If humanity’s critical planetary overshoot is not corrected deliberately, nature will impose a chaotic implosion
“If we wish civilization to continue, human beings must learn to live more equitably, well within the means of nature” – William Rees. —
No 2709 Posted by fw, February 14, 2021 —
“So, if I can just summarize and put the choice before us –.
1/ Climate change is indeed a serious problem. We must deal with it.
2/ But it’s a mere symptom of a much greater disease, which is the generalized overshoot of the human population above and beyond the long-term carrying capacity of Earth. We cannot solve any of these problems in isolation, and doing so would be futile because the others would take us down. They are a collective issue under the umbrella of overshoot.
3/ Well, we are in that critical overshoot, and the present trajectory resembles a plague phase of a one-off population cycle. And if it is not corrected deliberately, it will crash.
4/ We may or may not already be on some critical tipping point, not only in climate but in other ways as well.
5/ In my view, in coming years, there’s no question that the human enterprise will contract.
6/ But, as an intelligent, planning-capable, moral species, we can theoretically make a choice between —
6(a) Insistence on “business as usual”, which risks, in my view, a chaotic implosion imposed by nature, followed by geopolitical turmoil and resource wars;
6(b) Or we can come together as a society, realize the flaws in our currently globally-shared constructed vision of reality, accept what our science is telling us, and, in that context, cooperate internationally toward a well-planned orderly and cooperative descent toward a socially just sustainability for all.
7/ So, human beings must learn — if we wish civilization to continue – to live much more equitably, well within the biophysical carrying capacity, well within the means of nature.” —William Rees
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