http://www.thegreatonwardpress.com/9979/03/index20article6.html
In a world fixated on the ‘war on terrorism’ and on a thousand other issues of varying consequence, we are losing sight of another enemy that is now in the advanced stage of mobilizing for a devastating assault on human societies.
The enemy is ecological decline. This enemy has given the world ample evidence of its lurking intent, but the scale of the threat it poses for economic and social security has yet to permeate the public consciousness.
… The enemy is not nature: it is the erosion of ecosystem functionality. Humans, as a species, are part of nature. However, especially since the advent of agricultural communities, human societies have been created. They draw from ecological systems for everything they require in order to survive, to meet consumption requirements, to create wealth, to support economic growth, and to break down and absorb their increasingly diverse waste products. Human societies are of nature but are no longer part of natural systems.
When stress on ecological systems reaches the point where it constrains the ability to access or draw down the environmental goods and services required to provision societies — goods and services that are essential for all gains in human well-being — ecological decline becomes the enemy of all people.
The world is now in just such a position. As presently organized and using currently available technologies, human societies are drawing more from nature than ecological systems can provide: every major ecosystem in the world is now in some stage of human-induced decline. The peoples of the world have less than twenty-five years to find and implement new ways of organizing to vastly increase their ability to provision their growing populations and economies. And they must do so without further impairing ecosystem viability, lest they risk making the worst Malthusian nightmares a reality.
We have all heard the tales of woe… :
— Over half of all the freshwater lakes in the world are now polluted.
— Most parts of the world are facing challenges associated with water availability and quality.
— Enormous groundwater reservoirs that support vast areas of high-yield agricultural production, as well as urban and industrial needs, are being drawn down well in excess of replenishment rates.
— The human-induced loss of biological diversity is reaching epic proportions — fully half of the species of large mammals in the world are threatened with extinction; there may soon be little viable forest, coral reef, and other protective habitat left; and up to half the world’s plant species are in danger of disappearing forever.
— The global catch of fish from the wild peaked in 1989 and has been in decline ever since; fish farming is now in direct competition with other forms of agricultural production for access to land and other land-based productive resources.
—Almost all of the world’s agricultural land is now in use, productivity growth is leveling off, soil quality is declining, and there are no signs of new ‘Green Revolution’ taking root.
—Awareness of the insidious, adverse effects on health of long-term exposure to low levels of toxics is growing.
—Human societies are now drawing on the outer reaches of the biosphere to absorb and break down human wastes.
The list goes on endlessly, with the most pressing issue being climate change: there is little prospect of preventing a rapid doubling of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from human activity. This will only accelerate the relentless increase in global warming, which is already showing signs of bringing about great human tragedy.
The problem is more complicated than suggested by the simple compilation of long lists of independent examples of ecological stress. Many changes already underway in the operation of ecosystems are probably irreversible, and societies will have to meet their future needs in conditions of ecological uncertainty and instability. Moreover, because the world is operating at the margins of ecological supply capacity, every new source of environmental trauma ripples across and between ecosystems and around the world. Everything is now connected. Feedback is immediate. The potential for environmental ‘flips’ to seriously impair the capacity to provision human societies with essential ecological goods and services is everywhere stronger than before.
From this already tenuous base, the global community will somehow have to find ways to address the vast incremental needs for ecological goods and services — needs that will all come to a head by 2025.
— Roy Woodbridge,
The Next World War:
Tribes, Cities, Nations, and Ecological Decline
Filed under: natural philosophy
