You know, we humans are programmed to think that big changes on the Earth happened a long time ago, or will happen a long time in the future. What we don't realize is that they actually can happen right now. Right here, right now, while we're alive, in our own hours and days and months and years.

It's important to recognise that humans are not the measure of all things... The Earth is the measure of all things.

I grew up in suburban New Jersey in a transitional area that was surrounded by farmland that wasn't being cultivated.

We still carry this old caveman-imprint idea that we're small, nature's big, and it's everything we can manage to hang on and survive. When big geophysical events happen - a huge earthquake, tsunami, or volcanic eruption - we're reminded of that.