Ślady stóp na pisaku zmyje morze, ale ślady plastikowej codzienności będą na miliony lat połączone z oddychającą tkanką Błękitnej Planety.
David Farrier oczarował mnie stylem, bo "ZA MILION LAT OD DZISIAJ", to pozycja czuła, pięknie napisana. Czytając tę książkę miałam wrażenie, że czytam współczesną baśń, która niesie w sobie niebezpieczną pieśń przyszłości.
Autor często odwołuje się do wielkich dzieł światowej literatury. Mamy tu mitologię, która sprytnie maluje nam obraz na pozór metaforyczny, ale gdy przyjrzymy się tym treściom bliżej, uważniej, to zauważymy ich ponadczasową prawdę, ludzką przezorność, intuicję, która od wieków towarzyszy naszemu gatunkowi, ale której także od wieków nie słuchamy... choć słyszymy.
Rozdział 3 "Butelka jako bohater" stał się moim ulubionym, choć na oko uznałam, że będzie tym najmniej interesującym. Jest to ODYSEJA BUTELKI, tak fenomenalnie opisana przez Farrier'a, że już chyba na zawsze pozostanie jej cień w mojej głowie. Ta podróż wydaje się wieczna, a jej konsekwencje spektakularne... bo plastik jest sztuczny, ale trwa niewzruszony i wżera się w ciało świata.
Uwielbiam te odniesienia do literatury. Autor świetnie łączy ludzką wyobraźnię z ludzką siłą twórczą. Znajdziemy tu słowa Kapuścińskiego, magiczne metafory Woolf ("Fale"), mitologiczne opowieści i ludowe bajki, jak chociażby ta nigeryjska o NIENASYCONEJ DRODZE i groźnym Królu Dróg. Wszystko to idealnie opisuje grozę, czarą linię, która prowadzi nas do przyszłości której skamieliny będą pachnieć sztucznością, nuklearnym syfem, bladą i martwą Rafą Koralową, lodowcami, które zniknęły i podwodnymi miastami widmo.
Autor poruszył wiele ważnych tematów, sam choć był bohaterem tej książki, nie narzucał się czytelnikowi. Był obserwatorem, bajarzem, opowiadaczem. Napisał bardzo przystępny i mądry reportaż, który w czuły i pełen miłości do człowieka sposób zwraca się także do tego samego człowieka z prośbą o - rozsądek.
Nie byłabym sobą, gdybym w tym kontekście nie napisała o tym, że niemal cały majątek leży w rękach 1% ludzkości i to ten 1% powinien jako pierwszy bić się w pierś... tylko, że to nie jest możliwe. Nienażarte bogactwo musi się przecież bogacić.
Sięgnijcie po tę książką - bo warto! Okładka może troszkę zniechęcać, ale nie dajcie się jej zwieść, bo to lektura świetna, która wciąga, wzrusza, porusza, wyjaśnia, uczula i wykopuje niewygodne fakty z ziemi - nawet jeśli jest to zalana betonem ziemia czarnobylska.
Jaki po Tobie ślad odkopią archeolodzy przyszłości?
8/10
seria MUNDUS
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
bo.wiem
David Farrier oczarował mnie stylem, bo "ZA MILION LAT OD DZISIAJ", to pozycja czuła, pięknie napisana. Czytając tę książkę miałam wrażenie, że czytam współczesną baśń, która niesie w sobie niebezpieczną pieśń przyszłości.
Autor często odwołuje się do wielkich dzieł światowej literatury. Mamy tu mitologię, która sprytnie maluje nam obraz na pozór metaforyczny, ale gdy przyjrzymy się tym treściom bliżej, uważniej, to zauważymy ich ponadczasową prawdę, ludzką przezorność, intuicję, która od wieków towarzyszy naszemu gatunkowi, ale której także od wieków nie słuchamy... choć słyszymy.
Rozdział 3 "Butelka jako bohater" stał się moim ulubionym, choć na oko uznałam, że będzie tym najmniej interesującym. Jest to ODYSEJA BUTELKI, tak fenomenalnie opisana przez Farrier'a, że już chyba na zawsze pozostanie jej cień w mojej głowie. Ta podróż wydaje się wieczna, a jej konsekwencje spektakularne... bo plastik jest sztuczny, ale trwa niewzruszony i wżera się w ciało świata.
Uwielbiam te odniesienia do literatury. Autor świetnie łączy ludzką wyobraźnię z ludzką siłą twórczą. Znajdziemy tu słowa Kapuścińskiego, magiczne metafory Woolf ("Fale"), mitologiczne opowieści i ludowe bajki, jak chociażby ta nigeryjska o NIENASYCONEJ DRODZE i groźnym Królu Dróg. Wszystko to idealnie opisuje grozę, czarą linię, która prowadzi nas do przyszłości której skamieliny będą pachnieć sztucznością, nuklearnym syfem, bladą i martwą Rafą Koralową, lodowcami, które zniknęły i podwodnymi miastami widmo.
Autor poruszył wiele ważnych tematów, sam choć był bohaterem tej książki, nie narzucał się czytelnikowi. Był obserwatorem, bajarzem, opowiadaczem. Napisał bardzo przystępny i mądry reportaż, który w czuły i pełen miłości do człowieka sposób zwraca się także do tego samego człowieka z prośbą o - rozsądek.
Nie byłabym sobą, gdybym w tym kontekście nie napisała o tym, że niemal cały majątek leży w rękach 1% ludzkości i to ten 1% powinien jako pierwszy bić się w pierś... tylko, że to nie jest możliwe. Nienażarte bogactwo musi się przecież bogacić.
Sięgnijcie po tę książką - bo warto! Okładka może troszkę zniechęcać, ale nie dajcie się jej zwieść, bo to lektura świetna, która wciąga, wzrusza, porusza, wyjaśnia, uczula i wykopuje niewygodne fakty z ziemi - nawet jeśli jest to zalana betonem ziemia czarnobylska.
Jaki po Tobie ślad odkopią archeolodzy przyszłości?
8/10
seria MUNDUS
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
bo.wiem
August 10, 2024
Imaginarse como serán los fósiles futuros o las huellas que dejaremos como sociedad en los próximos miles de años es un reto y en general un tema muy peculiar, "aprender a ver un cambio que se producirá dentro de un tiempo, pero del que ya hay indicios."
En varios libros he leído que el Antropoceno es la era geológica que se proponen los científicos y es que solo desde el 2016 en el congreso internacional de geología en Ciudad del Cabo, se votó por aceptarla y aún tienen que demostrar el cambio en el planeta por obra del impacto de la actividad humana y la históricamente ha tenido mayor extinción de especies y mayor impacto sobre el clima y el suelo, y es que estamos cambiando el futuro sin darnos cuenta.
Hemos construido miles de millones de kilómetros de carretera, y es que ahora los humanos solo nos movemos a través de ellas, siguiendo un camino marcado por alguien más, pero que en miles de años sea por la entropía o por desastres naturales quedaran en ruinas como testigos silenciosos del paso los humanos.
Ame el capítulo de la Botella como héroe, el cual es más bien antagónico, y es que los humanos evolucionaron gracias a que empezaron a cargar cosas, llevar agua de un lago al otro les permitió movilidad, ahora compramos una botella y la tiramos en unos minutos la cual tiene una vida de millones de años en el ambiente.
No somos conscientes muchas veces del cambio que pasa a nuestro alrededor, mucho menos de identificar ese futuro que estamos afectando, el concepto del "síndrome de la línea base cambiante" donde cada generación supone que el mundo siempre ha sido como es ahora, no sé si existirá otro concepto que englobe el síndrome que lleve a la gente a pensar que el futuro todo se mantendrá de la misma manera, lo cual no es posible sin pensar en el impacto que tienen nuestras decisiones hoy en día.
¿Cómo le advertiremos a generaciones futuras de todo lo que hemos impactado? La historia de las plantas piloto de aislamiento de residuos nucleares (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - WIPP) o el depósito en Finlandia Onkalo, construidas para mantener los desechos 100.000 años, nos hacen pensar si para ese entonces hablaremos incluso un idioma similar al de hoy, como se mantendrán alejadas esa generación de esos residuos tan peligrosos.
Las medusas en el mar, el ciclo las bacterias, ¿algo tan futurista como almacenar información en el ADN (DNA) que cosas si pueden durar De seguro nos eran nuestras memorias, serán solo huellas de una época que desestabilizo el planeta y hoy solo podemos imaginarnos escenarios alternos posibles después de tanto abuso?
Un libro que vale la pena leer
En varios libros he leído que el Antropoceno es la era geológica que se proponen los científicos y es que solo desde el 2016 en el congreso internacional de geología en Ciudad del Cabo, se votó por aceptarla y aún tienen que demostrar el cambio en el planeta por obra del impacto de la actividad humana y la históricamente ha tenido mayor extinción de especies y mayor impacto sobre el clima y el suelo, y es que estamos cambiando el futuro sin darnos cuenta.
Hemos construido miles de millones de kilómetros de carretera, y es que ahora los humanos solo nos movemos a través de ellas, siguiendo un camino marcado por alguien más, pero que en miles de años sea por la entropía o por desastres naturales quedaran en ruinas como testigos silenciosos del paso los humanos.
Ame el capítulo de la Botella como héroe, el cual es más bien antagónico, y es que los humanos evolucionaron gracias a que empezaron a cargar cosas, llevar agua de un lago al otro les permitió movilidad, ahora compramos una botella y la tiramos en unos minutos la cual tiene una vida de millones de años en el ambiente.
No somos conscientes muchas veces del cambio que pasa a nuestro alrededor, mucho menos de identificar ese futuro que estamos afectando, el concepto del "síndrome de la línea base cambiante" donde cada generación supone que el mundo siempre ha sido como es ahora, no sé si existirá otro concepto que englobe el síndrome que lleve a la gente a pensar que el futuro todo se mantendrá de la misma manera, lo cual no es posible sin pensar en el impacto que tienen nuestras decisiones hoy en día.
¿Cómo le advertiremos a generaciones futuras de todo lo que hemos impactado? La historia de las plantas piloto de aislamiento de residuos nucleares (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - WIPP) o el depósito en Finlandia Onkalo, construidas para mantener los desechos 100.000 años, nos hacen pensar si para ese entonces hablaremos incluso un idioma similar al de hoy, como se mantendrán alejadas esa generación de esos residuos tan peligrosos.
Las medusas en el mar, el ciclo las bacterias, ¿algo tan futurista como almacenar información en el ADN (DNA) que cosas si pueden durar De seguro nos eran nuestras memorias, serán solo huellas de una época que desestabilizo el planeta y hoy solo podemos imaginarnos escenarios alternos posibles después de tanto abuso?
Un libro que vale la pena leer
November 6, 2020
Very interesting book.
Farrier explores the depths of deep time (millions of years, or more) and sets out to imagine what will be the fossils that our cities, materials, and way of living will leave behind. From things like concrete and tarmac, passing through the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere and nuclear waste, all the way to the decrease of microbial diversity and data storage in DNA, the author shows how our actions have consequences way more profound than we might think.
However, throughout the reading, I kept wondering: who will care about those things?
Farrier suggests that, "for some, deep time replenished a sense of mystery depleted by the loosening bonds of religious faith" (p.13). This take on deep time seems to give some sacrality to our everyday's actions, but it falls flat when we realize that maybe there will be no one to sift through the data. Or maybe, if humans manage to suvive into deep time, there will be no one who cares about our age and our actions, just as we care little about the anguishes and decisions of those who lived a few centuries before us.
Maybe to counteract that, Farrier muses that the only immortal beings on the planet are a species of jellyfish, and one of the scientists he interviewed jests that should cockroaches evolve enough to analyze the fossils left by the anthropocene - the age of humans! - there would be a lot to discover. But would they care?
The book finishes with a story about a poem written on the DNA of an unkillable bacteria sent to Mars. A poem for no one, it seems... Or was it for the martians, who maybe couldn't care less for human poetry?
Believe what you may about the deep time, I say that it only matters if we are around to care: to attach meaning and importance to that story, and also to look after the planet and the archive of humanity it became.
As a Christian theologian who believes in a corporeal resurrection of the saints, however, it was an insanely interesting book to read and wonder what kind of activities will fill our time when death is no more and the knowledge of the Lord fill the earth as the waters fill the sea. Maybe fixing Chernobyl and cleaning up the oceans will be a good task to tackle before we go out exploring the galaxies?
Farrier explores the depths of deep time (millions of years, or more) and sets out to imagine what will be the fossils that our cities, materials, and way of living will leave behind. From things like concrete and tarmac, passing through the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere and nuclear waste, all the way to the decrease of microbial diversity and data storage in DNA, the author shows how our actions have consequences way more profound than we might think.
However, throughout the reading, I kept wondering: who will care about those things?
Farrier suggests that, "for some, deep time replenished a sense of mystery depleted by the loosening bonds of religious faith" (p.13). This take on deep time seems to give some sacrality to our everyday's actions, but it falls flat when we realize that maybe there will be no one to sift through the data. Or maybe, if humans manage to suvive into deep time, there will be no one who cares about our age and our actions, just as we care little about the anguishes and decisions of those who lived a few centuries before us.
Maybe to counteract that, Farrier muses that the only immortal beings on the planet are a species of jellyfish, and one of the scientists he interviewed jests that should cockroaches evolve enough to analyze the fossils left by the anthropocene - the age of humans! - there would be a lot to discover. But would they care?
The book finishes with a story about a poem written on the DNA of an unkillable bacteria sent to Mars. A poem for no one, it seems... Or was it for the martians, who maybe couldn't care less for human poetry?
Believe what you may about the deep time, I say that it only matters if we are around to care: to attach meaning and importance to that story, and also to look after the planet and the archive of humanity it became.
As a Christian theologian who believes in a corporeal resurrection of the saints, however, it was an insanely interesting book to read and wonder what kind of activities will fill our time when death is no more and the knowledge of the Lord fill the earth as the waters fill the sea. Maybe fixing Chernobyl and cleaning up the oceans will be a good task to tackle before we go out exploring the galaxies?
September 12, 2022
Footprints is a very sobering book. It discusses the impact that human society has on our planet and what will remain as evidence in the future. Although there is a small discussion about the impact of pre-modern times; it is the developments of last century that will be our most lasting mementos.
It is incredible to think that in less than 100 years we have shaped the world so radically that we have altered the air, water and land in ways that will take eons to repair.
Some of the topics covered: roads and cities - more than half of the world population now live in cities, up from 3% in the 1800s, and how many of the worlds great cities are sinking under their own weight; that nearly all the millions of tons of plastics made today end up in the ocean or buried in landfill and that it will still be there in millions of years. The melting of ice caps and glaciers is covered in a chapter on the interpretation of ice cores drilled deep in the old ice. These cores can be used to describe climatic events of long ago - the chemistry of the atmosphere, volcanic eruptions and even the development of nitrogen fertilisers and leaded petrol.
Human destruction will also be recored by the world wide loss of coral reefs, especially the Great Barrier Reef and the nuclear waste left over from the mining, processing and final use of nuclear energy. As nuclear waste requires tens of thousands of years before it is no longer toxic, how do we manage the waste for future generations?
Then there is the destruction of the natural environment - the flora and fauna of the land and oceans - that is undergoing another great extinction similar to the end of the dinosaurs. In this chapter the author visits a dying sea to find out what remains when an isolated water body is so polluted that almost nothing can survive. There are now more than 500 dead zones in the world's oceans and increasingly the oceans will be home to enormous swarms of jellyfish.
Although it's about the future the book actually builds an enormous sense of bitter nostalgia for the world we are losing.
Although an important book, it is a little indulgent at times, getting side tracked by interesting but not so relevant discussions of literary personalities and mythical stories. It's a 4 stars for me.
It is incredible to think that in less than 100 years we have shaped the world so radically that we have altered the air, water and land in ways that will take eons to repair.
Some of the topics covered: roads and cities - more than half of the world population now live in cities, up from 3% in the 1800s, and how many of the worlds great cities are sinking under their own weight; that nearly all the millions of tons of plastics made today end up in the ocean or buried in landfill and that it will still be there in millions of years. The melting of ice caps and glaciers is covered in a chapter on the interpretation of ice cores drilled deep in the old ice. These cores can be used to describe climatic events of long ago - the chemistry of the atmosphere, volcanic eruptions and even the development of nitrogen fertilisers and leaded petrol.
Human destruction will also be recored by the world wide loss of coral reefs, especially the Great Barrier Reef and the nuclear waste left over from the mining, processing and final use of nuclear energy. As nuclear waste requires tens of thousands of years before it is no longer toxic, how do we manage the waste for future generations?
Then there is the destruction of the natural environment - the flora and fauna of the land and oceans - that is undergoing another great extinction similar to the end of the dinosaurs. In this chapter the author visits a dying sea to find out what remains when an isolated water body is so polluted that almost nothing can survive. There are now more than 500 dead zones in the world's oceans and increasingly the oceans will be home to enormous swarms of jellyfish.
Although it's about the future the book actually builds an enormous sense of bitter nostalgia for the world we are losing.
Although an important book, it is a little indulgent at times, getting side tracked by interesting but not so relevant discussions of literary personalities and mythical stories. It's a 4 stars for me.
Read
September 19, 2025From a professor of English in the University of Edinburgh, this book is an information-rich and melancholic reflection on the long shadow of legacy that our generation is leaving for future millennia, in the form of artifacts that have a long lifespan. These future artifacts include the carbon we are sequestering in the oceans and atmosphere; the plastics and microplastics we are clogging in landfills and in streams and oceans and the bellies of marine life; the concrete we are pouring into roads and blasting into tunnels; the pits we are digging for coal; as well as the artifacts we have vanished, such as coral reefs. He talks movingly of dynamic histories that our actions in the Anthropocene have set into motion, such as the rising of sea levels through glacial melt, the creation of plastics from algal mats of the Neo-Tethys Sea 150 million years ago that went into Chinese pipelines into plastic dumps floating into the ocean, and the records of climate and temperature frozen in ice cores. This book is a heavy reminder of the long tail of inimical influence we possess over the coming generations of human and non-human life on earth. Five-star worthy book, except for the fact that the author expels an undesirable amount of greenhouse gases himself in the effort of unnecessary plane travel and last-chance-to-see tourism to produce this book (going to Shanghai, the Baltics, the Great Barrier Reef, etc.)
January 13, 2024
This book, dealing with a lot of geology and biology, expressed these long-term processes with more metaphors than you can shake a stick at, which makes sense given the author is an academic who studies English Literature. He is constantly quoting from other writers, retelling stories, describing famous artwork or photography - and using them to communicate things like the scale of open-cast mining, the knowledge stored in ice cores, and the evolution of microbes. It was maybe a bit much occasionally, but often some really poetic passages did a lot to help you see and feel these ideas.
Farrier's description of the journey a discarded plastic bottle ("a vessel that contains millennia"), from the decaying organic matter that made the oil that was piped to a Chinese refinery millions of years later then moulded into plastic then carried into the sea and swept up by ocean currents to eventually wash up in Hawaii and crack in the sun into shards and finally sink to the ocean floor or be swallowed by sea life, was cinematic.
One of the most fascinating things I learnt about was about facilities for sealing away nuclear waste for thousands of years. These included the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and its carefully designed signs to somehow communicate across countless generations the danger that lies beneath the ground.
Farrier's description of the journey a discarded plastic bottle ("a vessel that contains millennia"), from the decaying organic matter that made the oil that was piped to a Chinese refinery millions of years later then moulded into plastic then carried into the sea and swept up by ocean currents to eventually wash up in Hawaii and crack in the sun into shards and finally sink to the ocean floor or be swallowed by sea life, was cinematic.
One of the most fascinating things I learnt about was about facilities for sealing away nuclear waste for thousands of years. These included the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, and its carefully designed signs to somehow communicate across countless generations the danger that lies beneath the ground.
March 20, 2024
(9.5/10) This is a superb book, a narrative that is not told in this way and in this much depth anywhere else. The fact that Farrier, after such a fascinating global tour, reproduces in an approachable way the science involved, while being primarily a student of prose that walks us through the emotional and cultural resonance of all of this science in magnificent language, renders Footprints a unique learning experience that I'm amazed hasn't garnered ten times the attention it has.
The only complaint I had, the concern I had going in and the reason I don't give this book a 10/10, is that the book is shatteringly depressing. There's no real getting around that with this subject matter. However, even then, this book feels emotionally worthwhile in facing up to and processing the self-imposed threats to humanity to come. Instead of evoking the same vague, clickbait fears of future ruin we remind ourselves of every day, the book paints a (near-)complete picture of what that future might actually look like, and allows us to start coming to terms with the problem in a way that's more categorised and realistic. I think Farrier is right that this exercise can result in helping us imagine alternative possible futures.
Farrier is an enormously memorable writer and this book deserves far more reception than it's received.
The only complaint I had, the concern I had going in and the reason I don't give this book a 10/10, is that the book is shatteringly depressing. There's no real getting around that with this subject matter. However, even then, this book feels emotionally worthwhile in facing up to and processing the self-imposed threats to humanity to come. Instead of evoking the same vague, clickbait fears of future ruin we remind ourselves of every day, the book paints a (near-)complete picture of what that future might actually look like, and allows us to start coming to terms with the problem in a way that's more categorised and realistic. I think Farrier is right that this exercise can result in helping us imagine alternative possible futures.
Farrier is an enormously memorable writer and this book deserves far more reception than it's received.
July 7, 2024
David Farrier's "Footprints" is an extraordinary exploration of the anthropogenic marks left on the planet, encapsulating a powerful narrative that blends history, science, and lyrical prose. Farrier masterfully navigates the landscapes of our making, from nuclear fallout zones to the plastic-laden depths of the ocean, presenting a compelling argument about our deep and often irreversible impact on the earth.
What sets "Footprints" apart is Farrier’s ability to weave complex environmental issues with poignant personal stories and historical anecdotes, making the science approachable and deeply human. His exploration of the future fossil record is both innovative and haunting, urging us to consider what legacy we choose to leave behind.
The book is not only a call to awareness but also a call to action. It challenges the reader to reconsider their role in the ongoing narrative of the planet. Farrier’s eloquent style and thoughtful pacing make "Footprints" a mesmerizing read that is hard to put down.
Overall, "Footprints" is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of our planet. Farrier does not just present problems but also nudges us towards pondering solutions, leaving us with a sense of responsibility and hope. This book is a profound reminder of the power of human agency in shaping the Earth, for better or worse.
What sets "Footprints" apart is Farrier’s ability to weave complex environmental issues with poignant personal stories and historical anecdotes, making the science approachable and deeply human. His exploration of the future fossil record is both innovative and haunting, urging us to consider what legacy we choose to leave behind.
The book is not only a call to awareness but also a call to action. It challenges the reader to reconsider their role in the ongoing narrative of the planet. Farrier’s eloquent style and thoughtful pacing make "Footprints" a mesmerizing read that is hard to put down.
Overall, "Footprints" is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of our planet. Farrier does not just present problems but also nudges us towards pondering solutions, leaving us with a sense of responsibility and hope. This book is a profound reminder of the power of human agency in shaping the Earth, for better or worse.
December 18, 2020
A depressingly terrifying tour of the Anthropocene beautifully written with a view for the future, not just our own, but that of many many generations beyond us. Maybe even beyond the point where there are generations of us.
Farrier presents a fascinating view of the things we, as humans, leave behind as traces of our existence and our life. The displacement of Earth and its movement, our insatiable hunger for more... everything, and out impact on the planet is evident throughout, making me wonder what morsels we're leaving for the future?
While some projects like the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository are being built with a mind to future generations, Farrier shows that is anything but commonplace for our ordinary day-to-day living. Our plastics, climate change, and death of species are leaving discernible scars (or footprints) that in millennia could be used to understand who we were, much like we try to unravel the mysteries of our distant - and not so distant - past.
A worthwhile read that steers clear of preaching or admonishing, and instead opts for a future-centric perspective that makes inaction seem foolish.
Farrier presents a fascinating view of the things we, as humans, leave behind as traces of our existence and our life. The displacement of Earth and its movement, our insatiable hunger for more... everything, and out impact on the planet is evident throughout, making me wonder what morsels we're leaving for the future?
While some projects like the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository are being built with a mind to future generations, Farrier shows that is anything but commonplace for our ordinary day-to-day living. Our plastics, climate change, and death of species are leaving discernible scars (or footprints) that in millennia could be used to understand who we were, much like we try to unravel the mysteries of our distant - and not so distant - past.
A worthwhile read that steers clear of preaching or admonishing, and instead opts for a future-centric perspective that makes inaction seem foolish.
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