How T. rex can make you think about the future
| Washington
The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History鈥檚 new fossil hall is more than a collection of dinosaur bones 鈥� it鈥檚 a time machine.
To travel forward through time, select the rear entrance. To go backward in time, walk through the front doors. Either way, visitors to tomorrow鈥檚 opening of 鈥淭he David H. Koch Hall of Fossils 鈥� Deep Time鈥� will traverse 3.7 billion years. During that time span, Earth experienced five mass extinctions due to climate changes. The most recent one, triggered by a meteor collision 66 million years ago, accounts for the towering T. rex skeleton in the main gallery.
By showcasing geologic eras that telescope across eons, the exhibition offers a humbling perspective of where humans fit into the mind-boggling time scale. It also makes explicit connections between past climate change and present-day global warming influenced by Earth鈥檚 relatively recent dominant species. Yet the exhibition presents a surprising tone: optimism.
Why We Wrote This
The challenge of climate change can feel overwhelming because it is so big in scale. A new Smithsonian exhibition aims to provide a sense of agency by acquainting visitors with the concept of deep time.
Contrary to fear-based narratives that we鈥檙e about to go the way of the stegosaurus, the museum tells its time-traveling visitors they can change their future. It鈥檚 a hope-based model of environmental messaging that, according to some, is the most effective way to spark individual action.
鈥淭he No. 1 question we get from visitors is 鈥榃hat can I do?鈥欌�� says Siobhan Starrs, the exhibition鈥檚 project manager. 鈥淚t feels so big. Just like time feels big. The scale of our impact feels unmanageable. ... So we want to inspire people. We鈥檙e not going to direct what you can do, but we can show you what other people are doing.鈥�
But first, the world鈥檚 largest museum of natural history aims to arouse a sense of awe.
The 31,000-square-foot space includes miniature dioramas, interactive screen displays, and fossilized bones that visitors can touch. The exhibition features dinosaurs with claws like the X-Men鈥檚 Wolverine, a lifelike recreation of a coral reef during the Permian geologic period, and fossilized cockroaches that serve as a reminder that the hardy insect will outlast even 鈥淭he Simpsons.鈥�
During a preview tour of the exhibition, Ms. Starrs points to a diplodocus skeleton whose rollercoaster-shaped contour ends with an elongated neck sloping up to the second-floor railing. With a twinkling smile, she says previous exhibitions portrayed the loping creatures as having drooping tails. Now its tail seems to swish in stylish cursive, reflecting what scientists now know about the role of their stiff tendons.
That鈥檚 just one example of how the fossil hall, originally founded in 1911, has updated the science of its exhibits as part of a $110 million overhaul. (The renovation includes a $35 million donation by David Koch, who made his fortune in the petroleum refinery business.) During the project鈥檚 seven-year development, Ms. Starrs' team also reconceived the exhibition to offer a deep-time chronology of Earth鈥檚 development. They say that perspective helps illuminate the geologic scale of humanity鈥檚 recent impact on the planet.
鈥淗ope is the tone that we鈥檝e tried to achieve because we know a sober and scientific assessment of what鈥檚 going on now leaves you pretty apprehensive about the future because we have already set in motion really big changes,鈥� says paleontologist Scott Wing, a member of the exhibition鈥檚 core team. 鈥淭here鈥檚 also no reason from the fossil record to feel that we鈥檝e endangered life on Earth as a whole, or even really ourselves. We seem to be pretty resilient and the technology we have is pretty good at buffering us from bad environments.鈥�
The museum鈥檚 urgent-yet-optimistic message is a stark contrast to apocalyptic stories that often dominate news headlines. For example, this week the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, an Australian think tank, declared a 鈥渉igh likelihood of human civilization coming to end鈥� following a cycle of accelerated warming beginning as soon as 2050. The Australian report depicts the sort of 鈥渟ocial breakdown and outright chaos鈥� that makes 鈥淢ad Max鈥� seem like a documentary.
But that worst-case scenario is predicated on an assumption of dire positive feedback effects in the climate system. The Hall of Fossils includes an example of what positive feedback effects look like. Around 250 million years ago, a self-perpetuating, intensifying loop of greenhouse gas emissions led to a mass extinction 鈥� over a period of tens of thousands of years.
鈥淭hat event was probably originally triggered by volcanic carbon,鈥� says Mr. Wing. 鈥淎t some point there was a reservoir of organic carbon, like methane, in the seafloor that was triggered to be released as a result of the warming that already happened.鈥�
He notes that he doesn鈥檛 think we鈥檙e close to anything like that scenario at the moment.
鈥淭here is a competition to be gloomy about the future which sounds newsworthy and wise, when in fact it鈥檚 the optimists who鈥檝e been right,鈥� says Matt Ridley, a British science journalist who takes a lukewarm 鈥撀燼nd somewhat controversial 鈥撀爒iew of dire climate predictions. His 2010 book, 鈥淭he Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves,鈥� emphasizes the potential for human ingenuity to solve and mitigate environmental problems.
鈥淭he idea that we won鈥檛 find a way to solve problems caused by climate change seems to me implausible,鈥� Mr. Ridley says. 鈥淭hat doesn't mean we should give up and hope it happens naturally. But it does mean we should step forward optimistically, because the alternative is a counsel of despair which demotivates people rather than encourages them.鈥�
The Age of Humans gallery inside the fossil hall is designed to inspire action. Big-screen videos and interactive kiosk displays show visitors how to emulate individuals who have proactively tackled environmental problems. For example, Afroz Shah, a lawyer in Mumbai, India, enlisted hundreds of neighbors to help him clear 4,500 tons of trash from Versova beach. Before the cleanup, the beach looked something like the trash-compactor scene in 鈥淪tar Wars.鈥� Afterward it was possible to see the sand once again.
Ecosystem ecologist Elena Bennett has cataloged more than 500 examples of similar bright spots in her Seeds of a Good Anthropocene project. She stresses the importance of initiatives that, like the beach cleanup in India, have a scale-up effect. Ms. Bennett, an associate professor in the McGill School of Environment in Montreal, also believes that positive stories (but not utopian ones) galvanize individuals more than scare tactics do. It鈥檚 helpful, she says, to embrace a deep time perspective that looks to the future.
鈥淭here鈥檚 something about thinking a long way off or thinking kind of radically that just jolts people out of their every day, whether that's their everyday skepticism or their everyday arguments or whatever it is that we do on an everyday basis,鈥� says Professor Bennett.
Next to the Age of Humans gallery there鈥檚 a long bench where visitors can sit next to a bronze statue of Charles Darwin. It鈥檚 a place to contemplate, perhaps, the museum鈥檚 narrative about Earth鈥檚 past, present, and future.
鈥淎 lot of museums see their role as being over and above just places that are repositories for the material of human history,鈥� says Alistair Brown, policy director for the London-based Museums Association. 鈥淢useums are social spaces. They are places that people go to engage with other people, with their families, with their friends, but also with strangers whom you wouldn鈥檛 interact with in normal society. That's very important to that idea about inspiring debates and reflection.鈥�
