AMHERST, mass. — If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Jonathon Keats figures a picture can also span a thousand years.

Keats, a San Francisco writer and self-described experimental philosopher, has designed a “millennium camera” that he intends to mount in a churchless steeple on a college campus and chronicle climate change by taking a 1,000-year exposure of a western Massachusetts mountain range.

If it seems far-fetched, consider that some of Keats’ previous endeavors include selling tracts of real estate in the theoretical extra dimensions of space-time; opening a photosynthetic restaurant that serves gourmet sunlight to plants; choreographing honeybees; and copyrighting his own mind to give his “intellectual property” a 70-year post-life extension.

Keats notes he always has a serious message to deliver. In the case of the millennium camera, it’s encouraging people to think beyond their own human life span to what geologists call deep time.

“We need to find a way to think in deep time if we are to responsibly make use of the technologies we have,” he says. The Associated Press