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Footprints : in search of future fossils / David Farrier.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020Copyright date: ©2020Edition: First editionDescription: 307 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780374157333
  • 0374157332
Subject(s):
Contents:
Traces of a haunted future -- The insatiable road -- Thin cities -- The bottle as hero -- The library of Babel -- Medusa's gaze -- The moment under the moment -- Where there should be something, there is nothing -- The little god -- Seeing the new world.
Summary: The author surveys the traces we will leave for peoples in the very distant future. He shows that modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, including the plastic polluting the oceans, the nuclear waste entombed within the earth, and the thirty million miles of paved roads spanning the planet. This is his meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene, and an urgent search for fossils--industrial, chemical, geological--that humans are leaving behind. -- adapted from inside front dust jacket.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 304.2 F246 Available 33111009631983
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-303).

Traces of a haunted future -- The insatiable road -- Thin cities -- The bottle as hero -- The library of Babel -- Medusa's gaze -- The moment under the moment -- Where there should be something, there is nothing -- The little god -- Seeing the new world.

The author surveys the traces we will leave for peoples in the very distant future. He shows that modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, including the plastic polluting the oceans, the nuclear waste entombed within the earth, and the thirty million miles of paved roads spanning the planet. This is his meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene, and an urgent search for fossils--industrial, chemical, geological--that humans are leaving behind. -- adapted from inside front dust jacket.

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