6.1. Defining The Issue

6.1a Status From a Planetary Perspective

In Chap. 1, the Earth System is described as consisting of four major internal systems: Marine, Terrestrial, Atmospheric, and Human Systems. The first three are ancient mega-systems that have survived large astronomical, physical, geological, chemical, and biological disturbances throughout the course of their evolutionary development, such as meteoritic collisions, volcanic explosions, ice ages, continental drift, and changing atmospheres, or combinations thereof.

Life on the planet also has generated or been impacted by enormous disturbances, for example, those of the Great Oxygen Event 4401 million years ago (MYA), or by the Mass Extinction created by the meteoritic explosion of Event 2 3 66 MYA. These mega disturbances were unevenly distributed in time by hundreds of million years apart, and each has left significant changes in the composition and structure of the Earth Systems that can now be read in their signatures within terrestrial and marine sediments.

The evolution of life has added another more complex disturbance to the planet with the biochemical evolution of plants (autotrophs) that were capable of self-reproduction and spread unchecked throughout the marine, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems. The plants also drove down the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the primitive atmosphere which cooled the earth and drove up the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere, which then oxidized continental minerals and changed the chemistry of the ocean.

The evolution of herbivores that consume plants and breathe in oxygen (O₂) and respire CO₂ changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and warmed the earth. The evolution of carnivores (humans included) further increased the atmospheric CO₂ to a balance of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 0.04% carbon dioxide. That is, until the middle of the 19th century, when the human heterotrophs and their machines began wasting buried fossil carbon that previously had not been in the present atmospheric carbon cycle, at accelerating rates to levels higher than they have in hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, the human footprint is superimposing an ever-increasing disturbance on its three supporting systems (Chap. 1, Fig.6) at a time‑scale of a geological explosive event compared to most biological evolutionary events.

Scientists have enough evidence on the human-derived impact of increasing CO₂ and decreasing O₂ during this interglacial period that is significantly changing the planet’s marine, terrestrial, and atmospheric systems sufficiently to qualify it as another planetary disturbance and usher in a unique epoch, called the Anthropocene that is destined to leave a signature through its mass extinctions, additions of synthetic and radioactive chemicals in sediments, and by changes in the compositions and functionalities of the earth’s three systems. Many of these Anthropocenic changes (like climate change) are irreversible on a more-than-human time scale and are seriously affecting their interactions between Social, Natural Financial Capitals, in the sense of damaging the habitability for most of life on earth, and at ever‑increasing monetary costs of recovering from extreme climate damage.

The paradoxical fact is that while our human population has demonstrated the capacity to measure and analyze these deteriorating changes that they have consciously known for more than three decades, humans are only now beginning to respond to this threat appropriately.

The tragic ironic fact is that humans are proving that they have developed the capacity to devastate life on the planet, but not to save it. Alas, the technical capacity of humans to change has out-developed their social capacity to preserve their civilizations. The actual fact is that the Human System no longer plays an autonomous role as it did prior to its industrialization. It has become increasingly dependent on the three natural systems through its continued development as an extremely complex set of inorganic and organic interactions and processes that are superimposed on the earth’s three systems are destroying their very capacity to host the human habitat (Chap. 1, Fig.1). Consequently, by virtue of the growth and dominance of the Human System, it cannot afford to pretend to be independent of Natural Capital.

In addition, the Human System cannot pretend to ignore the ecological and thermodynamic laws that govern nature. However, it is distinguished from the Natural Systems in an extremely important way: humans have evolved a highly developed consciousness and intelligence that enables them to willingly abuse certain ecological laws that otherwise would limit them. For example, they can better adapt to weather extremes with clothing and shelter and thereby geographically expand their niche to a larger range of climes. They can better harvest, distribute, and store plant and animal food. They can better store and communicate information as communal knowledge to communicate and cooperate to develop large communities that obtain support by means of occupying, harvesting, and polluting global ecosystems. These human-developed attributes are both revered and ignored with respect to their impacts on and limits posed by the earth’s other three systems.

6.10b The Ultimate Importance of Livability

Since humans now have such an increased level of consciousness and technical capacity, why are they not using these attributes to preserve the health and resilience of the natural systems and the health and vulnerability of our global social systems, instead of competing for resources and economic wealth that puts all societies on a trajectory of global collapse – as many our great past civilizations have done?

In fact, on one hand, science is continuing to validate this knowledge, and international organizations and governmental entities are actively pursuing solutions. It isn’t that our societies are not somewhat aware or not taking some corrective measures, but that policymakers are not responding quickly or effectively enough corresponding to the urgency and complexity of the needed solutions to avoid collapse.

One might ask why we appear to have a lack of self-preservation when it would be safe to assume that an overwhelming majority of individuals don’t want a global collapse. One might also assume that most nations would not want it either, but they remain locked into the concept that protecting national sovereignty has precedence over that of global sovereignty without recognizing that these two goals are interdependent when they could be symbiotic. The United Nations (UN) was created to avoid a global breakdown and has made great strides in raising social responsibility and justice. After more than half a century, humanity appears to be still bent on pursuing the mistaken goal of monetary and material wealth as if the purpose of life were to compete for more wealth than others, and thereby demonstrating the fallacious belief that monetary wealth does not necessarily generate peace, social wealth, or happiness, where instead, it tends to generate social inequality and oppression.

6.1c Why Don’t We Monitor Our Social Progress?

If our societal goal is prosperity for all, why are we not honoring it and measuring its development as our primary focus instead of relying on economic growth and financial wealth as indicators of our society’s prosperity? Such a strategy steers our societies toward striving for greater financial assets and away from transitioning to a more sustainable society (Chap. 5).

Without a clear, common goal of pursuing social development for sustainability, all lesser goals will inevitably lead to global instability. This argument ought to be obvious in the face of the aforementioned destabilizing global trends (Chap. Figs. 2) in climate, energy, biodiversity, resources, population, corruption, corporatism, and oligarchic governments.

Global stability is precariously balanced between the forces building and those destroying social stability. Why then do we persist in ignoring and not monitoring this balance, when we should be striving to reverse these trends by focusing on those constructive developments that are promoting our common goals of stability, peace, justice, and tolerable equality for all?

To ignore the confluence of foreboding social trends that are already endangering the survivability of modern civilization and instead promote the continuation of those trends that are destructive to our survivability should be recognized as contributing to a global genocidal crime against life on earth.