We are living on a different planet than that of our ancestors because we are able to alter the world in more significant ways than they ever could- they re-acted to geologic events, we can enact geologic events. As is written in the beginning of Making the Geologic Now, “These [geologic] are forces to be reckoned with existentially, creatively, conceptually, and pragmatically as humans work to meet the fact that not only is our species increasingly vulnerable to the geologic, we also have become agents of planetary geologic change”. New possibilities are available, when man can grasp the geologic, but they make deeper understanding of all organisms and the networks that interconnect them even more necessary.
In the Miyazaki’s movie, the Toxic forest is an example of how human-created pollution has become a “System Event”, a change in the way material flowed through the overall growth system on earth, at the scale of the geologic. The pollution that is stuck within the layers of earth , is absorbed by the plants that grow on earth’s outermost layer, and alters the way the plants grow so much, that when they bloom, they release toxic gases. The toxic gases spread with the spores that are released and cover the world in more toxic plants, steadily coating the world in an environment poisonous to people. Later in the movie you realize that there is a pure space underneath the Toxic forest, so that the forest is a purifying tool to cleanse the pollution left by humans.
