Our Eco-Future

 

A new analysis published in Ambio, a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, explains:

 "We now know that society needs to be viewed as part of the biosphere, not separate from it. Depending on the collective actions of humanity, future conditions could be either beneficial or hostile for human life and wellbeing in the Anthropocene biosphere. Whether humanity has the collective wisdom to navigate the Anthropocene to sustain a livable biosphere for people and civilizations, as well as for the rest of life with which we share the planet, is the most formidable challenge facing humanity."

The new report focuses on the unprecedented environmental degradation on the one hand and a situation in which vast economic inequality has created a political situation in which taking the necessary steps to alter humanity's trajectory has proven almost impossible.

The study consider:

"The Anthropocene is characterized by a tightly interconnected world operating at high speeds with hyper-efficiency in several dimensions. These dimensions include the globalized food production and distribution system, extensive trade and transport systems, strong connectivity of financial and capital markets, internationalized supply and value chains, widespread movements of people, social innovations, development and exchange of technology, and widespread communication capacities."

"In a single human lifetime, largely since the 1950s, we have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. Now just a few plants and animals dominate the land and oceans," said lead author Carl Folke, director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and chair of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, in a statement Monday.  "Our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient and more prone to shocks than before."

According to Line Gordon, co-author of the report and director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, "This is a decisive decade for humanity. In this decade we must bend the curves of greenhouse gas emissions and shocking biodiversity loss. This means transforming what we eat and how we farm it, among many other transformations."

Co-author Victor Galaz, deputy director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said: "As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so too does the hope that technologies such as artificial intelligence will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change. That will only happen however, if we act forcefully in ways that redirects the direction of technological change towards planetary stewardship and responsible innovation."

Scientists Say Humanity Now at 'Dawn of What Must Be a Transformative Decade' | Common Dreams News

And that is the sad thing in the view of our blog. Despite insights into the reality of climate change and the toll upon humanity and nature, the experts, the scientists, those who should know better, still think in terms of capitalist solutions. They dare not suggest that socialism and its steady-state, zero-growth sustainable mode of production is the alternative.