This is Scientific Americans 60 Second Science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

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The Unnatural World is the title of a new book by former Scientific American

Environment editor David Bielo, the subtitle The Race to remake civilization in Earth's newest age.

And that age has been dubbed the Anthropocene, in which humanity, Anthro, has become, as the book puts it, a world-changing force of nature.

Bialo talked about the unnatural world recently at the book court bookstore in Brooklyn.

He was asked who he met in his research, who stood out as someone trying to take steps to

address the issues of this age.

His name is Phon Chong Wei and he is an environmental bureaucrat in a small coastal town in China.

And he has been tasked by his provincial government and his local government with trying to turn a city carbon neutral.

So this means that they would emit no more CO2 than they also kind of took in and destroyed, which is a beautiful sounding circular

economy kind of concept. Turns out to be incredibly difficult in practice as as

Fawn as finding out and you know that struggle is the one that we're all facing and certainly it's a struggle that it's more important that it happened in China than anywhere else and maybe India right

after it.

You know, we have cleaner air, cleaner water, and that's because we decided that we didn't want killer smogs and the Chinese people are deciding that right now and and perhaps the Indians will decide not to have killer smogs before they have them.

More from David Biello about his book The Unnatural World in an upcoming episode of the Science Talk Podcast.

Thanks for the minute for Scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.