Future Sustainability – Humanity at a Critical Juncture
Recap
Throughout the entire series of posts thus far, the overriding theme – Our Human Story and Future Sustainability – has remained focused on the primary influences that have led humanity to this critical point in socioecological history. If there’s any hope for achieving future sustainability, urgently addressing our socioecological predicament’s wide-ranging systemic problems becomes a priority, particularly as related to the six of nine planetary boundaries humanity has already transgressed.
The penalty for our continuing to ignore (or deny) the multifold threats posed by the accumulating human impacts on the bio-ecological sphere is a massive existential metacrisis (or polycrisis). As indicated throughout previous posts, humanity must either come to terms with our past and ongoing harmful behaviors, or otherwise risk the potential global collapse of civilization and deterioration of Earth’s life-sustaining systems. For certain, we cannot afford to continue our current unsustainable pro-growth trajectory.
The previous post – What Does Sustainability Mean? – was presented as an introduction for this reconsideration of our current unsustainable pro-growth economic paradigm which was introduced in an earlier post. [A paradigm may be thought of as a specific set of concepts or patterns associated with a particular system, field, or worldview.] Previous posts address envisioning and designing a sustainable future, two series in which each consists of 4-5 parts (posts). Both series provide additional background information.
Humanity at a Crucial Socioecological Juncture of Paradigms
So here we are, poised at a historically crucial juncture and severely challenged with having to decide which paradigm to adopt going forward. For me, the decision is a no brainer. I agree with well-informed socioecologists that it would not be wise to continue supporting our existing status-quo socioeconomic paradigm, as it will inevitably lead to a disastrous future, the result of a single driving factor.
Yes, the primary growth-oriented practice deserving urgent attention is our expanding human population, the principal driver of over-consumed natural resources and resultant waste products, including toxic chemicals. More relevant information is available in previous posts: Our Unsustainable Present, How We Got This Way—An Unsustainable Existence, and Our Near-Future Socioecological Predicament.
Conversely, if humanity wisely decides to implement well-strategized goals, plans, and procedures, it might be possible to achieve a sustainable-future paradigm, at least for a smaller human population existing in fewer livable areas. Two previous series of posts present ideas and proposals for envisioning (six parts)and designing (four parts) a sustainable future.
The four pillars for future sustainability are generally described as: 1) environmental – preservation of natural wealth; 2) economic – circular and steady-state forms; 3) social – universal human rights, laws, government, relationships; and 4) human – education, healthcare, and welfare systems.
The overriding principle for sustainable paradigm to exist is creation of a harmonious symbiotic relationship of humans within the natural world. This mutual relationship is referenced with the term “socioecology” throughout my posts.
Although these two paradigms present polar options, both involve choices that may prolong or speed up long-term positive responses. For instance, getting to a sustainable state will require pursuing a well-planned “bend, not break” de-growth strategy, perhaps lasting several decades before eventually attaining a sustainable state.
A major objective of the de-growth movement is to replace the current economic measurement based on GDP (gross domestic product) with the more humane well-being measurement of GNH (gross national happiness). Similar compatible concepts are represented with ecological economics and steady-state economics, whereby the economy serves as a subsystem to the bio-ecosphere.
A Brief Overview: From a Sustainable Past to an Unsustainable Present
A brief historical review of human growth and development over the past 10,000 years should help place the issue of socioecological sustainability in an understandable perspective. More information can be found in four previous posts, beginning sequentially with deep-time and evolutionary origins and progressing to our ancestral agricultural and civilizational transition, modernity and the scientific revolution, and ending with our unsustainable present.
Prior to 10,000 BCE, a relatively small global population of hunter-gather humans subsisted symbiotically for around 250,000 years within a natural environment rich in biodiversity, including some megafauna species driven to extinction. Later, over a period from 10,000 BCE to around 1700 CE, a period that began with the establishment of early-agrarian societies expanded over several thousand years, from small settlements into ever-larger civilizational infrastructures, including cities, states, and empires.
Throughout this long multi-centuries period, the accumulation of agricultural surplus helped power population growth, in turn increasing consumption of resources and production of waste products that have inflicted harms on the bio-ecosphere. In spite of harmful impacts, overall biodiversity and resources managed to remain sustainable up to the mid-eighteenth century, when the development of the First Industrial Revolution generated an increase (in size, scope, scale, and speed) of human impacts on the bio-ecological sphere (Nature).
With the advent of the Machine Age (c.1880-1945) humanity began transitioning from a sustainable existence that was accelerated by multiple factors, largely driven by a growing dependence on fossil fuels to power society’s needs, including technologies that enabled deforestation and techno-mechanized agriculture. The culminating effect was a dramatic increase in food surplus and storage, thus enabling humanity’s dynamic population growth, along with increasing consumption of natural resources and waste products. Consequently, humanity’s ecological footprint grew so large, heavy, and wide-ranging that the Earth’s capacity for natural regeneration was increasingly diminishing.
If you’re wondering when human civilization might have existed in a relatively sustainable state during our 300,000-history on Earth, there is an answer. Such an era would have also included a high quality of life for all living beings, a time when our modest-sized human population was able to survive abundantly within the carrying capacity of Earth’s bio-ecological sphere, including ample natural resources and stable climatic conditions. Such an era has existed, but, as you might suspect by now, exists no longer.
Based on such livable conditions, leading socioecological experts agree that the most sustainable era for humans and the bio-ecosphere was the Mid-Holocene (Late Neolithic) period, from around 10,000 to 3,000 BCE). As a relatively stable epoch with predictable climate conditions, the modest global population of around 50-million humans was able to access plentiful natural resources for sustenance. In general, smaller agrarian societies were practicing sustainable forms of subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and foraging, all in sync with natural cycles. Of course, we have gradually gravitated from a sustainable state to one that is increasingly growing more unsustainable.
Wrap Up
Consequently, we’re faced with a momentous pivotal decision. Should we continue the status-quo neoliberal (business as usual) paradigm that got us into such a socioecological predicament, perhaps using our techno-industrial and AI expertise in addressing challenging socioecological issues? Or do we pool our collective knowledge and expertise to envision and, hopefully, design and implement what could become a sustainable paradigm?
I think you’ll agree that we should enthusiastically choose the sustainable paradigm option. Assuming humanity decides to act responsibly, the overarching goal must focus on minimizing the size of our Earth-squashing ecological footprint. Meanwhile, I encourage you to think about the material covered thus far, in addition to other ways humanity might realize, reimagine, recall, and reevaluate our role on Earth as a key predatory species with awesome powers, for good or ill.
The next post will list a series of challenges that humanity must confront and overcome in attaining future sustainability, that is, if possible, given the current chaotic trajectory. As duo Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmachtenberger emphasize throughout The Great Simplification’s Bend Not Break YouTube Series, if humanity’s goal is to live coherently and sustainably on planet Earth, it will be far better to take a socioecological path forward that allows a process of bending rather than breaking.
Stay safe and be well . . .
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clifton Ware, D.M., retired professor (voice), professional singer and author of four published books and two unpublished works, retired in 2007 from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities School of Music, where he taught for 37 years. Since retiring, as a self-described socio-ecological philosopher he has spent 15 years focusing on sustainability issues, in the process of acquiring an evidence-based, big-picture understanding of all principal societal and ecological systems, including the symbiotic interconnections and role of humans as an integral part of Nature. In 2013 he founded Citizens for Sustainability in St. Anthony Village, MN, produced Sustainability News + Views (2014-2019), a weekly newsletter featuring a variety of articles and a commentary, co-composed 13 Eco Songs with his wife, Bettye, organized Sustainability Forums, and performed eco-oriented programs and presentations for several organizations.
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