I want to talk to all of you today about the humans that survived the current planetary predicament. How did they organize their lives? What was the key to their success? It is no secret that we are in the midst of a severe period of ecological collapse. The exploding human population lay flat on its growth curve for hundreds of thousands of years until the invention of industrial agriculture. Then it shot skyward in an exponential arc corresponding with the rapid depletion of intact ecosystems, healthy environments, and stored materials across the Earth. All of this happened in the blink of an eye in a few short centuries.
It has become fashionable to talk about sustainable businesses and the greening of economic growth. Yet rarely do these conversations go deeply enough into the ecology of our species to see how profoundly unsustainable this growth arc has always been. Ecologists like William Catton Jr. in his classic text Overshoot have called the period of exponential growth for any species the “exuberant” phase. It is quickly followed by a peak and subsequent collapse. Those of us who study history will recognize that the Great Myth of Progress arose in Western Civilization just as it was embodying the most brutal forms of colonial expansion into the Americas. Terms like manifest destiny and self-reliance were blended within the microspheres of this macroscopic pattern, blinding many to the ecological limits of the Earth that were soon (in geologic terms) to be leapt beyond in a giant pulse of destabilization.
Ecologists have a practice of defining species according to their ecological niche. How does this ant make its living? Where does that bird call its home?…
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