S2 E68: Can man-made stuff outweigh living creatures?

In a recent article published in the Scientific American, scientists compared the weight of everything that man has made, with the weight of all life on earth. This exercise was repeated many times over from 1900 onwards and a trend emerged.The opening lines of the article summarises this trend - "The sheer scale of buildings, infrastructure and other anthropogenic objects underscores our impact on the planet". Scientists have also found something rather unnerving about the impact of plastic ...