Imagine a Future In Balance

Like it or not, you're about to get a lot smaller.  We all are.  The question is whether our civilization accepts the fact in time to control our shrinkage or we do nothing and wait until it lands on us with a thud.

It's inescapable.   We have built a way of life, a lifestyle that is unsustainable.  Think "overshoot."  Earth Overshoot Day now falls on  August 21.  That's the day on which mankind consumes an entire year's supply of renewables.   As of today, humankind has already consumed 131 per cent of our planet's capacity to produce renewable resources (and you've still got 51 shopping days til Christmas).   Beginning on August 22, we become dependent on consuming nature's accumulated reserves.  It's estimated that in twenty years we'll be consuming renewables at twice their renewal rate if we can find enough reserves to keep going that long.

How can that be?  It's easy and you can see it, you can feel it, you can measure it.  It is manifest.  The evidence of it is seen in things that no longer are:

Deforestation.  Satellite imagery will show the spreading regions where trees are being felled faster than they regrow.   These vast forests are sometimes called the "lungs of the planet."

Desertification.   In order to produce agricultural products to feed an unsustainable level of demand, we're working arable soil to exhaustion.   China is a perfect example of that and the evidence is in those dramatic photos of dust storms sweeping into Chinese cities or the dust plumes that at times stretch all the way across the Pacific.

Fisheries collapse.   You don't get to see that because (a) the surviving fish are underwater and (b) you probably don't spend a lot of time with the industrial fishing fleets and (c) we're still rich enough that we can stock our shelves while Third World countries - those that actually depend on fish for protein - go without.  The proof of these collapses is in those empty shelves in the poorest countries and the fact that we continue to "fish down the food chain," pursuing less desirable stocks (stuff we used to reject) as we exhaust the more desirable species.

And then there's the hellspawn of them all, the freshwater crisis.  Even the rich can't dodge this one.  Around the world rivers are becoming contaminated, unusable.  Worse yet is the rate at which we consume freshwater stocks.   Once mighty rivers like the Colorado no longer flow to the sea.  Their waters are consumed long before they get near the sea.  And we've run this agricultural Ponzi scheme, the vaunted Green Revolution, on groundwater.   To do that we pumped massive quantities of freshwater from our aquifers ignoring the rate at which nature could refill them.  Take a full water bottle and put two straws in it.   One feeds water into that bottle at X ounces a minute.   You drink through the other straw, drawing 10X ounces per minute out of the bottle.  You're headed for the bottom, aren't you?

These are some of the problems we're facing.   There are others (think Peak Oil for example).   These aren't future problems, they're here now (remember I told you, we can see them from satellites) and they're getting worse.  Three years ago Earth Overshoot Day was in October.   Now it's moved up to August.  It's accelerating as it must and it doesn't end well.   Yet we can't even come up with a meaningful way to arrest global warming.

So what are the answers?   First we have to accept that these are global problems that threaten all of mankind, our very civilization.  Second, we have to accept that we all must commit to the sacrifices needed to come into balance with our biosphere, the only one we've got, Earth.   This is going to be tough because the impacts are arriving in different places at varying rates and differing severity.  It's natural to say, "I don't have to worry about it, I've got water," but all you're really saying is, "I don't care, you go first."   Because what is happening already to the most vulnerable regions will reach you in due course.   It may arrive in a somewhat different form.  It could be war instead of famine, for example.   But it will arrive on your doorstep in some form, eventually.

You have to reject supposed leaders who won't even mention overshoot or what that means for you and your family.   We, as a people, give them our collective power specifically to deal with this very sort of threat.   It's not their right to ignore issues this fundamental, of this magnitude, because it may be politically inconvenient.

Oh yes, there's one other option.   You can stick your head in the sand and get blue in the face with indignation over census forms or gun registries.  We'll probably all pay dearly for that in twenty or thirty years but you can certainly dodge the problem altogether - until it's too late.