For about 17 years now I have been working to understand the human-environment problem and the causes of and solutions for the global ecological crisis driven by human industrial culture. This is my latest summary of the situation as I see it. I post it now as part of a kind of “New Year’s Revolution” that I hope can provide a novel contribution to efforts for environmental sustainability. This post also marks a new commitment and initiative on my part to rededicate to developing ideas and tools, sharing insights and resources and collaborating on actions related to these important topics. Any comments, feedback, critique or referrals greatly appreciated.
Toward a concise list to clarify what I see as the core message, understanding, insight, knowledge, wisdom, questions and paradoxes of the “humans in the environment problem”.
1. The basis of value is life as a unified whole. (Note that “life as a unified whole” is a special issue with additional definition and explanation below. For example, it is very specifically not the same as the life of an individual, person, species, organism or other partial subset of life.)
Other ways to state this idea:
1a. The most important “thing” in the universe is life as a unified whole (not really a thing but property, quality, process, phenomenon, etc.)
1b. To preserve and enhance life as a unified whole is the highest good and moral imperative for all actions.
Ways to state the opposite
1c. The worst thing that could happen would be for life to cease to exist.
1d. To threaten or degrade life as a unified whole is the greatest harm and worst moral wrong.
2. Life is complex and requires special skills for comprehensive, effective understanding.
Corollaries to this point…
2a. We need at least three models or ideas of the fundamental unit of life – 1) the cell-organism-individual, 2) the community-ecosystem and 3) the biosphere. And we must understand these three units of life as irreducible – all three are needed at all times to understand life, and none of the three can be reduced as in be fully explained by any of the others.
2b. The second crucial complex aspect of life is the need to understand that life and environment are fused in an integral wholeness at the relational core. This can be illustrated by the concept of the ecosystem which is defined as both the living and non-living aspects of an environment integrated and functioning as an interdependent whole with reciprocal actions (each influences the other).
3. From the perspective of complex life as a unified whole integrated with environmental context we can see it possible and the general case that life enhances its environment as it “operates” (as life processes occur over time). This enhancement of the environment is self-referential in terms of the value assessment inherent in a term like enhancement, which requires ideas of bad, good and better. That is, life enhances the environment for life. This circularity is OK and is not a problem. For evidence of this special mutually beneficial life-environment relationship, we can see the oxygenated atmosphere and creation and maintenance of soils as excellent real examples.
4. Some significant portion of human values and actions serve to degrade life as a unified whole, the environment, and the life support capacity of the environment. Those actions and associated values that decrease biodiversity, degrade soils, disrupt climate and destroy stratospheric ozone, add toxins to the environment, lead to a human overshoot of environmental carrying capacity, as well as those that harm people, create violence, suffering and injustice, create inequity and degrade quality of life and social cohesion, are wrong and bad.
5. Some portion of human values and actions serve to aid life as a unified whole and in fact are completely essential for life to exist into the open-ended future (that is, for life to continue to exist over the very long term). The main arena of examples for this essential life role of humans relates to space – to observe and detect potential impactors, to explore space and eventually to colonize life beyond Earth – all of these serve life and cannot be done by any other species.
6. We need to clarify the two modes and sets of human values and actions above – those that harm and degrade life and those that aid and enhance life – and then we need to decrease the bad and wrong and increase the good and essential. This is my personal mission…to aid this three-fold work.
These six points leave much to be said and explained. For example, between points 3 (life enhances the environment) and 4 (humans degrade the environment) is a huge story and body of information about how human population has reached and likely exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth. This story is well-illustrated by the Goodland and Daly (1996) idea of the transition from the “empty world” to the “full world”. Since the world, reality, the basic circumstances, the fundamental life-environment relation have all changed qualitatively, it is now time for the human mindset to change qualitatively to fit the new real circumstances. This transformation to a new mindset is at the core of the New Year’s Revolution I propose.
