A Call to Action
Slowly . . . unrelenting . . . perceptibly and imperceptibly . . . accelerating . . . humanity is deconstructing the web of life and distancing itself from its lifeline . . . from its source . . . the natural world.
Humanity, by the impact of its population, a limited understanding of the reality in which it exists, and the toll extracted by its pernicious economic systems (maximizing short-term profits), unwittingly has institutionalized ecocide: the destruction of the natural environment. It is very difficult, likely impossible, to reverse the destruction and its unimaginably dire consequences.
Consider our situation and the challenges that lead to the ever-growing unpredictability, instability, and uncertainties in our lives. None of what follows is contrived or fiction, arbitrary or subject to dismissal, or in any way negotiable. It’s life as it is.
- We humans, alongside countless other animal and plant life-forms, live on a speck of a planet located in our solar system’s very narrow and fragile band that allows life to exist at all.
- We have about eight billion of us at this writing. We add in excess of a million and half more people every week to feed, clothe, house, educate, employ, transport, govern, protect, and keep healthy.
- As a result of how we break out socially and politically, we fight with each other every day, everywhere, over everything imaginable. As a consequence, unaddressed, unresolved, and growing problems fuel our fatal collective demise. If this unsustainable behavior is not arrested and reversed in the short term, civilization will collapse.
- “Natural disasters,” a normal part of living on a planet, occur regularly: earthquakes, hurricanes (typhoons, cyclones), volcanoes, forest fires, floods, droughts, and other severe weather phenomena. All are growing in magnitude due to global warming and climate change.
- We contract and suffer from an extraordinary number of illnesses, most of which are preventable.
- Countless accidents and injuries occur regularly.
- An astonishing amount of criminal and deviant behavior occurs nonstop everywhere.
If the sum of the above is not more than enough to deal with - which it is - on top of it all, because of our ignorance of the behavioral demands required by our reality - the natural world - to achieve sustainability, we have created an interrelated web of life-threatening environmental problems:
- We are depleting our resources: forests, fisheries, rangelands, croplands, plant and animal species.
- We are destroying the biological diversity on which evolution thrives. The so-called Sixth Great Extinction is going on now. This is the first caused by something other than a natural event like an asteroid striking the planet or climate change which caused four of the five Great Extinctions. This extinction is caused by us, humanity.
- With powerful electrical and diesel pumping techniques, we are draining our aquifers and lowering our water tables.
- We are systemically polluting our air, water, and soil and, consequently, our food chain. We now have microplastic contaminants in our food and water. Each year, we dump eight million tons of plastics into our oceans.
- We are depleting the stratospheric ozone that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation.
- We are experiencing symptoms of global warming and climate change which many people deny exists and many more deny that it is caused by the greenhouses gases we emit into our atmosphere (e.g., 2.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide per second and rising). Some symptoms of climate change:
Heatwaves
Devastating droughts
Destruction of croplands
Dying forests
Accelerated species extinction
Destruction of coral reefs
Melting glaciers
Rising sea levels
More frequent and intense storms
Coastal flooding
The more rapid spread of disease
Acidification and poisoning of oceans
Famine and starvation
Human migration
Heat deaths
Economic collapse
Social conflict and wars
The above isn’t an exhaustive list of environmental problems. What’s more, problems interact with each other and cause other ominous, unpredictable, and unprecedented problems known as “multi-hazards.”
Life is fragile and perilous. It always has been. It always will be. It’s up and down like a seesaw. We are sitting on the seesaw.
To sustain humanity, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species, transformational system-level changes that align humanity with the dynamic interdependence of Earth’s complex systems must begin immediately. But the needed changes won’t begin for at least four reasons:
1. Much of humanity, still operating out of primitive hardwired instincts and emotions associated with the primitive origins of our brains - a biological reality - has yet to realize that we do not have the time, resources, or energy to fight with each another. The fighting persists at every level, socially and politically, even though we have severe and complicated problems that must be addressed immediately in an urgent and constructive manner.
2. Humanity, driven by short-term profit, does not yet understand that life is a far more complex phenomenon than a race to see who can accumulate the most. Financial wealth is not only the worst measure of prosperity, but the insatiable greed and short-term thinking associated with it is the driving force of our demise.
3. Billions of people operate out of deeply embedded, antiquated, and divisive belief systems - human fabrications - that are the products of the infancy of our intelligence. These people live in a world of fiction and fantasy. They do not understand our reality and its behavioral demands. Many believe that a supernatural being is going to “save” us. Like it or not, that is not the way life works.
4. Needed human changes and advancements occur most often, not from enlightenment, but from crises. The crises we now face are at a scale, and growing, that will not allow normal recovery and for some there will be no recovery.
We exist as a tiny fragment of an immensely larger interlocking whole - the universe and quite possibly multiverse - in which all the parts are interconnected and dependent upon each other for survival. This interlocking whole is the undeniable foundation for the architecture of life and our civilization.
Most of humanity - not all - requires a completely new understanding of the reality in which we exist. The window of opportunity to make the necessary and monumental shift in thinking and behavior is small compared to the large obstacles in our current belief systems that must be dissolved. This shift must be achieved if we and all the other life forms that share this jewel of a planet are going to survive.
Our social and political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs must advance to a higher level. Not easy.
If we continue to violate, damage, dishonor, and destroy that which sustains life, our civilization will collapse as does anything that is subject to persistent abuse. Conversely, if we honor and respect that which sustains life, we will succeed and prosper in every way.
The choice is ours as it always has been. The difference today is that we know much more about what sustains and optimizes life. It is time that we honor the knowledge that we have. In fact, it is way past time.
Only then will we improve the quality of our lives, arrest and reverse our destructive and unsustainable momentum, end our needless suffering, prosper together, find peace, sustain humanity, advance our civilization, and succeed as a species.
A CALL TO ACTION
Take to the Streets
All that I’ve written is well documented and known by scientists and enlightened people worldwide.
There are many excellent, educated, and forward-thinking politicians who work very hard to do what is best for humanity. They are handicapped by uneducated, unaware, and narrowly focused politicians whose sights are far more fixed on the next election than the next generation. The retrograde mentality of the latter group has resulted in where we are today.
If you are a person who is inclined towards activism, now is the time to act. We are quickly running out of time to avert further and escalating disasters.
If you revere life and wish to sustain it for yourself and your children and their children act now. NOW! Time is short.
The objective is to communicate the following:
Our social and political attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs must advance to a higher level.
We cannot continue to violate, damage, dishonor, and destroy that which sustains life, or we are done.
The bottom line for the laws we enact must be to sustain life, not to sustain the special interests of any person or organization.
The products that we create, the services that we offer, the way we treat employees, and the way we treat our environment must all be based on that which sustains life.
Organize. Be creative.
Each of you in your uniqueness has answers and know-how. Many will join you in the effort given their understanding of the need, their desire to sustain life, and simply in response to their own survival instincts. Together, you will form a cohesive force.
Only then will the needed changes begin.
There is no greater campaign in which to participate.
Joe Simonetta
www.7WordsChangeTheWorld.com