Barbara Tewksbury
Doctor of Science
Commencement remarks

I was listening the other night to the new reports about the recent flooding in New England. I was struck when the news anchor remarked in a deeply concerned voice that these were the worst floods that New England had seen in over 70 years. I confess that I had an Eddie Izzard moment. You've seen the skit where he pokes fun at Americans for their truncated view of what constitutes "old"? I could just see him on stage intoning "..over 50 years ago!…no, surely not…no! No one was alive back then!"  The geologist in me applauded that one. But I'm sure even he wasn't thinking about time the way a geologist thinks about time. Geological conversations typically go something like this, "Those rocks? Oh, they're about 500 million years old, give or take a few million." (Which, by the way, would be a true statement for the rocks we're sitting on here.) Geologists toss millions of years around with tremendous ease.

This is what geologists call "deep time". Let's see if we can put it into perspective. I want you all to turn around and look at the Herring Cole building down at the end of the quad. Suppose we stretch a string from Herring-Cole to me here at the podium. That string represents the history of the Earth. We'll put the birth of the Earth at the Herring-Cole end and the present, naturally, at my end. The Earth is about 4,600 million years old, and one inch on our string represents 1 million years of Earth history. So here's your challenge. Where would you put a marker for the dinosaurs? What about for humans? I want everyone to decide and to mark the spots in your mind.

So, let's start with those rocks right underneath us. Where would they lie along our string? Remember that I said a minute ago that they're about 500 million years old. 500 million years is 500" on our string, divide by 12, which is about 42' from the podium. That's about, ah, maybe 8 rows back. Huh. Spring chickens compared to the age of the Earth. Well, OK, is this where our dinosaur marker should go? Nope – 500 million years ago, there were no land plants. No land animals. No fish. In fact, evolution had only just taken a huge leap from algae and simple squishy marine things to a great variety of marine organisms with shells and hard parts. So, if your mental dinosaur marker (or your human marker!) is back beyond row 8, you'll need to make a few revisions!

So, where would we put the dinosaurs? The first dinosaurs appeared around 230 million years ago – that's about 20' from the podium, back around row 4. They went extinct only 65 million years ago. That's just 5' from the podium! Now, can you see why geologists say "only" 65 million years ago? It's all relative.

Now comes the fun part. Humans. Our small-brained, upright-walking hominid ancestors appeared only about 5 million years ago. I have a 5" file card up here, which represents those 5 million years at the scale of our string. Even 1 million years ago, 1" from the end, Homo sapiens, our species, had not yet evolved. Fully modern humans didn't appear on the scene until less than 100,000 years ago. That's 1/10 of an inch from the end!! Now, if we think of civilization, that's in the last 10,000 years, only 1/100 of an inch from the end. And if we're talking about modern science and technology, well, that's scarcely more than 100 years old, or 1/10,000 of an inch from the end!

Wow – the dinosaurs were around for, how long, maybe 14' at our scale? And we've been around for less than 1/10 of an inch, with modern society in just the last 1/10,000 of an inch??? I can't even cut off a sliver that small.

So, here's where I'm going with this and why it's so important for us to think geologically, to be fluent with "deep time". Just how long do we want humans to be around on this Earth? Would you settle for 100 years? Well, no, certainly not. That's likely within the lifetimes of the children of those of you graduating today. How about 1000 years? Would you settle for 1/1000 of an inch? What if you wanted 1/10 of an inch, or even a whole inch?? Even that's not much compared to the dinosaurs, but it's a staggeringly long time compared to the 70 years that shocked the news anchor reporting on the New England floods.

What will it take to have humans make it another 1/1000 of an inch, or 1000 years?  That's about the thickness of a human hair on our scale. Well, it kind of depends on what you want life to be like. We're a civilization that depends profoundly on non-renewable resources, and we're extracting and using resources at a staggering rate. I can't think of a single vital resource that is projected to have reserves lasting more than decades or, at most, a couple hundred years. The Earth simply does not have the resources in the ground to fuel our kind of society for that next 1/1000 of an inch.

So, what will happen? Personally, I think the conclusion is inescapable that the solution, if we can find one, will come from advances in science and technology. The answer will not come from money managers, lawyers, doctors, pro sports, or, if you'll excuse me, Hollywood. If we cannot develop profoundly new technologies that use different resources and use resources differently, human society as we know it will simply be unsustainable.

So where do you come in, those of you who are graduating today? I sincerely hope that you will do three things. First, reduce your footprint on the Earth to make our resources last as long as possible while we evolve new technologies for the future. If you want the human race to have a shot at just another 1/1000 of an inch, don't insist on having the newest and the biggest. Buy a fuel-efficient car and keep it until it wears out. Buy a small house instead of building a McMansion. Rake your leaves instead of using a leaf blower. Recycle everything that you can. The list is endless, and every person can make a difference.

Second, learn enough about the Earth that you can make smart choices about where to live. If you build right on the shore, in the middle of a floodplain, across a fault,  in a desert where there isn't enough water, or in the shadow of a volcano, you will eventually cost society a lot when we pay big bucks to bail you out. And if our society spends only to maintain itself, we won't have a shot at that next 1/1000 of an inch.

And last, support research in science and technology. Encourage your children to study math and science. Support government funding for basic research. And support NASA and the private-sector exploration of space. If we want another inch for the human race, we may need to seek it in the stars.

Thank you for this honor today and for the privilege of having this opportunity to speak to you.