The quantity and quality of consciousness, one may say, have always been growing throughout geological times. In this respect man, in whom nervous organisation and therefore psychological powers have attained an undisputed maximum, may be considered, scientifically, as a natural centre of evolution of the primates.

Most visitors to Iceland tend to spend just a few hours in Reykjavik before moving on to the geological wonders beyond. I think they are missing out.

What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.

From year to year, environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives, but from evolutionary or geological perspectives, what is happening is explosive change.

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.

Philosophers of freedom were mainly, and understandably, concerned with how humans would escape the injustice, oppression, inequality, or even uniformity foisted on them by other humans or human-made systems. Geological time and the chronology of human histories remained unrelated. This distance between the two calendars, as we have seen, is what climate scientists now claim has collapsed. The period I have mentioned, from 1750 to now, is also the time when human beings switched from wood and other renewable fuels to large-scale use of fossil fuel-first coal and then oil and gas. The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil-fuel use.

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

Geological change usually takes thousands of years to happen but we are seeing the climate changing not just in our lifetimes but also year by year.

From year to year environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives but from evolutionary or geological perspectives what is happening is explosive change.

Civilization exists by geological consent subject to change without notice.