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The Future of Sustainability: Have Your Say! Week Four - “Shaping the Future”
---- If human beings evolved on Earth (did not descend from heaven or come here from some other place in the universe) and the emerging data of human overpopulation of our planetary home are somehow on the right track, then humanity could soon confront daunting global challenges. Perhaps hubris confuses human reasoning about the "placement" of humanity within the natural order of living things. There is the rub, I suppose. We have learned from God's great gifts to humanity -- natural philosophy and modern science -- that Earth is not the center of the universe (Copernicus); that we are set upon a tiny celestial orb among a sea of stars (Galileo); that such things as the Law of Gravity and the Laws of Thermodynamics affect living things equally, including human beings (Newton, et al); that humankind is a part of the general evolutionary process (Darwin); and that people are to a significant degree unconscious, mistake what is illusory for what is real and, therefore, have difficulty both adequately explaining the way the world works and consciously regulating our behavior (Freud). Now comes unanticipated and unfortunately unwelcome data from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel that indicate we have preternaturally and inadequately understood human population dynamics and refused to appreciate the necessity for regulating certain distinctly human activities which is visible on the far horizon. That is to say, humanity could be presented with a predicament resulting from "overgrowth" activities -- increasing and unchecked per capita consumption of limited resources, seemingly endless expansion of production capabilities in a finite world, and unbridled species propagation -- to the extent these activities extirpate biodiversity and degrade the ecosphere. Extant data indicate that the excessive extinction of biodiversity and creeping environmental degradation as well as the voracious dissipation of natural resources at an accelerating rate, one that substantially exceeds the capacity of Earth to restore the resources, could be in large part a consequence of human influence. From my humble vantage point, it does look as if the challenges posed to humanity by certain unregulated human activities overspreading Earth now are huge ones. Even so, we can take the measure of the looming challenges and find solutions to our problems that are consonant with universally shared values. METAPHOR Is there even a remote possibility certain activities of the human species now overspreading the surface of Earth could have become so dominant as to precipitate the mass extinction of biodiversity, the destabilization of the climate and the irreversible degradation of our planetary home? Perhaps the magnitude of the influence of the human world upon the natural world is like the proverbial "elephant in the living room." No one can say how so large a creature ever got into the house. Its very presence does not make sense. Even so, every human being on the planet can see some part of the great beast. Some people see a gigantic tusk or a tail. Others see its head or some part of its massive body. Because the creature is so big that no one person can see the whole of it, we conclude that it simply cannot be real, not really. If we simply agree to make the choice to deny its presence, then we can ignore that which, in any case, cannot be completely seen by anyone. Henceforth, there is no reason to talk about the elephant. And not surprisingly, if we continue to ignore the elephant in our living room long enough by not talking about the potential threat it poses to a sustainable future for coming generations, as one of the world's most prominent political leaders (gesturing by throwing up his hands) recently put it, "We will all be dead." Thanks to all for acknowledging and talking about the ELEPHANT. |