3 September

3 minutes of fascination. Tracks the birth of cities over 5700 years. (Watch the explosion of cities around 1900 - fuelled by? Fossil fuels.) Notice cities preceded States by a long way, and some say 'sovereign' States are now making way for cities again. This is also, for me, the real story of climate change, the shift of people from land to city. Once we empty the landscape of people, those people become divorced from their interactions with the natural world. And fossil fuels power that shift.