Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
A Future Too Big to Fail: Ecological Ignorance and Economic Collapse
"Too big to fail." It's been the mantra of our economic meltdown. Although meant to emphasize the overwhelming importance of this bank or that corporation, the phrase also unwittingly expresses a shared delusion that may be at the root of our current crises -- both economic and ecological.
In nature, nothing is too big to fail. In fact, big is bound to fail. To understand why that's so means stepping away from a prevailing set of beliefs that holds us in its sway, especially the deep conviction that we operate apart from nature's limits and rules.
Here's the heart of the matter: We are ecologically illiterate -- not just unfamiliar with the necessary scientific vocabulary and concepts, but spectacularly, catastrophically, tragically dumb. Oh yes, some of us now understand that draining those wetlands, clear-cutting the rainforests, and pumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere are self-destructively idiotic behaviors. But when it comes down to how nature itself behaves, we remain remarkably clueless.
The Adaptive Cycle from Google to GM
Science tells us that complex adaptive systems, like economies or ecosystems, tend to go through basic phases, however varied they may be. In the adaptive cycle, first comes a growth phase characterized by open opportunity. The system is weaving itself together and so there are all sorts of niches to be filled, paths to take, partnerships to be made, all involving seemingly endless possibilities and potential. Think of Google.
As niches are filled and the system sorts out, establishing strong interdependent relationships, the various players become less diverse and are bound together in ways that are ever more constricting. This is the consolidation phase that follows growth. As the system matures, it may look ever bigger and more indestructible, but it is actually growing ever more vulnerable. Think of General Motors.
The hidden weakness that underlies big systems is inherent in the consolidation phase. When every player gets woven ever more tightly into every other, a seemingly small change in a remote corner of the system can cascade catastrophically through the whole of it. Think of a lighted match at the edge of a dry forest. Think of Bear Stearns.
As global capitalism is melting down around us, we are experiencing just how, in an overly mature system, disruptions that start small can grow exponentially. So, for example, unemployment goes up another percent or two, just enough to make those of us with jobs save our cash, fearing we might be next. As we buy less, stocks pile up, production lags, more people are fired, more fear spreads, and consumption contracts further.
The above scenario, as familiar as can be, also provides an example of how easy it is to cross thresholds -- even just that slim percent or two can do the trick -- and fall into self-reinforcing feedback loops. Big consolidated systems are particularly vulnerable to such runaway scenarios. Think of the domino effect within the densely connected global economy that led to Bear Stearns, then Lehman, Merrill Lynch, AIG...
The third phase in the typical adaptive cycle is collapse. If you want to know what that's like, turn on the TV, look out your window, or knock on your neighbor's door, assuming that you still have a window or your neighbor still has a door. Since everything's connected, when an overgrown system spirals out of control, collapse tends to feel like an avalanche rather than erosion.
It may be hard to notice during the turmoil and confusion, but enormous amounts of energy are released in the collapse phase of an adaptive cycle and that leads to the final phase: regeneration. After seeds are cracked open by a forest fire, seedlings bloom in the nutrient-rich ashes of the former forest. They soak up newly available sunlight where the forest canopy has been opened. Then, as those open spaces start to fill, the growth phase begins anew. Hopefully, in our world, those empty auto-making factories will soon house a blooming business in wind turbines and mass transit.
It is important, however, to recognize that sometimes the collapse phase leads to renewal and sometimes to an entirely different and unwanted regime. Fire, for example, can renew a forest by clearing debris, opening niche space, and resetting the successional clock, or, if combined with a prolonged drought, it can set the stage for desertification. In human systems, we can influence whether the outcome is positive or negative by setting goals, providing incentives, and creating policies designed to reach them.
Building an Economy in Thin Air
Once you tune in to the phases of an adaptive cycle, you see them unfolding all around you. They may seem overwhelmingly complex, especially when compared to the neater, more linear models that shape our conventional ways of seeing the world, but ignoring that cycle as you build an economy is akin to denying gravity as you build a skyscraper.
Bigness is a warning signal that tells us to take a second look and consider whether the seemingly solid thing in front of us is far closer to collapse than it looks and, if so, to ask what can be done about it. If we were ecologically savvy, the conventional wisdom would be: If it ain't broke but it sure is big, then fix it. We do that by breaking it up and creating space for new niches and for the more dynamic diversity that naturally flows into such a system.
It's easy to attribute the creative fervor of the growth phase to an absence of regulation, rather than seeing it as the natural process of niche-filling in a system with lots of available space. As is now plain, freeing an already big corporate system of almost all regulation so that it can grow even bigger does not, in fact, encourage creativity; it just hastens the consolidation phase. So, to offer but one example, letting GM off the hook on fuel efficiency during the Bush era didn't make the company more creative. It only added to its long-term vulnerability.
It was surely no coincidence that, after the mammoth AT&T monopoly was broken up in the 1980's, cell phone technology emerged explosively starting in the 1990's. In a sense, cell phones were the technological equivalent of a new species emerging after the collapse and regeneration phases of an ecosystem. In the same way, it wasn't giant IBM which generated the revolutionary development of personal computers and the Internet. The next breakthrough in solar technology may be more likely to start in your neighbor's garage than in Chevron's lab.
Driving Off Cliffs
Our ignorance of the adaptive cycle is just one example of our ecological illiteracy. We are similarly inept at reading all sorts of natural signs. Take, for example, thresholds, those critical points where seemingly minor changes can tip an economy into recession or a climate into a new regime of monster storms and epic droughts.
Thresholds are like the doors between the phases in the adaptive cycle, except that they are often one-way -- once you stumble through them, you can't get back to the other side -- so it is crucially important to understand where they are. Although we recognize that there are such things as "tipping points" and we recognize, belatedly, that we have already crossed too many of them, we're lousy at seeing, let alone avoiding, thresholds before we reach them.
Understanding exactly where a threshold is located may be difficult, but we can at least look for such boundaries, and deliberately try not to cross them when the unintended consequences of doing so can be dire. There are, after all, usually warnings: the reservoir level is lower every year; the colors in the coral reef are fading away; mercury levels in the lake increase; you are more dependent than ever on imported oil...
Once you have driven off a cliff, it does you little good to realize that you are falling. The time to practice water conservation is before your well runs dry. Our culture's ability to deal with thresholds has proven only slightly better than my dog's ability to solve algebra problems.
Regeneration, Not Recovery
Still, if we really were attentive to the natural cycles unfolding around us, we wouldn't be attracted to growth like moths to a flame. We wouldn't equate bigness with success, but with risk, with enervation awaiting collapse. We certainly wouldn't be aiming today to rebuild yesterday's busted economy so that, tomorrow, we can resume our unlimited looting of nature's storehouse.
Believing that we are unbounded by nature's limits or rules, we built an economy where faster, cheaper, bigger, and more added up to the winning hand. Then -- until the recent global meltdown at least -- we acted as if our eventual triumph over anything from resource scarcity to those melting icebergs was a foregone conclusion. Facing problems (or thresholds) where the red lights were visibly blinking, we simply told ourselves that we'd figure out how to tweak the engineering a bit, and make room for a few more passengers.
We got it wrong. A capitalist economy based on constant, unlimited growth is a reckless fantasy because ecosystems are not limitless -- there are just so many pollinators, so many aquifers, so much fertile soil. In nature, unchecked rapid growth is the ideology of the invasive species and the cancer cell. Growth as an end in itself is ultimately self-destructive. A (globally warming) rising sea may lift all boats, as capitalists like to point out, but it may also inundate the coastline and drown the people living there.
If "recovery" from economic meltdown is just another word for a return to business as usual, we will be squandering a crucial chance to begin to build an economy that could be viable over the long run, without overloading the Earth's carrying capacity and courting catastrophe. We don't have to go big.
Remember that regeneration phase of the adaptive cycle? Here's where that comes in. Yes, collapse is a nightmare, but it also presents opportunities. If we were more aware of the thresholds we've already crossed, we might think differently about the next iteration of the economy. We could always cross a threshold of our own making and decide to live differently. Unrestrained growth, after all, was never a prerequisite for health, happiness, and justice. It's not written into the Constitution.
What would an end to separation from nature and from each other feel like? How might it be expressed day to day? The regeneration phase that is now upon us begs us to answer those questions.
This much is clear. If we want to avoid endless darkness and hardship, we have to become ecologically literate -- deeply so. The future is, you might say, too big to fail.
- Posted in
28 Comments so far
Show AllWhat an excellent article!!! Thank you Chip for telling it like it is. I will pass this one on to my listserv....education is the key!
What a profound and prophetic article. This kind of thinking is what should be taught in our colleges and universities, but these institutions have sold themselves to the devil, the beast of capitalism.
We are a self-reflective species that is capable of knowing where we are and where we should be going. But such thinking has been obliterated by the thoughts of unlimited growth and the "blessing" of consumer capitalism for the chosen few.
Mother nature works naturally for the common good. Humankind must choose to know. To choose to know is the evolutionary destiny of our species for the survival of humankind.
In a self-indulgent society there is little reason to choose to know.
I will read this article later but I can see now the major flaw it is pointing to that is exacerbated by this ignorance of the ecological environment and that is human greed. That one trait of humanity that readily points to the insanity of the human species through the destruction of its own home.
While there is nothing inherently wrong with being in law or big business, it has not served the earth that such people almost exclusively run the world.
Biologists have long known that such people are as ignorant about the world of nature as a biologist might be about, say, some details regarding corporate law. The fact that corporate CEOs and the members (lawyers) of Congress they fund (and, oh yes, the media they purchased) are running the show, there is little chance that the planet will avoid the impending train wreck.
If there had been a wide representation of the American people in government lo these past generations, rather than a collective of people whose thinking has been funneled through law school and corporate think, the planet and its myriad species would not be in this godawful situation.
Thank you for a wonderful article. I've been trying to explain what little I know about natural systems theory to others, but usually get blank stares. This article will help, I'm sure. I would also like to see it simplified a little further for those who are really struggling to get the concept. Thanks again.
education about the natural planetary cycles and resource limitations is absolutely critical to defeat the above mentioned self-indulgence...success is currently measured by how little one has to personally do to sustain oneself, and how many others work to sustain one...just the opposite of what is needed: each individual doing their own work...
education about many things is useful, but knowledge must be evaluated wisely on a done\undone basis...just because something can be done, doesn't mean it should be...we might be much better off if we leave many undone things undone, and take many done things and undo them...
knowing how to live in sustainable harmony with all of the planet's pants and animals, and wishing to do so are very different things...we must make wishing to do so admirable, and not, not...
Australian academic Clive Hamilton' in his book 'Growth Fetish', cites an Aristotelian concept called 'eudemonism', an ethical doctrine holding that the value of moral action lies in its capacity to produce happiness (pronounced with the emphasis on the long 'e' in the 2nd syllable). '[This] new, post growth political philosophy..... proposes a society in which people can pursue the activities that truly can improve their individual and collective well-being'.
But how do 'we' (whoever 'we' are) get to a 'post-growth' world? Do 'we' wait for the 'ecological climax' to exterminate the excesses? Is it really possible to dismantle rampant capitalism while the hegemony is in the global capitalists hands? What sort of a political will would it take? Could the ecological climax be 'nature's way' of educating humans to the folly of doctrinal excess, and to the value of the obedient stewardship required for human beings to survive and thrive on planet Earth. I'd like to survive long enough to find out.
This article is long on the obvious and short on solutions. The Left has forgotten that it is a counter-balance to the Right. The Right is united on all things economic, many from the Left have joined them. The democratic balance has been upset because the voice of the Left, Academia and the Media has sold out. They have come to enjoy the benefits of cheap labor. A Corporatocracy has developed as the result of class tyranny. This tyranny can not exist without cheap labor, they must devalue people who have purpose and meaning. The battle which the Left can therefore win is on the grounds of labor value, this battle must be won for the sake of power. Then perhaps the Left might consider winning the Environment War. --- The article in question is otherwise very good.
Well if you look at the streetlevel it does not really matter what part of the machine you are working, you better be doing it for love. If you are a banker or a real estate manager, or running a dry cleaner you better be an artist about it, and doing it for the sheer joy it provides you and the world, because the margins have evaporated.
In a way this is the triumph of the ARTS, a pyrric victory, maybe but the artist will continue no matter what, and maybe the artists didnt win exactly but they didnt lose.
Go ARTISTS! WERE TOO PUNY TO FAIL!
I am reminded of the Chinese characters for crisis: danger and opportunity. And like birth, there will be a painful period in the change that is inexorably coming.
In reading this incredible article, I kept thinking of Sioux Rose. If we are lucky, we will not only honor our beautiful planet, but learn from it. I remember the rejuvenation of Mount St Helens. We tried to restore the land but left one section alone. And what happened there far exceeded our efforts at restoration. So have we learned that nature knows best what to do, if we only get out of the way? Getting out of the way seems to be the hardest thing for us to do.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Not only is the article short on solutions, it is short on science. Let me explain.
This article is well-intended, but lacks a comprehensive view of ecological science. For example, not all large, complex systems adhere to the "adaptive cycle" that the author describes.
For example, the author makes no reference to the common phenomena of climax ecosystems.
Here is a definition:
"Climax ecosystem: The last stage in ecological Succession. An ecosystem in which populations of all organisms are in balance with each other and with existing abiotic factors."
http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Climax_ecosystem
Climax ecosystems are not entirely stable. But they tend to last a very long time. Think of a rainforest.
The human presence in behaviorally and cognitively modern form goes back between 50k to 100k years ago. We have yet to develop a sustainable system of living since the rise of urbanization and empires 5000 years ago, starting with Babylon and Egypt.
The sustainable living modeled by a climax ecosystem is possible for us. This is an obvious point of biological and ecological literacy that escapes the author. The remedy to this shortcoming is for writers like Chip Ward, with partial understandings, to use scientifically literate experts to review articles like this one before publishing it.
We need models for sustainability. The "adaptive cycle" the author references is not such a model. But there are such models in the world around us such as climax ecosystems.
For example, to achieve something akin to a climax ecosystem in our economy and with regard to our effect on ecosystems, humanity's sustainable growth could become growth in productivity, even as our growth in population and consumption consciously and deliberately declines to sustainable levels. One way to begin that shift would be to begin a transition from geo-political thinking to geo-physiological thinking, and from geo-strategic thinking to eco-strategic thinking.
If we do not consciously and deliberately do this, our growth will decline, but due to collapse—think lemmings—because we will have failed to create a sustainable system of living.
As a believer in the benefits of civilization, I'm hoping we can create a sustainable, climax civilization, one which pursues the UDHR for the entire planet's humans, and for good relations with our co-occupants in the community of life.
Great article. Even better if Chip mentioned the unmentionable part of growth that underlies all our problems, population growth and extreme wealth/power concentration.
ezeflyer: Have you seen: Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat? http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/16-7
Population issues are tricky.
Yes. My reply was that consumption makes overpopulation worse.
Why all the fuss? The equation is simple.
Energy inputs>Human Stuff>energy outputs plus waste.
The numbers on the left and right hand sides of the equation are way out of whack. Energy inputs have ceased to grow and energy outputs(wasted energy) plus materials waste are growing also. That leaves less room in the middle for the Human Stuff.
We can find more energy inputs, create less waste or do less Human Stuff. Since the humans have decided to base their economies on energy input growth that does not exist, called debt, there is going to be a system failure.
Look at http://dieoff.org/page125.htm to understand why the news doesn't make any sense.
All of the cycles the author describes are going on simultaneously both in nature and in man-made systems. That's what makes it hard to figure out on an intellectual level. But with a simple, which is to say uncluttered, awareness, we can start individually to make changes that make sense in our own lives.
If we've become aware, for example, of the thought impulse "I want that"(in response to some sort of bauble or gadget) then we can also analyze the necessity to act on that impulse, what fulfilling that desire will bring us.
Or you could just examine your closets or garage and see all the stuff in there that has no value to your life.
And then you can question the impulse to haul more stuff into your life.
It just takes a quieter mind happier with simple and real things, the intangibles and the inner things, mostly. They makes life rich.
When Chips' dog solves a simple system of three algebraic equations with three unknowns then I will believe that humans will do the rational thing and preserve the environment.
Unlimited growth is impossible. We live on a sphere. All of the happy talk about developing some sort of post-industrial technotopia is blather at best and insanity at worst. As a previous commentator points out, we need to consciously attain a climax ecosystem, a sustainable system.
The population will crash to around one billion, perhaps less, depending upon how we deal with this extraordinary emergency. If we are content to unearth the remaining coal and tar sands to fuel the dying paradigm in one last gasp of orgasmic consumer fetishism, then we are well and truly screwed. The bottoming of the population crash may well reach a few hundred thousand.
If we look to Cuba's example from the 1990's, which went through a resource crash, we may have a chance of a graceful decline in population. If not, then look to North Korea which also suffered a sudden withdrawal of resources. That country attempted to prop up the paradigm, to keep it going at all costs, and millions starved to death.
The worst part of this conversation is that I know from ten years of experience, hell thirty some years if you count the Limits to Growth, that the Tinkerbell syndrome rules. The planet-killing media, governments/corporations, and their minions will turn on the Soma machine, the 24/7 propaganda extravaganza, and all the uneducated, witless thugs who represent the vast majority of the population here in the U.S. will stare in thrall. A slow clap will start somewhere near Karl Rove and Glen Beck, building into a chant of "Sieg Heil"and we're off to the races. The same intellectual midgets who deny global climate change will be clamoring to deny that runaway consumerism will kill the planet.
What many of the commentators here and elsewhere are not telling the vast feckless crowds of NASCAR daddies and soccer mommies is the dire truth of the situation. Why? No one's stock goes up when the end of growth is announced. And on the left, hope is the drug of choice. I've got news. You better hope that someone in the upper echelons of government finally grows a set and comes clean and starts the process of powering down and soon, or we will be jumping to the concrete below in a technicolor civilizational splat that will make the dark ages look like the inside of an arc-lamp. Of course, we might liberally apply a good coating of hope to the situation, hoping that some magical technology will come along that will make new land and resurrect the ocean's biota and cleanse the skies and lower the carbon and de-acidify the oceans....
BREATHE.
But, that would be like climbing to the 140th floor to jump because the 101st just wasn't high enough.
The only thing that comes close to cleaning up the atmosphere, building soils so that we can eat, cleaning up nitrate runoff from agriculture and NOT creating it's own waste stream is biochar.
I'm not talking about vast plantations of monocultures set up to burn charcoal so we can keep on with coal burning. We will need to carefully sort and process agricultural and yard wastes to conserve as much nitrogen and sequester as much black carbon as possible. Then those nutrients need to go back in the soil supported by a cropping system that prioritizes soil building over short term crop yields.
Right now political discourse is all about which car on the train you will be on when it runs off the shattered bridge of our ecosphere. If you can't get the train to stop it would be good to find a way to get off.
Excellent article.
I think corporatism ties in with this. From another post:
A key element on this issue runs deep into human nature, but also into simple, but far-reaching choices/errors we have made over hundreds of years, or longer.
A key piece of the puzzle is the CORPORATION---how "we" have chosen to organize commerce.
The corporation floats the wrong people to the "top" of society for the wrong reasons.
The specific attribute of the corporation is "legal personhood" through which it assumes the Constitutional rights meant only for humans under the law. Authors Thom Hartmann, David Korten and Naomi Klein have written eye-opening work on just how this came about, its effects and remedy.
Most, if not all the signs of dysfunction mentioned above can be tracked back to our choice/toleration of the legal entity, "corporation".
The corporation must be stripped of personhood, but the bind is, of course, our system is dominated by corporations, which are unlikely to change the rules (or more correctly, will change the rules only if they can increase their power and profit by doing so, which is unlikely). Change inevitably will come in one of several ways: through enlightened leadership and a Supreme Court that have the courage to correct this error, through economic and societal collapse, through rejection by informed citizens, or by game-changing Natural conditions which demand different choices.
Families (read: women) raise their male children to succeed in the world they see around them. This runs deep, to the core of western "modern" civilization. We could learn a lot from what's left of the indigenous/native cultures that emerged from the last ice age. I think it is obvious that we face game-changing ecological conditions of some kind. And, I think the corporate model of societal organization has not only aggravated and hastened the onset of climate change, but is entirely inappropriate to survival under those conditions.
Change we must. And change we will. How it happens is up to each one of us, every day, with every dollar we spend, every person we talk to, and every vote we cast.
"We got it wrong. A capitalist economy based on constant, unlimited growth is a reckless fantasy because ecosystems are not limitless -- there are just so many pollinators, so many aquifers, so much fertile soil. In nature, unchecked rapid growth is the ideology of the invasive species and the cancer cell. Growth as an end in itself is ultimately self-destructive. A (globally warming) rising sea may lift all boats, as capitalists like to point out, but it may also inundate the coastline and drown the people living there."
The CORPORATION is the horse that societal cancer rode in on.
Strip corporations of legal "personhood"!
Bigness can also end in a supernova, rather than collapse into a black hole. Either way, it's pretty traumatic!
If Standard Oil is too big to fail (or too big to permit free market competition) then the government has an inherent right and obligation for the good of the United States to split it into seven smaller companies: (1)Standard Oil of New Jersey, or Esso, or Exxon, (2) Standard Oil of Louisiana, or Mobil, (now Exxon/Mobil), (3) the millionaire, and (4) his wife, (5) the movie star, and the rest,...
Where am I? Oh! For the good of society we should bail-in new companies into every overly oligopolistic market, especially if they bring new technologies onto the market (like the plug-in hybrid) that had otherwise been locked out by the crooks. Bailing in works more effectively than bailing out. Many countries have consciously bailed in their local automakers, including Japan, South Korea, India and China.
The counterpart to a bail-in, and a second option to splitting a company like Lord Voldemort (shh) into seven horcruxes, is to apply a graduated monopoly tax to any company that dominates a particular field of commerce. A company with a 90% share can crush a company with a 5% share like an ant, so, why not get considerably more tax money out of the 90% share company? The company might even split itself for the good of its stockholders.
Ecologically, new companies should be born, and sick companies should die. We will not miss them when they go, as they are not humans. Rather they are legal fictions of humans, no more or less than characters on TV.
Excellent article. No need for me to add any embellishments.
Despite the flaws pointed out by Earthian (and the irony of pointing out that the author is less ecologically literate than he thinks), this is a good article.
I am often chastized for being overly pessimistic, but my thirty-five years of education/work in biology indicate to me that the ecosphere is in collapse now. The Sixth Extinction is "ON" and, since we did not and will not lower our birth rate in time, it isn't going to get any prettier. In other words, expect the death rate (of humans and other species) to increase dramatically.
Maybe the survivors in the 22nd century will understand in hindsight what went wrong and how to fit in more harmoniously. In the meantime, let's all keep doing our best.
Best wishes to all.
Yep, the Sixth Extinction is indeed on. It began over 200 centuries ago when we humans consolidating our migrations across the Earth, which began 300 centuries earlier. The overall trend from 200 centuries ago to 50 centuries ago was the grouping of people from moving bands to stationary villages (See the excellent history called After the Ice by Steven Mithin.) . . . and by five centuries ago . . . cities, kingdoms and empires. By about 100 centuries ago, the hunting pressure was a key factor which led to the demise of 57 of 80 species of large mammals in North America. Of course, the last 500 years saw exponential increases in human numbers and human effects on ecosystems. Many of the top scientists I've either read or talked with think it is nearly too late to avoid what Dennis Meadows, author of Limits to Growth, calls "overshoot and collapse."
But FastEddie75 has the solution, if there is one, in contrast to cynicism: "let's all keep doing our best." That is the critical, important attitude. To solve the problem, it is crucial to know exactly what caused it. That's why the Sixth Extinction narrative is so important, as FastEddie75 raises. And while damage is greater than ever, so is our knowledge, by both the public and by scientists.
The best sources for understanding the situation we are facing that I've found are here:
Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail and Succeed
Dennis Meadows' book Limits to Growth, the 30 year update, 2004.
The great archive: http://www.greenfacts.org
And the fantastic GEO-4 report from the UNEP:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7060072.stm
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/25/4815/
Thanks for the additional post and references. I had typed a longer response, but my internet connection died when I tried to post it, and before I could copy the text, I lost it all. The gist is that I need my friends and family to keep encouraging me not to give up. We will need all the courage, compassion, and cooperation we can muster to address the coming chaos.
PEACE!
You are welcome.
We need to encourage one another. To give up is to become cynical. And cynicism is a psychological defense of weakness to power. And it is entirely self-fulfilling.
Understanding the situation is crucial. We face ecocide on the present course. EVERYTHING is at stake. The alternative to ecocide is the creation of a sustainable civilization on the planet. We're going to have one or the other. Momentum may prevail. Or the compassion for grandchildren may prevail. One or the other. It is the great battle for the success or failure of the human species insofar as civilization is concerned. It is up to us.
The Millennium Goals are a step in the right direction. So is the UDHR. So is the recent direction of the EU. Even President Obama said recently that the planet is in peril. The rich nations need to go to zero emissions within a few decades.
I don't think we get a second chance for civilization though. Astronomer Fredrick Hoyle said in 1964:
"It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing high intelligence this is not correct. We have, or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.
(Hoyle, F. (1964). Of Men and Galaxies. University of Washington Press, Seattle.)
Again, thanks. I need to mull over the quote from Hoyle for a while. I can't quite figure out why I have an intuitive reaction against it, but it has something to do with the possibility that intelligence is not all that it's cracked up to be(or maybe it's my own that's not!). After all, look what our species has done with it. Anyway, don't make too much of this half-baked reply.
Cheers.