Awareness of time: the past and future of the Earth through the eyes of a geologist

Few are aware of the scale of time in the long history of our planet, and this is what lies at the heart of many environmental problems that we create. It is easy for us to imagine a period of nine days - this is how much water remains in the atmosphere of the Earth. But the period of hundreds of years is the time of being in the atmosphere of the carbon dioxide molecule - almost outside of human understanding. Our everyday life is determined by the processes that began thousands and millions of years ago, and the consequences of what we do, in turn, will survive us. The period of the existence of the Earth may seem incomprehensibly long in comparison with the brevity of human life, but such an attitude to time does not allow us to feel our deep connection with the history of the Earth and evaluate the scale of our impact on it. Understanding the rhythms of the distant past and the perception of time through the eyes of geologists can make us look in a fresh look at the planet and learn to act taking into account the interests of many future generations