"Humanity is the greatest challenge"

By John Feeney (Growth is Madness!)

We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first.

Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound and the time for reticence is over.

We've outgrown the planet and need radical action to avert unspeakable consequences. This - by a huge margin - has become humanity's greatest challenge.

If we've altered the climate, it should come as no surprise that we have damaged other natural systems. From deforestation to collapsing fisheries, desertification, the global spread of chemical toxins, ocean dead zones, and the death of coral reefs, an array of interrelated declines is evidence of the breadth of our impact.

Add the depletion of finite resources such as oil and ground-water, and the whole of the challenge upon us emerges.

Barring decisive action, we are marching, heads down, toward global ecological collapse.

We're dismantling the web of life, the support system upon which all species depend. We could have very well entered the "sixth mass extinction"; the fifth having wiped out the dinosaurs.

Human activity is threatening the web of life, warns Mr Feeney
Though we like to imagine we are different from other species, we humans are not exempt from the threats posed by ecological degradation.

Analysts worry, for example, about the future of food production. Climate change-induced drought and the depletion of oil and aquifers - resources on which farming and food distribution depend - could trigger famine on an unprecedented scale...

The most worrisome aspect of this ecological decline is the convergence in time of so many serious problems. Issues such as oil and aquifer depletion and climate change are set to reach crisis points within decades.

Biodiversity loss is equally problematic. As a result of their ecological interdependence, the extinction of species can trigger cascade effects whereby impacts suddenly and unpredictably spread. We're out of our league, influencing systems we don't understand...

Though few seem willing to confront the facts, it's no secret how we got here. We simply went too far. The growth which once measured our species' success inevitably turned deadly.

Unceasing economic growth, increasing per capita resource consumption, and global population growth have teamed with our reliance on finite reserves of fossil energy to exceed the Earth's absorptive and regenerative capacities...

we need ecological awareness. For instance, we must "get" that we are just one among millions of interdependent species.

It's imperative we reduce personal resource consumption. The relocalisation movement promoted by those studying oil depletion is a powerful strategy in that regard.

We need a complete transition to clean, renewable energy. It can't happen overnight, but reliance on non-renewable energy is, by definition, unsustainable.

But there is a caveat: abundant clean energy alone will not end our problems. There remains population growth which increases consumption of resources other than energy.

The demand for more goods means we need more energy

We have to rethink the corporate economic growth imperative. On a finite planet, the physical component of economic growth cannot continue forever....

We must end world population growth, then reduce population size. That means lowering population numbers in industrialised as well as developing nations...