All language subtitles for BBC How Earth Made Us EP05 Human Planet (2010) English

Our planet has immense power,

and for most of human history
it has dominated us.

In the series so far we've seen
how the forces of the planet,

the deep Earth,

wind...

...fire...

...and water

have all had major impacts
on human history.

But now the relationship between
us and the planet is changing.

We're no longer at its mercy.

We have now become
a major planetary force.

The fundamental elements of our planet
have helped shape human history,

but now we ourselves
are a force of nature to be reckoned with.

Even in the wildest corners
of the Earth,

you can't escape our human influence.

The question is
what does that mean for our future?

If you want to get a sense of
our changing relationship with the planet,

then this vast expanse of mud
is the place to come.

This is no ordinary mud.

The towering column of steam

shows that this mud is emerging from
within the Earth at boiling point.

I'm in Indonesia,

one of the most volcanically
active countries on Earth.

Which is a clue to the origin
of this strange phenomenon.

You know, what's happening down there

is one of the most unusual
eruptions on Earth.

It's a volcano,
but it's not spewing out molten lava.

That is a mud volcano.

This volcano began erupting in 2006,

and for the people who live here,
it's been a disaster.

Around 30,000 people have been
displaced by the mudflow,

and around 10,000 homes
have been destroyed.

You know, the scale of this
is truly enormous,

and all the way around
it's surrounded by villages,

and many of them are half flooded
with the mud...like that there.

Look at that, completely burying
these trees here.

Down on the ground,
there's a real sense of desolation.

Up close, it's the sheer oddness
of the scene that strikes you most,

like the fact that I'm walking
alongside the roof of a mosque,

a mosque that was once
the centre piece of a village

that now lies entombed
in solid mud beneath me.

Such an eerie feeling.

It's as if the planet has decided
to reclaim this place from humanity.

Life has been completely smothered.

But there's something
that makes this eruption unique.

And that is what it was caused by.

The eruption going on out there
is really special,

because it's almost certain
it's not natural at all.

Geologists think it was triggered
by us...by human activities,

when an underground probe
for natural gas went horribly wrong.

In 2006, developers were drilling
in search of gas,

but at around 3,000 metres,
they withdrew the drill.

The pressure in the well
then dropped,

which sucked in hot water
from surrounding rock.

This caused fractures in the rock.

Water burst through and shot upwards

mixing with layers of mudstone

to form a liquid mud
that boiled to the surface.

Every day, enough mud emerges

to fill more than 40
Olympic-size swimming pools.

To try to contain the flow,
enormous levees have been constructed.

Wallowing machines
are still trying to channel mud

away from the surrounding villages.

Concrete blocks have even been thrown
into the centre of the volcano

in an attempt to "plug" it.

But every effort to hold back
this relentless tide has failed.

To me, this eruption symbolises

our strange relationship
with the planet today.

On the one hand, we are
an incredibly powerful force now,

capable of triggering
volcanic eruptions.

But on the other hand, we're not
really in control of that power.

Much of the effect we have on the planet
even takes us by surprise.

These days, it's easy to see
our impact on the planet

in a negative light -
the story of an Eden destroyed.

But our relationship with the Earth

is far more intriguing
and surprising than that.

We have a much longer history of

transforming the planet
than you might think.

And not all of those changes
have been bad news.

To go back to the start of the story,

I'm off to Canada's Rocky Mountains.

This mountain scenery is spectacular,

sculpted by one of the Earth's
great cycles,

a cycle that's not only transformed
the surface the planet,

but it's also been critically important
for our evolution, to our history.

It's the cycle of the ice ages.

For millennia, the Rockies
have been a battleground

for immensely powerful geological forces.

Ice has carved this landscape,
creating these dramatic peaks

and cutting deep valleys
out of the rock.

You know, for the past
one million years or so,

our planet's been swinging back
and forth between long ice ages -

when mountains like these
were embedded deep in the ice -

and much shorter warm periods,
like we're in now.

The ice waxed and waned according to
small changes in the Earth's orbit,

and that influenced
the amount of heat

falling on different parts
of the Earth's surface.

The ice age cycle is
pretty well understood.

I mean, it's not an exact science,

and there are plenty of
complicating factors,

but what it means is
that scientists can predict

when ice ages should begin
and when they should end.

But until recently,
geologists had been missing something.

New data has provided
a more accurate understanding

of temperature changes
between ice ages -

periods known as interglacials.

The data shows
that during past interglacials,

temperatures steadily declined.

If that pattern had continued
into the present interglacial,

we would now be heading
into a new ice age.

From here you get a good idea
of what that would have meant.

If cooling had continued
to the present day,

that ice would have crept down
and smothered the whole valley.

From about 7,000 years ago,

temperatures would have
started to fall.

In Europe, the glaciers of the Alps
would have spread out

across alpine meadows.

If the cycle of the ice ages
had continued to follow

the same pattern as in the past,

then human history would have followed
a very different course.

But it didn't happen.

It was the ice age that never was.

If you like, a great escape.

So what prevented the ice
from following the same rhythms

that it always followed in the past?

There's a clue in the timing.

Just when
it should have been getting cooler,

a major change to the planet
was under way.

Farming.

It's thought that farming began
around 11,000 years ago

in the Middle East,
in what's known as the Fertile Crescent.

It took a while to catch on,
but by 7,000 years ago

it was spreading fast,
across Europe and Asia.

Even though our numbers
were still small,

farming had a big impact
on the planet.

Fires were used to clear
the forests for farmland,

which increased the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

We domesticated wild animals,
which produce a lot of methane.

Both carbon dioxide and methane
are powerful greenhouse gases.

This new theory suggests
that the gentle rise in greenhouse gases

meant that instead of temperatures
falling, as they had in the past,

they stayed steady.

The rise of farming was enough
to halt the onset of the next ice age.

It's fascinating to think that
as far back as 7,000 years ago

we had already made an impact
on the planet at a global scale.

This was the beginning of our role
as a force of planetary change.

Since then, human progress
has been defined by our ability

to find ever more inventive ways

of exploiting the planet's
natural systems.

Around 5,000 years ago,
our ancestors discovered

that trapped within certain types
of rock were metal ores.

These mineral-rich rocks were formed
deep inside the Earth

over millions of years.

The metals they released
could be transformed into tools,

the foundation of civilisation.

By 2,000 years ago,

people had found ingenious ways
to intercept the water cycle.

They tapped fresh water
underneath deserts

and used it to create
some of the first cities.

Around 500 years ago,

sailors learnt how to exploit the power
of the Earth's wind systems.

They used them to develop
global ocean trade routes.

And more recently, we discovered
that the fossilised remains

of plants and animals,
coal and oil,

could become major sources of energy.

Each of these discoveries
was a landmark

in our ability to use planetary systems
for our own purposes.

Today, the way in which

we use the Earth's resources
can be summed up by this...

It's just great to be able to
get up close

to one of these beautiful machines.
They're so elegant and streamlined.

A kind of fusion of precision engineering
and raw power.

It's absolutely beautiful.

But as a geologist,
I can't help seeing these planes

through a different lens.

Just look at what
goes into making one...

Aluminium, or aluminum,
comes from a mineral called bauxite.

It's the most abundant
metallic element in the Earth's crust,

which has been concentrated
within rock over millions of years.

Perspex -
in its most basic form, oil.

It's made inside the Earth
over hundreds of thousands of years

from dead organic matter.

And the wiring, loads of copper
from a mineral like malachite.

Anyway, you get the picture.
This thing comes from the Earth.

In many ways, it feels like
modern life is detached from the planet,

but actually we're linked to it

in hundreds of subtle
and surprising ways.

This plane is a huge conglomeration
of natural resources

that have all been precisely extracted,
transformed, moulded

and connected by us.

And what's staggering
is the scale on which we do this.

This airbase in the Arizona desert
is home to over 4,000 planes.

Many of them will never fly again.

Effectively,
this is a vast accumulation

of the planet's minerals.

Our impact on the planet is felt
not just in what we transform,

but also in what
that transformation leaves behind.

I've come here because rivers carry
and deposit sediment.

This is what forms
the rocks of the future.

The old geological hammer's
not much use here. Urgh!

You know, there's a lot of things
in here that I would expect.

There's lots of plant remains,
some pollen grains.

I see a few snail shells.

But in amongst all that

there's some very odd little fragments,

like, a-ha, just here.

Now that...looks like a little shell,
but it's not.

It's made of plastic...

and what that is
is a little plastic pellet,

the kind of plastic pellets that go into
making plastic bags, plastic bottles.

There's more of them, there's loads
of them, there's another one.

And look at that,
it's a plastic seal of a bottle.

Now, that may not be so surprising

when you consider exactly
where this river is...

I'm right in the centre of Los Angeles,

home to around four million people
and all that goes with them.

But the impact of plastics reaches
much further than major cities.

Globally, around 26 million
tonnes of plastic

ends up in the ocean every year,

where it becomes part
of something much bigger.

In the Pacific Ocean,
plastic from America

is swept into a large revolving
ocean current known as a gyre.

As this current circulates, it also
picks up material from East Asia.

Over time, these plastics accumulate
in enormous flotillas.

One of them is so big
it's even got its own name -

the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch.

Eventually, the plastic is broken down
by the sun's ultraviolet rays

into smaller particles,

that sink to the sea floor,
where they are buried.

It's the first stage in their
transformation into sedimentary rock.

The Grand Canyon is a striking example

of the scale this process operates on.

These cliffs were once
an ancient seabed,

formed over millions of years,
as layer after layer of sediment built up.

Under immense pressure,
these layers were cemented together

to form the rock strata we see today.

The plastics that lie
at the bottom of the ocean

will eventually form
part of the rocks of the future -

our geological legacy.

You know, it's a sobering thought
that from the planet's point of view,

our enduring signature, the thing
that marks out the modern human age

in geological terms,
will be the dead weight

of millions of tonnes
of different kinds of plastics.

Our ability to take the Earth's resources

and transform and deposit them
in vast quantities

means we've now made an indelible mark
in the planet's 4.5 billion-year history.

We can slice the tops off mountains

and dig holes big enough to bury a city.

In a single year,
we now move more earth and rock

than all the natural processes
of erosion put together.

Our machines
have transformed the planet.

So great is our impact on the Earth
that it has been used

to define a new geological epoch...

...the Anthropocene, the human epoch.

If you add together
all the landscapes we've altered -

our cities, towns, villages
and farmland -

then 75% of the Earth's ice-free landmass
owes its appearance to us.

This truly is a human planet.

Sometimes our intervention
in the planet's natural processes

can have surprising
and far-reaching consequences.

This is South Dakota in the United States.

It's hard to believe it,
but this was once a busy little town,

up to 300 people living here
in its heyday.

It's hard to imagine it
as a jostling little farming community,

but that's exactly what it was.

In the early 1900s,
this was a boom town.

Farmers poured into the Great Plains
of the western USA

to develop new land.

You'd think this place
would be fantastic for farming.

The whole landscape is covered
in a thick blanket of silts and clays,

blown or washed in after the last ice age.

Soil is a mixture of minerals
from broken-down rocks

and nutrients from organic matter.

It takes more than 500 years
to create just 2cm of it.

What keeps that fine sediment here
is the vegetation -

the grasses bind the topsoil together.

But the first settlers
ploughed over those grasses

and exposed the delicate soil underneath,
and that dried out in the sun.

When the rains failed in the 1930s,
the ploughed-up soil was exposed

to the full force of the wind.

The result was devastating.

It became known as the Dust Bowl.

Half a million people
in the Great Plains were made homeless.

100 million acres of farmland
turned to wasteland.

The homesteaders
of the Great Plains had upset

the delicate balance of the landscape.

80 years on, that delicate balance
is one we still find hard to keep.

In China, deforestation and overgrazing

means soils are being degraded
30 times faster

than the planet's natural processes
can replenish them.

In Australia, clearing
large areas of bush for farmland

has allowed salt
to infiltrate the topsoil,

damaging around 60,000 square kilometres.

In total, 25% of the world's farmland
has now been degraded

as an inadvertent consequence
of our drive to increase food production.

There's now an extraordinary contrast

between the Earth's natural environments
and the ones that we've created.

To fully appreciate the extent

of our interference
in the planet's natural processes,

take a look at one of the Earth's
most fundamental cycles...

...the water cycle.

Rain that falls over mountains
makes its way into streams and rivers.

This is the Lena River.

Its headwaters
are in the Baikal Mountains,

where rain and snowmelt
set the cycle going.

It travels 4,500 kilometres
across Siberia...

...before it reaches a huge delta,

on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

Here it returns water to the sea,
which evaporates to form clouds,

and the cycle begins again.

The Lena is one of the few major rivers

that still completes the water cycle
from source to sea

without a single
man-made interruption.

Today, we've created
an alternative water cycle.

This is part of
the Colorado River system.

Along its 2,000-kilometre length,
it has over 20 dams.

So much water is diverted
to the cities and farmland

of the American West that most years,
it no longer reaches the sea.

The biggest city it supplies
is Los Angeles.

Fresh water is delivered across
hundreds of kilometres of desert

via a network of aqueducts,
canals and pipelines.

This system delivers 90%
of the city's fresh water.

Without it, LA wouldn't exist.

The veins and arteries
of our water supply

are the lifeblood of our civilisation.

And the human version
of this planetary cycle

operates at a global scale.

We have altered the planet's
water cycle to such an extent

that five times as much fresh water
is stored in reservoirs

as flows in all the world's rivers.

This change in the balance of power
between us and the planet is based

more than anything on our ability
to exploit one particular resource.

This is the Athabasca River,
in the heart of Alberta in Canada.

It doesn't look like it,
but today this is a fresh frontier

in one of the great geological
quests of our age -

the hunt for oil.

Oil is central to our lives.

It fuels a mechanised world.

It's a concentrated form of energy,
easily transported.

Every year we burn
around 31 billion barrels of it -

that's 1,000 barrels a second.

The problem is...
it won't last forever.

The amount of oil we're burning
each year takes the planet

over three million years to make.

Thanks...

Finding more oil is getting harder.

Some say we've already reached
a peak in oil production,

and that from now on
it's all downhill,

with supply unable to keep pace
with demand.

But others say
that's a load of rubbish -

there's plenty of oil in the ground,
it's just a case of finding it.

For those in the second camp,
one of their prime exhibits is here.

Ah, now, this is what
I've come to find. Look at this.

Looks like the rock's bleeding,
doesn't it?

This place is just full of oil...

coming out of the rock,
and if you look at it, the thing is...

Look at that - ugh!

You feel as if, if you just squeeze it,
it would come out.

It's actually a sand, but all
the sand grains are just coated in oil.

We've got a name for this -
we call it tar sands -

and this is just about
the dirtiest oil around.

The whole cliff is just full of it.

This kind of oil doesn't come
shooting out in a great fountain.

And you don't get at it
by drilling down into the ground.

This is a very different type of oilfield.

To appreciate just how different it is,
you have to go up high.

Oh, my... Look at that! It's like
we've gone into a different world.

This oil deposit is thought to contain

almost a trillion barrels of oil.

It covers 50,000 square kilometres.

I mean, look at that.
The forest just ends there,

and then after that, just industry
for miles upon miles.

To get at the tar sands involves
scraping the surface

off vast tracts of land.

This is strip mining for oil.

Right below me, you can see
both the huge attraction of tar sands

and their Achilles heel.

On the one hand,
there's just vast amounts of oil -

those fields seem to go on and on forever.

But on the other hand,
getting it out comes at a price,

a hell of a price.

Although it's at the surface,
it's much harder to extract

than conventional oil.

To separate the oil from the sand,

huge volumes of steam
have to be injected into it,

and that's expensive.

In a traditional oil well, you'd expect
around 25 barrels of oil back

for every one barrel of energy
you use to extract it.

Here, it's more like
one barrel of energy in

and only five barrels back.

You know, tar sands may be messy,

but we still get more energy
out of them than we put in.

So as far as oil's concerned,
they're one of our best prospects.

But it's not exactly
an appealing image of hope, is it?

Can't help but think...

that we really are scraping
the bottom of the barrel.

The tar sands illustrate
that the oil is still out there.

And new sources
are being discovered.

It's just they tend to be
exceptionally hard to reach.

For centuries, our ingenuity has
enabled us to find new forms of energy,

so it's easy to think
that trend will continue.

History tells us that
we don't tend to run out of resources.

Instead, when push comes to shove,
we find new ones.

But that is a lesson
from human history.

The planet's history has perhaps
a more important lesson for us.

It's a lesson about the most dramatic
human influence on the planet -

the speed and scale at which
we're changing the atmosphere.

Levels of carbon dioxide and methane
are higher than at any time

in the last 15 million years.

We can already see
some of the effects.

The thickness of the Arctic sea ice
has almost halved.

Some of the extra carbon dioxide
we've pumped into the atmosphere

has been absorbed by the oceans.

This has increased their acidity by 30%,

hindering the growth
of marine creatures, like corals.

Over the last few decades,

the frequency of extreme hurricanes
has doubled in some areas.

We're at the beginning
of a dramatic period of change.

At the heart of it
is the greenhouse effect,

a global warming caused by
the gases we release.

The question is, how will the planet -
and our civilisation -

respond to this change?

For me, the best way to answer
this question is to look back

into the Earth's past.

Which is why I've come
to the coast of California.

There's something really strange
going on in the ocean over here -

the whole water looks as if
it's fizzing away like mad.

I've never known anything like it.

This promises to be an unusual dive.

The point is to take me back
to the last time

the Earth experienced a rapid and extreme
increase in greenhouse gases.

It's amazing.

It's like...

it's like swimming in champagne.

Everywhere you look,

wherever you are,
you're surrounded with bubbles.

These bubbles are the key to unlocking
one of the Earth's great events.

55 million years ago, the atmosphere
went through something very similar

to the changes happening today.

The bubbles are full of a gas
called methane,

which is leaking out
of a fault line deep below me

and heading up there
to the atmosphere.

And it's this speed and intensity of
bubble release that's a critical factor.

Today, only relatively small amounts
of methane bubble out

from seeps like this
at the bottom of the ocean.

But 55 million years ago,

methane started to erupt
from the ocean in massive quantities.

No-one is quite sure
why it happened,

but huge areas of the ocean
would have been bubbling like this.

55 million years ago,

these bubbles
wouldn't have been fizzing out,

they would have been belching out.
It would have had a devastating effect.

Methane is 20 times more potent
than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

And as it burst up
through those ancient oceans,

it led to sudden, runaway global warming.

That burst in methane levels
55 million years ago

was the closest experience we've got

of what continued global warming
might bring.

So what was it that happened
to the planet

during that ancient surge
in global warming?

And what did it mean for life?

The answer can be found

nearly 8,000 kilometres away,
on the Svalbard archipelago.

It's well within the Arctic Circle.

60% of Svalbard
is covered in glaciers.

It's a landscape dominated by ice.

But 55 million years ago,
it was rather different.

The clues are in the rocks.

Let's see what we've got. Ooh!

Ooh, look at this.

It's what I was hoping to find.

These rocks are stacked full
of ancient leaves.

Look, there's a frond of a plant there.

There's another one here.
There's a stem with branches going out.

These rocks are packed full...of leaves.

Better keep going.

Look at this! Would you believe it?!

These fossil leaves originate

from a time just after
the methane surge in the oceans.

They're from a distant relative
of the beech,

a broad-leafed deciduous tree.

Some of these trees are preserved

in the permafrost
in other parts of the Arctic.

It's amazing.

You can just imagine these falling down
from trees onto an ancient forest floor.

But, I mean, today...

you don't get trees here. You don't get
trees like this for hundreds of miles.

It just tells you
that 55 million years ago,

Svalbard was a very different place.

Following the methane surge
in the ocean,

global temperatures would have been
10 degrees warmer than they are today.

It caused immense upheaval.

Plants and animals were forced
to migrate towards the poles.

Back then,
I would have been walking through

a completely different landscape -
subtropical swamps and forest.

Less High Arctic -
more Florida Everglades.

It would have been inhabited
by ancestors of creatures

like the hippopotamus and the crocodile.

The lesson from the Earth's past

is that the world we know today
can change out of all recognition,

simply by raising the level
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

But the remarkable events
of 55 million years ago

offer another,
more optimistic, lesson for us.

Clearly this extraordinary warm period
55 million years ago didn't last -

otherwise,
I wouldn't be dressed like this.

The planet cooled,
ice came to the Arctic.

So what happened?

What happened was the Himalayas.

The creation of this mountain range
helped return ice to the Arctic.

When the tectonic plates
of India and Eurasia collided

around 50 million years ago,

the result was a mountain range
that grew to become the biggest on Earth.

In building the Himalayas,
the planet unleashed

its most formidable
global-cooling weapon...

...weathering.

The process begins when
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

is dissolved in rain and snow.

This reacts with minerals in the rock

to form a solution
that's carried by rivers to the sea.

Here, the carbon is absorbed
by marine creatures.

When these die,
they sink to the sea floor,

eventually becoming rock,
locking the carbon away.

Because the Himalayas
were constantly rising,

they were perpetually exposing
new rock to the elements.

This drew more carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere,

cooling the planet

and eventually leading to
the re-freezing of the Arctic.

So the planet had
an entirely natural way

of reducing greenhouse gases.

But there's one obvious problem,
and that is

it takes millions of years
to build a mountain range,

and we don't have the luxury
of that sort of time.

Yet the lesson from history
is not entirely wasted.

Burying carbon has long been
the sole preserve of the planet,

but there's no reason why we can't have
a go at doing the same thing ourselves.

We are now developing ways
to take carbon out of the atmosphere.

One method is to stimulate the growth
of immense blooms of algae

that use photosynthesis to draw
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

On land, there are plans

to create artificial trees
that replicate photosynthesis.

But the biggest challenge

is to stop carbon dioxide reaching
the atmosphere in the first place.

This can be done by capturing it
at source,

filtering it from industrial chimneys

and then burying it.

Scientists are planning
to try this out on Svalbard.

If you happen to have thousands
of tonnes of carbon to dispose of,

the geology here
is particularly helpful.

That cliff behind me is a layer cake
of sandstone and shale.

And that arrangement is perfect
for burying carbon.

This sandstone is ideal
for storing the carbon,

because there's lots of spaces
in the pores between the grains.

And this dense, impermeable shale
provides the ideal lid

that stops the carbon escaping upwards.

The plan is to drill a number of shafts
through the dense shale lid

and into the sandstone.

Carbon dioxide will then be pumped
down into the sandstone,

where it will be locked
within the pores of the rock.

Carbon capture won't solve
our greenhouse gas problem,

but it might at least buy us some time
to develop cleaner forms of energy.

Burying and locking away carbon
is an attempt to accelerate massively

what the Earth has done
for millions of years.

It's the beginning of
a new approach to the planet,

deliberately transforming it

to try and preserve
the conditions for our survival.

Up until now, the effects of our impact
on the planet, whether good or bad,

have been accidental and unintended.

Whether it's a mud volcano in Indonesia
or altering the Earth's climate,

we never set out
to create these changes.

Science has given us an understanding
of how the planet works

that allows us to protect ourselves
against Earth's unpredictable nature.

But today,
we're on the brink of a new era.

We can now take control of our impact
on the planet's natural processes

and maintain the conditions
for civilisation to flourish.

It's a big challenge,
which involves global co-operation.

But there's an example of
what can be achieved here in Svarlbad.

You know, you'd never know it,

but locked inside this mountain
is something incredibly precious.

And that...that's the way in.

It's got a front door!

It looks like something
out of James Bond!

To protect its contents, this facility
in Svalbard has been built high enough

to be above any future rise
in sea level.

It's been excavated
so deep into the mountain

that it would survive a nuclear explosion.

This is apocalypse planning
for our future survival.

You know, this is a giant vault,

but in a way it's the modern equivalent
of a Noah's ark,

except that instead of sheltering animals,

it's preserving the future
of the world's food supply.

The temperature is a constant
minus 18 degrees Celsius

to protect
the precious contents stored here.

This is a shrine to over 10,000 years
of agricultural development.

It's a global seed vault.

I mean, take this -

this is rice. But the thing is,

there's not just one variety of rice
in here, there's thousands,

with different properties
and different growing conditions,

different resistance to disease.

This is the genetic diversity of rice
for the future.

But of course it's not just about rice.

This vault will one day store

every variation of every staple crop
from every country on the planet.

It's a heck of an insurance policy.

You know, for me,
preserving these seeds,

with all their precious genetic code,
makes a really important point.

And that is, we're taking conscious
control over an uncertain world.

And in that sense,
this whole place is like a symbol

of what can be achieved
at a global level,

if we put our minds to it.

In this series, we've seen
how the fate of past civilisations

has been shaped
by the planet's natural forces.

The Khmers of Angkor Wat thrived on
their ability to exploit the monsoon

until their growing population

outstripped
their most precious resource - water.

The Anasazi of Chaco Canyon
came to ruin

when a change in the El Niño cycle
led to a sudden, prolonged drought.

The Minoans of Santorini flourished

in blissful ignorance
of the volcano beneath them

that would one day
destroy their civilisation.

Today, our relationship
with the planet is a different one.

We are now a geological force
to rival the Earth's natural forces.

The ultimate test will be
how well we use that power.

As a species,
we like to think that we're special.

Well, this is our chance to prove it.