5 February 2022 | New Scientist | 5The leader
“We learn geology the morning after the
earthquake,” the 19th-century essayist
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote.
The quote has a pithy resonance as
we grapple with the fallout of our inaction
on so many fronts, from pandemic
prevention to climate change, pollution
and biodiversity loss.
Applied to geology itself, it is a case of
“if only”. These days, hardly anyone learns
the subject. In the UK, just over 1000
pupils a year gain an A level in geology,
down from almost 4000 four decades ago.
There are many reasons for that squeeze,
not least the narrowing of the school
curriculum to subjects deemed more
“relevant”. That perhaps can be traced
back to geology’s core image problem:
it is seen as just a load of dusty old rocks.
A glance at a computer or smartphone –their components cocktails of chemical
elements, from silicon in the processor to
lithium in the battery, derived from dusty
old rocks – should be enough to convince
that this is no sustainable objection.
But it speaks to another part of
geology’s modern image problem: its
long history in service of the miningand fossil-fuel industries. Our rapacious
consumption of Earth’s mineral resources,
enabled by geologists’ nous, is why we
are now debating the definition of a new
geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
Geology is, and should be, about so
much more. As Christopher Jackson pointsout (see page 43), it is a window on past
climate change and so the best tool we
have for understanding our future. And
its potential in creating a more sustainable
world is huge, be it in learning more about
soils to allow farmers to get the most out
of their land, in tracing how contaminants
affect the provision of safe water supplies
or, of course, in helping us to predict
and mitigate the effects of earthquakes
and other natural disasters that
disproportionately hit the world’s poorest.
It is time for geology to embrace a new
future focused on sustainability and, in
turn, be accorded the respect it deserves as
a discipline crucial to our understanding
of the world and our relationship to it.
That way, metaphorically at least, learning
geology can become a way to help stop
the earthquakes before they happen. ❚Geology rocks
The discipline needs to reinvent itself – and be accorded the respect it deserves
“ It is time for geology to
embrace a new future
focused on sustainability”Chief executive Nina Wright
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