8 September 2008
Introduction: Waking up from Humanity’s Sleepwalk, p. 6-7
Posted by Carleton Schade under: Dieback; Epistemology .
Excerpt from Chapter 1, Dieback: The Science and Soul of the Coming Collapse, p. 6-7
And, furthermore, should civilization begin to decline, wouldn’t the signs be obvious? Especially given the power of our science and the extent of our news media. Wouldn’t our television screens be projecting a steady stream of ghastly images—of famines, pestilence, pandemics and vicious wars over scarce resources? Haven’t scientists for quite some time been predicting the breakdown of the global ecosystem and “the end of civilization as we know it”? And hasn’t the predicted day passed with the earth as resilient as ever ? No, just as the economists and policy makers assure us, the calls of doom have surely been exaggerated. For example, the famous cornucopian economist Julian Simon in 1995 argued:
Our species is better off in just about every measurable material way… Just about every important long-run measure of human material welfare shows improvement over the decades and centuries, in the United States and the rest of the world. Raw materials - all of them - have become less scarce rather than more. The air in the US and in other rich countries is irrefutably safer to breathe. Water cleanliness has improved. The environment is increasingly healthy, with every prospect that this trend will continue .
.And Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician from the Netherlands who refers to himself as the skeptical environmentalist, says:
The main reason why the infamous “Limits to Growth” reports got their dire predictions of an imminent world collapse so wrong was because they overlooked the fundamental dynamics of technological progress. Modern societies create a great deal of value without much environmental degradation, as economic welfare has come to rely more on how a material is processed and utilized than on the material itself .
.And yet like a pesky pit bull, the scientists and environmentalists refuse to let up. They’re dogged, and their warnings are turning ever more strident. For example, the writers of the Limits to Growth (disparaged above) returned in 2004 with Limits to Growth: the 30-Year Update, and their predictions, using computer-driven scenarios, were indeed more dire:
Consequently, we are more pessimistic about the global future than we were in 1972. It is a sad fact that humanity has largely squandered the past 30 years in futile debates and well-intentioned, but half-hearted, responses to the global ecological challenge. We do not have another 30 years to dither. Much will have to change if the ongoing overshoot is not to be followed by a collapse during the twenty-first century ..
The 1993 “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” by the Union of Concerned Scientists –signed by 1,680 world scientists including 104 Nobel prize laureates—reads in part:
Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage to the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about .
And then there is the Millennium Assessment, prepared in 2005 by 1360 scientists from 95 countries and reviewed by 850 experts and government officials in what has become the largest study on the state of the world’s ecosystems. Excerpted pieces include:
Over the past fifty years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. This has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on Earth… Over the past few hundred years, humans have increased the species extinction rate by as much as 1,000 times the background rates typical over the planet’s history… The degradation of ecosystem services is harming many of the world’s poorest people and is sometimes the principal factor causing poverty .
3 Comments so far...
Sesjeoche Says:
22 November 2008 at 12:38 am.
Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.” 