In the case of hunter/gatherers, the human contribution to production of harvested food was limited. But as technology became more important in provision of ecosystem services, the human element (including machines and knowledge) began to dominate.
A problem has arisen because humans have tended to consume not only ecosystem services (flows) from natural capital, but also the nature-built capital (stocks) itself. A striking example is the cod fishery in the North Atlantic Ocean: overfishing led to a collapse of the cod population and an abrupt decline in productivity.
For centuries, humans have gotten away with depleting or destroying natural capital by simply moving on to the next unexploited natural resource. Commodity frontiers often have a geographic dimension, e.g. the wave of primary forest exploitation in temperate North America that extended from the New England hardwoods, through the pines of the Great Lakes states, and on to the Pacific Northwest conifers.
A massive erosion of nature-built capital over the last two centuries is evident in the spatial patterns of land use change, distortions in animal and plant population structure, and outright extinction of species. As natural capital is depleted, human interventions (often subsidized by energy from fossil fuels) must be ramped up to maintain the same level of ecosystem services.
From an Earth system science perspective, we can describe the interaction of the human enterprise and natural capital in terms of interaction of the technosphere with its natural resources base.
The technosphere is the global aggregate of human made artefacts and includes machines, buildings, transportation infrastructure, and communications infrastructure, along with the humans and their knowledge needed to maintain it. Estimates of technosphere manufactured capital are on the order of 800 Pg.
The technosphere requires a large stream of materials and energy to maintain itself and to produce the outputs of goods and services that keep the 7.8 billion people on Earth alive. Here, I am particularly interested in the interaction of the technosphere with the biosphere.
Biosphere capital is the sum of all organisms and the associated information in the form of genetic material. It is a subset of global natural capital.
Biosphere mass is estimated at 550 Pg (carbon) and the estimates for the number of species range from 5.3 million and 1 trillion. Inputs to the biosphere include solar energy and material flows from the geosphere (minerals) and hydrosphere. Besides sustaining itself, the biosphere outputs vast flows of food and fiber (including wood) to the technosphere.
From the global perspective, technosphere manufactured capital is clearly increasing and biosphere capital is clearly decreasing. Examples include:
Our limited understanding of the biosphere makes it difficult to even quantify the on-going loss of biosphere capital. Note that the biosphere contributes to regulation of atmospheric and marine chemistry by way of the global biogeochemical cycles. Thus, as we lose biosphere capital, we are beginning to lose those free regulatory services.
Meanwhile, technosphere manufactured capital is growing at a rate of 1-8% per year, depending on the level of development in a given country. It will likely peak at a much higher level than at present because of the still growing global population and increases in per capita manufactured capital in the developing world.
In principle, biosphere inputs to the technosphere can be derived in a sustainable manner. A landscape of tree plantations can be continuously harvested and replanted to produce a sustained yield of wood. Plantation forests supplied about one third of industrial roundwood in 2000. Likewise, there is such a thing as a sustainable marine fishery if the harvest is properly managed.
However, much of the current material transfer from biosphere to technosphere is drawing down biosphere capital. Differentiating between sustainable and depleting production of food and fiber, and increasing attention to sourcing, will play an important role in the transition to a soci-economic metabolism that is sustainable. Accounting practices that treat all forms of capital – including natural capital and technosphere capital in its various forms (manufactured, financial, human, social) – is necessary.
Since different natural resources must be managed at different scales, a hierarchy of socio-ecological systems is needed. This arrangement points to the importance of zonation on the Earth surface in terms of the strength of the coupling between technosphere and biosphere. We can have large areas of relatively undisturbed intact ecosystems (e.g. marine reserves and terrestrial wilderness areas), significant areas of heavy technosphere dominance (as in urban and industrial zones), significant areas of intensive food and fiber production (e.g. forest plantations), and a scattering of areas with a moderate intensity of biosphere/technosphere interaction. This view supports the development of spatially-explicit simulation models – implemented at a range of spatial scales – that can be used within a socio-ecological system to organize the co-production of ecosystem services. Potentially, with a well-designed combination of monitoring, modeling, and environmental governance, the technosphere will drive increases rather than decreases in biosphere capital (e.g. the recovery of whale populations).
Computer generated image of world-wide internet connections. Image credit: The OPTE Project
David P. Turner / November 14, 2021
The threat of anthropogenically-induced global environmental change imposes a challenge on humanity to reconceptualize its relationship to the other components of the Earth system. Historically, Nature was the background for the human enterprise. It provided unlimited sources of ecosystem services, such as ocean fish, clean air, and clean water. However, as the human enterprise expanded – especially after the “Great Acceleration” of technological development beginning about 1945 – real limits have become obvious.
Because the sum of human impacts on the environment is now global, humanity as a collective must act to self-regulate. Unfortunately, humanity is not at present a collective, and we are only beginning to construct a worldview that is consistent with living within the biophysical limits of the planet. This post examines three concepts that may help move us towards those goals.
The Technosphere
The term technosphere has been used for decades in the field of Science and Technology Studies and is loosely construed as the sum of all technological artifacts on Earth. Often it is credited with having a degree of autonomy in the sense of its growth having a direction and momentum outside of human control. The current difficulty in reducing fossil fuel related emissions of greenhouse gases is indicative of that autonomy.
In the last decade, the technosphere concept has been more formally defined as:
the set of large-scale networked technologies that underlie and make possible rapid extraction from the Earth of large quantities of free energy and subsequent power generation, long distance, nearly instantaneous communication, rapid long-distance energy and mass transport, the existence and operation of modern governmental and other bureaucracies, high-intensity industrial and manufacturing operations including regional, continental and global distribution of food and other goods, and a myriad additional ‘artificial’ or ‘non-natural’ processes without which modern civilization and its present 7 × 109 human constituents could not exist.
Earth system scientists now make quantitative estimates of the properties of the technosphere such as total mass and annual energy throughput. The juxtaposition of technosphere metrics like global fertilizer use, with biosphere metrics like global nitrogen fixation, reveals the growing dominance of the technosphere in the global biogeochemical cycles and points to the limits to technosphere growth.
The technosphere is in some ways analogous to the biosphere. Both are globe girdling aggregations of quasi-independent subsystems. In energetic terms, both the biosphere and the technosphere are dissipative structures, meaning they capture and use energy to maintain order. The biosphere changes by way of biological evolution; the technosphere changes by way of cultural evolution.
Humans and their institutions are parts of the technosphere, and human thinking is required to organize the technosphere. But the question about technosphere autonomy, and its possible danger to humanity, remains. Notably, the capitalist economic system that underlies the technosphere thrives on growth. Relentless technosphere growth is in effect consuming Earth system capital, such as biodiversity and fossil fuel, that has accumulated over millions of years. Astrobiologists, who ponder evolution of intelligent life on other planets, suggest that an environmentally self-destructive technosphere may significantly limit (filter) how often sustainable high technology planetary civilizations arise in the universe.
A critical problem with Earth’s current technosphere is that due to its rapid and recent evolution, it does not have the kind of feedback loops (as found in the biosphere) needed for self-regulation. Humans are programmed (biologically) to exploit all available resources, but we haven’t evolved culturally to understand limits. Haff emphasizes that the lack of recycling within the technosphere (with the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion as an iconic example). Life cycle analyses of all manufactured products, and better monitoring of input/recycling/output budgets (e.g., for aluminum) at the global scale is required for a sustainable technosphere.
Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863 – 1945) was one of the first scientists to explicitly study Earth as a whole. He understood that the biosphere (the sum of all living matter) added an unusual feature to the planet. The biosphere uses the energy in solar radiation to maintain a new form of order (life) on the surface of the planet. That layer of living matter is a major driver of the global biogeochemical cycling of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Vernadsky emphasized that the biosphere was a new kind of thing in the universe, i.e. a step forward in cosmic evolution.
He also recognized that humanity, as a result of the industrial revolution, had become of geological significance. Like the biosphere, humanity and its technology are a product of cosmic evolution – in this case relying upon an organism-based nervous system capable of consciousness and symbolic thinking. By extension from the existing concepts of lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, Vernadsky adopted the term noosphere for this new layer of thinking matter that could alter the global biogeochemical cycles.
The noosphere as conceived by Vernadsky was just getting powered up in his lifetime. He defined it more as a potential transformation of the biosphere – “a reconstruction of the biosphere in the interests of freely thinking humanity as a single entity”.
Vernadsky’s noosphere concept lay mostly dormant for much of the 20th century (although see Sampson and Pitt 1999). Around the turn of the century, Nobel Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen evoked Vernadsky’s idea of transforming the biosphere into a noosphere. But in this 21st century usage, the issue of dangerous human meddling with the Earth system had risen to prominence and the inevitability of a stabilized noosphere was less certain. Similarly, Turner proposed that an updated meaning for noosphere would refer to a planetary system as a whole in which an intelligent life form had developed advanced technology but had learned to self-regulate so as to not degrade the planetary life support system.
In a slightly different take, noosphere is proposed as a paradigm for an era to follow the Great Acceleration. In this case, the noosphere is still imagined as emerging from the biosphere, but here in response to the threats of anthropogenic global environmental change. The maturation of the noosphere would mean the arrival of a global society that collaboratively self-regulates its impact on the Earth system.
Limitations of the Noosphere Concept
As noted, Vernadsky was writing before the scientific discovery that humanity was altering the atmosphere, e.g., by increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases. Thus, he did not foresee humanity’s possible self-destructive tendencies. His noosphere concept was more about Promethean management of the Earth system than about humanity learning how to self-regulate, which is what we need now.
In most versions of the noosphere concept, the biosphere is “transformed” into a noosphere, hence in its fruition it would physically include the biosphere. However, the biosphere (much of it microbial) will always be capable of functioning independent of human attempts to manage the Earth system. The biosphere could be said to have agency relative to human impacts, which might be a more realistic basis on which to attempt to manage it.
Vernadsky’s noosphere was purely physical, but other users of the term have interpreted it more metaphysically, especially Teilhard de Chardin who referred to a purely spiritual endpoint of noosphere evolution. This spirituality and teleology have made the noosphere concept aversive to many scientists (see Medawar in Sampson and Pitt 1999).
The Global Brain
About the same time (1920s) that the noosphere meme was fostered by Vernadsky, Teilhard de Chardin, and Le Roy, the concept (or metaphor) of the global brain also emerged. Novelist and futurist H.G. Wells (1866 – 1946) proposed that all knowledge be catalogued in a single place and be made available to anyone on the planet. His hope was that this common knowledge base might lead to peace and rapid human progress. Given that World War II was soon to erupt at the time of his “World Brain” proposal, Wells was clearly ahead of his time.
Like the noosphere concept, the World Brain concept was not much referred to in the decades following its origin in Well’s imagination. However, the late 20th century Information Technology revolution has reinvigorated discussion about it. With rapid build out of the global telecommunications infrastructure, the global brain has begun to be envisioned as something wired together by the Internet.
Systems theorist Francis Heylighen and his collaborators at the Global Brain Institute have devoted considerable attention to building the analogy between the human brain and a proposed global brain, especially in relation to the process of thinking.
Heylighen sees the global brain as a necessary part of an emerging social superorganism – a densely networked global society. His global society will coalesce because information technology now offers a growing proportion of the global population access to a wealth of information and an efficient way to organize production and consumption of goods and services. Rather than totalitarianism, the high level of connectivity in Heylighen’s model of the social superorganism stimulates individuals to develop themselves (while still acknowledging membership in a global collective). This model leads to more distributed, less hierarchical, power centers.
How the global brain will think is not well characterized at present. Cultural evolution has always been a form of collective intelligence and the binding power of the Internet now provides a forum for a global collective to exchange ideas (memes). Changes in the frequency distribution of search term or web page usage would be one means of monitoring global thinking.
Collaborative development of the Community Earth System Model is an example of collective thinking on a limited scale. Specialist scientists work to improve the many subsystems of the model, and periodically the computer code is updated based on a consensus decision.
One other intriguing analogy relates to a characteristic feature of the human brain in which it makes frequent (conscious or unconscious) predictions. If they are not fulfilled, a motivation to act may be instigated. With Earth system model scenarios now produced in the context of climate change assessment, the global brain might also be said to be constructing scenarios/predictions for itself. Comparisons of scenarios, or detection of discrepancies between favorable scenarios and how reality is playing out, could inspire corrective action by the global collective.
Limitations of the Global Brain Concept
The analogy of global brain to individual brain is certainly a stimulant to conceptualizing new global scale structures and processes. However, since we barely understand our own consciousness and decision-making processes, it is an analogy that still needs a lot of work, especially with respect to the executive function. In the near-term, humanity needs research and models on how to integrate governance among 8-10 billion people (i.e. what form of institutions?) and how to convince billions of planetary citizens to cooperate in the effort that humanity must make to self-regulate. The global brain concept does not facilitate the coupling of the human enterprise to the rest of the Earth system.
Conclusions
The technosphere, noosphere, and global brain concepts share a common concern with understanding the relationship of the burgeoning human enterprise, including its technology, to the entirety of the Earth system. Anthropogenic global environmental change poses an existential threat to humanity and there is a clear need for a Great Transition involving massive changes in values as well as technology. These three concepts serve as beacons pointing towards global sustainability.
The utility of the technosphere concept is that it refers to measurable entities, and formally meshes with the existing Earth system science paradigm. Given that humans are only part of the technosphere, and a part does not control the whole, awareness of the technosphere argues against hubris. However, the technosphere concept doesn’t engage the host of psychological and sociological issues that must be addressed to rapidly alter the Earth system trajectory. It helps reveal the danger humanity faces but doesn’t foster a worldview that will ameliorate the danger.
The chief utility of the noosphere concept is its cosmic perspective and aspirational quality. A weakness is ambiguity about what the noosphere includes and how it operates.
The utility of the global brain concept is that it confirms we have the technical means to actualize global collective intelligence, which will be required to deal with the overwhelming complexity of the Earth system. A weakness is a limited model of global governance and a lack of attention to the rapid erosion of the human life support system (the biosphere) that must function well for the emerging global brain to flourish. The capacity of individuals to know themselves, i.e. to reflect on their own behavior and its consequences, can potentially be scaled up to the global human collective. This process will depend on the communication possibilities opened up by the Internet.
The technosphere, noosphere, and global brain concepts will contribute to synthesizing a new model of the planetary future that includes a functioning global society and a technological support system that maintains a sustainable relationship to the rest of the Earth system.
Think of the entire global human enterprise as a system − what Earth system scientists are beginning to call the technosphere. It consists of all the material artifacts and energy flows associated with our global high technology civilization, as well as all the social bonds and institutions that tie us together. A high degree of connectivity is evident in the technosphere (Figure 1), and it is worth asking if more connectivity (e.g., a stronger United Nations) or less connectivity (e.g., effects of anti-globalization) would help in the struggle for global sustainability.
Systems are often specified in terms of parts and wholes, and in terms of interactions between the parts that help maintain the whole. The quantity and nature of these within-system connections have long been of interest to systems theorists because of their influence on system stability. The connectivity concept offers a lens through which to view technosphere structure and function.
In the ecological literature, (eco)system connectivity has two aspects. One is geographic (2-dimensional) – as in corridors across a landscape that allow movement of animals or dispersal of seeds. High connectivity is important because, for instance, after a disturbance such as fire, early successional species must find their way to the disturbed patch.
The second aspect of ecosystem connectivity relates to the way processes are coupled. In a highly connected forest ecosystem, the processes of decomposition (which releases nutrients) and net primary production (which requires nutrient uptake) are coupled by way of a network of fine roots or mycorrhizae. In a weakly connected tree plantation, where a significant proportion of nutrients are provided by fertilizer, that coupling is missing. High connectivity of processes usually means more effective system regulation.
In the technosphere, geographic connectivity is maintained by the transportation and telecommunications infrastructure. Process-based connectivity relies on coupling between sources and sinks of energy, materials, information, and money.
Technosphere connectivity has grown increasingly dense over time (Figure 1) with a corresponding rise in technosphere mass and energy throughput. All that global connectivity has helped raise standards of living for billions of people. But the technosphere is showing signs of self-destructiveness, and it is worth asking if it is in any sense underconnected or overconnected.
Ecologist C.S. Hollings has argued that late successional ecosystems become overconnected. In his panarchy model for ecosystem development, a four-stage cycle (Figure 2) begins with a catastrophic disturbance (Release phase). The disturbance stimulates decomposition of dead organic matter and frees up resources for colonizing species that seed in and rapidly accumulate biomass (Reorganization Phase). As the ecosystem fills in (Exploitation or Growth Phase), the connectivity increases (note the x-axis). In contrast to earlier theories of ecosystem dynamics, Hollings suggested that ever increasing ecosystem connectivity may ultimately be destabilizing because nutrients get locked up in biomass, and a high density of organisms means strong competition that stresses the organisms and makes them vulnerable to disturbance (Conservation Phase). Eventually, the stressed condition of the biota allows another major disturbance, such as an insect outbreak (Release Phase), that sweeps across the ecosystem and restarts the panarchy cycle. The Reorganization phase is a period of low connectivity, leaving the ecosystem susceptible to degradation.
The technosphere system is like an ecosystem in having a throughput of energy (mostly fossil fuel) and a turnover of its components. It has certainly gone through a growth phase (often referred to as the Great Acceleration) and is now accumulating connections rapidly as it matures. Let’s place it somewhere between the Exploration and Conservation phases in Figure 2. It might be underconnected in the sense of weak links between different geographic areas (e.g., in the face of global scale problems like climate change) and limited coupling of critical processes (e.g., mobile phone manufacturing and mobile phone recycling). The opposite concern is that it may at some point become overconnected and vulnerable to a major disturbance.
Let’s examine ways in which the technosphere could be considered underconnected.
1. An underconnected technosphere is one in which global scale coordination is unable to meet the challenges of Earth system maintenance. Lack of connections allows global scale problems to escape technosphere control. The situation with global climate change evokes this sort of underconnection. In broad terms, we have inadequate institutions for global environmental governance (not to mention global economic governance). The shambolic global response to COVID-19 is also indicative of underconnection; a better coordinated global vaccination program would have been in the best interest of everyone.
2. The technosphere is causing massive disruption of the biosphere and Earth’s climate. These impacts on the Earth system are associated with failure to fully recycle technosphere “waste products”, e.g., the production of carbon dioxide by fossil fuel combustion is not connected to the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by some other industrial process.
3. A renewable energy revolution is clearly needed to mitigate climate change, but the sources of renewable energy (e.g., wind and solar) may not be co-located with the demand for energy (urban areas). Hence, a more robust grid (nationally and internationally) for distribution of electricity is required (along with other energy infrastructure upgrades).
4. We think of the global Internet as foundational for global connectivity. And, in fact, the Internet facilitates the kind of global coordination that is needed to address global environmental change issues that threaten the technosphere. However, nations such as China and Russia have built national Internet firewalls that prevent their citizens from freely accessing the Internet. That kind of fence raising promotes nationalism, but not the planetary citizenship we need to create a sustainable future.
The case for an overconnected technosphere is less compelling. The rapid spread of the 2007-2008 financial crisis around the planet is suggestive of fragility in the global economy. And the crush of 7.8 billion people striving for a high quality of life is contributing to widespread stress in the biosphere (upon which the technosphere depends). Ironically, solving these problems may require greater international connectivity.
We are still in the early stages of technosphere evolution, and my sense is that greater global connectivity is desirable. With regard to the global environment, we are in dire need of 1) a well-connected circular economy that recycles all manufactured products, and 2) new international institutions for global environmental governance that coordinate monitoring, assessments, adaptation, and mitigation of global environmental change problems. The anti-globalization movement calls for less connectivity but the proliferation of global scale problems points to the need for more connectivity.
Recommended Reading: Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization. Parag Khanna. 2016. Random House. My review.
Carbon dioxide emissions from increased energy use associated with air conditioning is one form of technosphere feedback to climate change. Image Credit: pxfuel
David P. Turner / July 12, 2021
The technosphere is often described by way of analogy to the biosphere. In both cases, energy throughput supports maintenance of order.
In the biosphere, the source of the energy is mostly the sun, and the fuel is often carbohydrates derived directly or indirectly from photosynthesis. The energy captured by photosynthesis is used for maintenance of metabolism in existing biomass (autotrophic respiration) and production of new biomass (of all types), which is ultimately broken down in heterotrophic respiration. These terms can be expressed in terms of energy flux or carbon flux.
In the technosphere, the energy source is also mostly the sun in that the fossil fuels that currently power the technosphere have their ultimate origin in ancient solar energy.
The technosphere equivalent of maintenance respiration is the energy throughput not associated with materials production, e.g., energy for heating, cooling, transportation, and communication. The technosphere equivalent of biomass production is manufacture of material artifacts like cars and buildings, much of which is turnover (replacement of worn-out or non-functioning objects) and some of which is new (expansion of the technosphere). The combination of energy spent on maintenance and manufacturing could loosely be considered technosphere respiration.
Respiration of both the biosphere and technosphere produces CO2 that is released to the atmosphere. However, in the case of the biosphere, nearly the equivalent of the respired CO2 is reabsorbed from the atmospheric pool in new photosynthesis. In contrast, much of the respired CO2 from the technosphere is accumulating in the atmosphere. Hence the problem of global warming.
There are many feedbacks that operate as the global climate warms, most of them positive (amplifying) feedbacks. Two commonly cited positive feedbacks are the water vapor feedback and the snow/albedo feedback (Figure 1). In both cases, as the atmosphere warms, the physical environment changes in a way that accelerates the warming. In systems theory, positive feedbacks tend to be destabilizing.
Figure 1. The water vapor (blue loop) and snow/ice albedo (red loop) feedbacks. Climate warming induced by anthropogenic CO2 emissions drives changes in the hydrosphere and cryosphere that amplify the warming. A plus sign means causes to increase and a minus sign mean causes to decrease. Image Credit: David Turner and Monica Whipple.
Here I would like to isolate two other positive feedbacks to climate warming that are not purely geophysical, rather they are mediated by the technosphere.
The first relates to energy use for cooling (air conditioning). As the low latitudes warm, people will increasingly prioritize air conditioning. At mid-latitudes, air conditioning will be used more frequently. At high latitudes, there will be some energy savings from reduced heating, but initial modeling suggests that the overall global effect of climate change on heating and cooling will be a large increase in energy demand (25-58% above a baseline by 2050).
To whatever degree that climate change induced technosphere energy consumption is supplied by fossil fuel combustion, i.e., business as usual, there will be more CO2 emissions and more global warming. This positive feedback loop (Figure 2) will frustrate global efforts to rein in CO2 emissions.
Figure 2. The technosphere maintenance respiration (purple loop) and turnover (green loop) feedbacks. Climate warming induced by anthropogenic CO2 emissions drives changes in the technosphere that increase energy consumption. The associated increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions pushes up the atmospheric CO2 concentration, and correspondingly the global mean temperature. Image Credit: David Turner and Monica Whipple.
Another source of increasing energy demand will be the more rapid turnover of technosphere artifacts because of a changing disturbance regime. More fires, extreme weather events, permafrost melting, and sea level rise will all be destructive and require new construction. Again, we will see more demand for energy and eventually more warming (Figure 2).
The 3 mechanisms of positive technosphere feedback noted here do not consider other factors that will be increasing technosphere energy demand in the near future, particularly the demands associated with a growing global population and continued economic development (rising per capita energy use).
A few sources of downward pressure on total energy consumption are in play, including increasing energy use efficiency, increasing building insulation, and longer artifact turnover time. They point to the importance of efficiency standards (e.g., for air conditioners), building standards (for insulation), and product standards (for extending product lifetime). To the degree that improvements in these fields are driven by an intent to limit climate change, they represent a negative technosphere feedback to climate change (effectively a teleological feedback).
A shift of the global energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels would of course also limit the magnitude of the climate change that initiates these feedbacks in the first place. That worthy goal is technically feasible.
The developmental task of building a personal identity is becoming ever more complicated. While some aspects of identity come with birth, others are adopted over the course of maturation. Increasingly, each person has multiple identities that are managed in a complex psychological juggling act.
Citizenship − generally defined in terms of loyalty to the society within a specified area − is a key component of personal identity. National citizenship most readily comes to mind, but the term is also used at other levels of organization. Members of a tribe, residents concerned about watershed protection, and neighbors attending to local quality of life all qualify as citizens.
The concept of citizenship at the planetary scale is rather new, in part because our global governance infrastructure (environmental, geopolitical, and economic) is rudimentary. However, if there is to be a purposeful (teleological) attempt to mitigate and adapt to global environmental change, we residents of Earth must become planetary citizens.
Earth system scientists generally reject the Gaian notion that the planet is in some way self-regulating or purposeful. But if humanity indeed manages to join together and intentionally reverse the trend of rising greenhouse gas concentrations and mass extinction, the Earth system as a whole (Gaia 2.0) would in a sense gain purpose.
Embrace of planetary citizenship is a pushback against unbridled individualism. In the widely held neoliberal belief system, individuals are viewed most fundamentally as autonomous consumers who live in a biophysical environment that is a limitless source of materials and energy as well as a limitless sink for wastes. In fact, the human impact on the global environment is a summation of the resource demands from the 7.8 billion people who now inhabit the planet. The cumulative impact of humanity has clearly begun to induce changes in the Earth system that endanger both developing and developed nations.
Rights and Responsibilities
Planetary citizens have rights, in principle. As noted though, the global governance forums for establishing those rights are weak. In the realm of environmental quality, a planetary citizen certainly should have a right to an unpolluted environment.
Correspondingly, a planetary citizen’s responsibilities include understanding their own resource use footprint, and endeavoring to control it (e.g., having fewer children). Understanding the environmental impacts of their society and advocating in support of conservation-oriented governmental policies and actions (e.g., by voting) is also essential.
Because global change is happening so quickly and persistently, a commitment to lifelong learning about local and global environmental change is a foundation of planetary citizenship.
Identifying with any collective evokes a tension between personal autonomy and obligations to the greater good. Thus, the addition of planetary citizenship to personal identity creates psychological demands. Mental health requires that those new demands (e.g., pressure for less consumerism and more altruism) be calibrated to individual circumstances and to the state of the world.
Collective Intelligence
Possibilities for the emergence of collective intelligence and agency among planetary citizens at various scales have grown rapidly as the Internet has evolved. Besides the general sense of a global brain emerging from the mass of online communication, various online groups now specifically address global environmental change issues, e.g. the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence sponsors a crowdsourced web site aimed at finding solutions to climate change.
Civil society organizations like 350.org, Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, and Wikipedia are testaments to the power of collective intelligence among planetary citizens. Participation of planetary citizens in self-organized groups of activists creates a sense of agency, which can be hard to find when a person confronts the enormity of global environmental change on their own. What is glaringly missing is a planetary forum for global environmental governance, something like the proposed World Environment Organization.
Global Citizenship
It is worth making a distinction between planetary citizenship and global citizenship. Both concepts are relevant to building global sustainability, with planetary citizenship more focused on the biophysical environment and global citizenship more concerned with human relationships. The global perspective is fundamentally political.
Global Citizenship is often discussed in the context of Global Citizenship Education (GCE). GEC theory commonly calls for “recognizing the interconnectedness of life, respecting cultural diversity and human rights, advocating global social justice, empathizing with suffering people around the world, seeing the world as others see it and feeling a sense of moral responsibility for planet Earth”.
Traditional GCE theory may be oriented around experiential learning by way of immersive experiences in other cultures, often including volunteer work. However, persistent concerns that the relationship of visitor to host replicates the colonial model of dominance have led to more critically oriented versions of GCE theory. Here, the emphasis is on examining injustices and power differentials among social groups and evaluating effective means to foster greater equity.
The thrust of the global citizenship concept tends towards differentiating the parts of humanity and fulfilling the obligation to address injustices of all kinds; the thrust of planetary citizenship is on humanity as a collective entity playing a role in Earth system dynamics. A comprehensive approach to teaching global citizenship would emphasize both aspects and even transcend them.
Pedagogy
Since identity as a planetary citizen is a choice, the question of how education can be designed to foster that choice is significant.
The idealized outcome of education for planetary citizenship is a human being who understands the impacts of the technosphere on the Earth system and has a willingness to engage in building global sustainability (Go Greta Thunberg!). These individuals would share a sense of all humans having a common destiny.
Two disciplines are particularly relevant.
The field of Big History covers the history of the universe leading to the current Earth system. It juxtaposes cosmic evolution, biological evolution, and cultural evolution to give perspective on how humanity has become aware of itself and come to endanger itself. A recently developed free online course in Big History aimed at middle school and high school students nicely introduces the subject. My own text, The Green Marble, and my blog posts such as A Positive Narrative for the Anthropocene, examine Big History at a level suitable for undergraduate and graduate students.
The field of environmental sociology is likewise important. It explores interactions of social systems with ecosystems at multiple spatial scales. The concept of a socioecological system, composed of a specific ecosystem and all the relevant stakeholders, is a core object of study. Nobel prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom helped elucidate the optimal structural and functional properties of socioecological systems at various scales.
Conclusion
Identifying as a planetary citizen means seeking to understand humanity’s environmental predicament and trying to do something about it. An important benefit from this commitment is the acquisition of a sense of agency regarding global environmental change. The aggregate effect of planetary citizenship across multiple levels of organization (individual, civil society, nation, global) will be purposeful change at the planetary scale.
Iceberg in Lilliehöökfjord, Svalbard. Image credit: Hannes Grobe, CC BY-SA 4.0
David P. Turner / February 1, 2021
Earth system scientists think of planet Earth as composed of multiple interacting spheres. The cryosphere is a term given to the totality of frozen water on Earth – including snow, ice, glaciers, polar ice caps, sea ice, and permafrost.
The cryosphere has a significant effect on the global climate because snow and ice largely reflect solar radiation, hence cooling the planet.
Figure 1. Snowball Earth. The planet was nearly covered in snow and ice around 700 million years ago. Image Credit: NASA.
The multiple glacial-interglacial cycles over the last several million years were initiated by changes in sun/earth geometry (the Milankovitch cycles), but strengthened by changes in snow/ice reflectance along with changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Figure 2. Ice cover (black) shifted markedly between the glacial and interglacial periods over the last 3 million years. Image credit: Hannes Grobe CC Attribution 3.0
The culprit in the current melting of the cryosphere is something new to the Earth system – the technosphere. This recently evolved sphere consists of the totality of the human enterprise on Earth, including its myriad physical objects and material flows.
Projections by Earth system models of cryosphere condition over the next decades, centuries, and millennia suggest it will significantly wane if not disappear.
Besides the positive feedback to climate change by way of reflectance effects (and release of greenhouse gases from permafrost melting), the diminishment of the cryosphere will have profound impacts on the technosphere.
The circulation of water through the hydrosphere on land is regulated in many cases by accumulation of snow and ice on mountains. That water is subsequently released throughout the year, thus providing stable stream flows for downstream irrigated agriculture and urban use.
The melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps will drive up sea level. If all such ice is melted (over the course of hundreds to thousands of years), sea level is projected to rise 68 m. The magnitude of sea level rise projected over the next 100 years for intermediate emissions scenarios is on the order of one meter.
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will certainly slow the erosion of the cryosphere and should be made. The precautionary principle suggests we avoid passing tipping points associated with melting of the Greenland ice cap and the Antarctic ice cap. However, the momentum of environmental change is strongly in that direction.
Once these ice caps are gone, there is a hysteresis effect such that the ice does not return with a simple reversion to the current climate (e.g. by an engineered drawdown of the CO2 concentration).
The planet is headed towards a warmer, largely ice free, condition. The biosphere has been there before. The technosphere has not. Humanity will be challenged to develop adequate adaptive strategies.
In the discipline of Earth System Science, a useful analytic approach to sorting out parts and wholes is by reference to the earthly spheres. The pre-human Earth system included the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. With the biological and cultural evolution of humans came the technosphere. In a very aggregated way of thinking, these spheres interact.
The biosphere is the sum of all living organisms on Earth; it is mostly powered by solar radiation and it drives the biogeochemical cycling of elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
The technosphere is the sum of the human enterprise on Earth, including all of our physical constructions and institutions; it is mostly powered by fossil fuels and it has a large throughput of energy and materials.
Over the last couple of centuries, the technosphere has expanded massively. It is altering the biosphere (the sixth mass extinction) and the global biogeochemical cycles (e.g. the CO2 emissions that drive climate change).
The interaction of the technosphere and the biosphere is evident at places like wildlife markets where captured wild animals are sold for human consumption. Virologists believe that such an environment is favorable to the transfer of viruses from non-human animals to humans. The SARS-CoV-2 virus likely jumped from another species, possibly wild-caught bats, to humans in a market environment. Covid-19 (the pandemic) has now spread globally and killed over one million people.
The human part of the technosphere has attempted to stop SARS-CoV-2 transmission by restricting physical interactions among people. The summed effect of these self-defense policies has been a slowing of technosphere metabolism. Notably, Covid-19 inspired slowdowns and shutdowns have driven a reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and a decrease in the demand for oil. This change is of course quite relevant to another interaction within the Earth system − namely technosphere impacts on the global climate.
The reduction in CO2 emissions in response to Covid-19. Image Credit: Global Carbon Project.
There are important lessons to be learned from technosphere response to Covid-19 about relationships among the Earthly spheres.
One lesson regards the degree to which the technosphere is autonomous.
If we view the technosphere as a natural product of cosmic evolution, then the increase in order that the technosphere brings to the Earth system has a momentum somewhat independent of human volition. The technosphere thrives on energy throughput, and humans are compelled to maintain or increase energy flow. It is debatable if we control the technosphere or it controls us.
In an alternative view, tracing back to Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky in the 1920s, humanity controls the technosphere and can shape it to manage the Earth system. This view received a recent update with a vision of Gaia 2.0 in which the human component manages the technosphere to be sustainably integrated with the rest of the Earth system.
The fact that humanity did, in effect, reduce technosphere metabolism in response to Covid-19 supports this alternative view.
Admittedly, the intention in fighting Covid-19 was not to address the global climate change issue. And the modest drop in global carbon emissions will have only a small impact on the increasing CO2 concentration, which is what actually controls global warming. Nevertheless, the result shows that it is possible for human will to affect the whole Earth system relatively quickly. The Montreal Protocol to protect stratospheric ozone is more directly germane.
A second lesson from technosphere reaction to Covid-19 is that a technosphere slowdown was accomplished as the summation of policies and decisions made at the national scale or lower (e.g. slowdowns/shutdowns by states and cities, and voluntary homestay by individuals). The current approach to addressing global climate change is the Paris Agreement, which similarly functions by way of summation. Each nation voluntarily defines its own contribution to emissions reduction, and follow-up policies to support those commitments are made at multiple levels of governance. This bottom-up approach may prove more effective than the top-down approach in the unsuccessful Kyoto Protocol.
A third lesson from technosphere response to Covid-19 regards the coming immunization campaign to combat it. Many, if not most, people around the planet will need to get vaccinated to achieve widespread herd immunity. Success in addressing the climate change issue by controlling greenhouse gas emissions will likewise depend on near universal support at the scale of individuals. Education at all levels and media attention are helping generate support for climate change mitigation. Increasing numbers of people are personally experiencing extreme weather events and associated disturbances like wildfire and floods, which also opens minds. The political will to address climate change is in its ascendency.
The response of the technosphere to biosphere pushback in the form of Covid-19 shows that the technosphere has some capacity to self-regulate (i.e. to be tamed from within). Optimally, that capability can be applied to ramp up a renewable energy revolution and slow Earth system momentum towards a Hothouse World.
Given the gathering storm of global environmental change, our world is in dire need of new ways of thinking. Culture is, in part, the set of beliefs, customs, and knowledge shared by a society; and cultural evolution happens when new ideas or concepts are generated by individuals and spread by way of social learning. If a concept is successfully replicated in the minds of most of the people in a society, it could be said to become part of the culture of that society. Here, I examine the concept of the “Great Transition”, an idea that may help a nascent global society grapple with planetary scale environmental change issues.
The “Great Transition” is a theme employed by authors from a variety of disciplines to characterize how humanity must change in the coming decades.
We can begin with Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993). He was an academic economist who published The Great Transition in 1964. Boulding was an expansive thinker and an early advocate of the spaceship Earth metaphor. Because he was publishing in the middle of the Cold War era, he was concerned about human self-destructive tendencies associated with both the global geopolitical situation and the global environment.
Boulding’s Great Transition called for a gradual augmentation or replacement of “folk knowledge” with scientific knowledge. Both are honed by cultural evolution, i.e. specific beliefs are generated, spread, and retained as part of the cultural heritage within specific social groups. Faith in folk beliefs is based on tradition rather than on an understanding of underlying mechanisms. Folk knowledge sometimes serves mainly to foster group identity (e.g. creation myths that build a shared sense of destiny) but other folk beliefs may have practical significance (e.g. knowledge of medicinal plants).
Various alternative ways of knowing (epistemologies) operate quite differently from folk knowledge. In the scientific epistemology, a consensus model of how the world is structured, and how it functions, is built up over time by way of hypothesis formation and testing. One great virtue of the scientific epistemology is that the consensus model of reality can change based on new observations, ideas, and experiments. Specifically, regarding global environmental change, the scientific community has discovered anthropogenically-driven trends in the global environment and has suggested that they pose a threat to human civilization. As is evident in today’s political battles over climate change, scientific discoveries and science-based mitigation strategies are not always consistent with folk knowledge.
Boulding advocated a more consistent reflexivity in human thinking, i.e. a questioning attitude and an openness to changing beliefs. This thinking strategy was something he wanted all humans to share, even though they might be supporting different ideologies.
Another economist (Mauro Bonaiuti) also wrote a book entitled The Great Transition. For Bonaiuti, a global economic crisis is imminent driven by 1) limits on natural resources such as fossil fuels, and 2) an overshoot in societal complexity.
Bonaiuti focused on a trend in growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for developed countries in recent decades. He found a long-term decline in GDP growth (% per year) across a wide range of developed countries. The driving mechanism was Diminishing Marginal Returns (DMR) on investments associated with reaching the biophysical limits of natural resources (e.g. land available for agricultural expansion). He feared this economic trend portended eventual collapse of capitalism and the ascendancy of autocratic regimes.
Bonaiuti’s Great Transition away from that trajectory was characterized by degrowth − reduction in the importance of market exchange, reduced production and consumption, and transitioning towards forms of property and company ownership that feature local communities, small shareholders, and public institutions.
As an Earth system scientist, I agree with Bonaiuti about the human enterprise on Earth hitting the biophysical limits of the Earth system. Regarding complexity though, I am more sanguine. A transition to global sustainability is likely to require more complexity, especially in the form of a more elaborate set of global governance institutions. The energy costs could be paid by an expanded renewable energy infrastructure (hopefully without the expansion hitting its DMR).
Physicist Paul Raskin developed another version of the “Great Transition”, this one aimed more directly at addressing the problems of biophysical limits. The Tellus Institute, with which he is affiliated, produced a broad program of policy prescriptions designed to foster societal change towards sustainability. One of their prescriptions is a renewable energy revolution (which, not surprisingly is also the subject of a recent book by Lester Brown called The Great Transition). The Tellus Institute published Journey to Earthland in 2016, with Earthland here referring to an emerging “country” that includes all nations on Earth (hence a planetary civilization).
For Raskin, the key factor that could unify humanity is the systemic environmental crises that are rapidly engulfing the world (e.g. climate change). People will be forced to work together to address these crises. He sees the needed change as a bottom-up driven process, i.e. a “global citizens movement” with strong participation of civil society.
Considering this convergence by earlier authors on the theme of transition, I adopted the “Great Transition” label for a phase in what I call A Positive Narrative for the Anthropocene. From an Earth system science perspective on the Earth’s history, I developed this six-phase story of humanity’s relationship to the rest of the Earth system. The Anthropocene Epoch alludes to the recognition by geoscientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars that humanity (by way of the technosphere) has become the equivalent of a geologic force. My Great Transition phase comes between a Great Acceleration phase (1945 – 2020) and an idealized future of global sustainability.
An essential aspect of my Great Transition usage is that a new social entity is born – a collective humanity working together to manage (or at least avoid wrecking) the Earth system as we know it. The coalescence of the United Nations − and its successes such as the Montreal Protocol − hints at the possibilities.
The great inequality in wealth at all scales, the differential responsibility for causing the current global environmental problems, and the differences among people regarding their vulnerability to anthropogenic environmental change, makes it fair enough to question whether there even can be a global “we”. However, a majority of humans (5.2 billion out of 7.7 billion) now have a cell phone. Almost all contemporary humans aspire to use energy and natural resources to achieve and maintain a reasonably high standard of living. That striving is, of course, causing global environmental change. So, indeed, there is a global “we”. And a transition to global sustainability is impossible unless most people on the planet acknowledge membership in that “we”.
The Great Transition must be a global scale phenomenon. However, the actual changes required will be made across a range of scales from individuals (decisions as consumers and voters), to nation-states (e.g. subsidies for renewable energy), to global (e.g. resolutions of the United Nations). Let’s consider several of the important dimensions of the Great Transition.
The Biophysical Dimension
Earth system scientists have identified a set of nine planetary boundaries (e.g. the atmospheric CO2 concentration), and the Great Transition will mean regulating human impacts on the environment enough to stay within those boundaries. At present, the quantitative estimates for those boundaries have significant uncertainties and a robust commitment to continued research is needed. The research will include continued improvement in our capability to monitor and model the Earth system. Model simulations are needed to evaluate the consequences of overshooting the planetary boundaries, as well as possible mitigation strategies (e.g. a carbon tax) that could prevent the overshoot.
The Technological Dimension
The technological dimension of the Great Transition is concerned with discovering and implementing the changes to the technosphere that are needed to achieve global sustainability. As noted, a key requirement will be a new renewable energy infrastructure. Pervasive advances are also needed in transportation technology, life cycle analysis, and in closed loop manufacturing. Technological fixes must be carefully scaled up since unintended impacts may emerge in the process. The field of Science and Technology Studies is beginning to systematically address the relevant issues. I have previously characterized the product of integrating the technosphere and biosphere as the sustainable technobiosphere (Figure 1).
Figure 1. A stylized rendering of the integration of biosphere and technosphere. Image credit: Original Graphic.
The Psychological Dimension
We all have a personal identity. It begins with the self-awareness that we grow into during childhood; and it evolves over the course of our life. We typically identify ourselves as members of various groups and there is often a psychological tension within a human being between independence and group membership.
These groups may include family, ethic group, professional group, and religious affiliation, as well as citizenship in a city, a state, and a nation. Membership in a group is recognized as conveying rights and responsibilities.
As noted, an essential feature of the Great Transition will be that individuals augment their multiple existing group memberships with membership in new groups focused on addressing human-induced environmental change.
The Education Dimension
One of humanity’s most important evolved traits is the capacity to transfer knowledge by way of social learning. Language is a tool for efficient communication of information horizontally (within a generation) and vertically (across generations). The Great Transition will require a global society with citizens who understand enough Earth system science to appreciate the need for humanity to manage its impact on the biosphere and the rest of the Earth system. They must generally be literate, so as to assimilate basic information about what is going on in the world, and to some degree be scientifically literate so they can understand the underlying mechanisms that explain what is going on.
The Geopolitical Dimension
Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, what happens within national borders is in principle largely left to the inhabitants of the nation. Nations have subsequently become protective of their national sovereignty.
Issues of global environmental change now disrupt and challenge that principle. National emissions of greenhouse gases sum up to a major global scale impact on the environment. National sovereignty is thus not sacrosanct; nations must cooperate, or they will all suffer. The current global wave of nationalism, especially the push back against commitments to international negotiations and agreements, is inhibiting movement towards a Great Transition. A significant step forward would be formation of a new global environmental governance institution, such as the proposed World Environment Organization.
The Great Transition concept has thus far spread rather thinly across humanity. But as a global society forms in response to global environmental change, it should become foundational.
Humans are story-telling animals. Our brains are wired to assimilate information in terms of temporal sequences of significant events. We are likewise cultural animals. Within a society, we share images, words, rituals, and stories. Indigenous societies often have myths about their origin and history. Religious mythologies remain prevalent in contemporary societies.
The discipline of Earth System Science has revealed the necessity for a global society that can address emerging planetary scale environmental change issues – notably climate change. A shared narrative about the relationship of humanity to the biosphere, and more broadly to the Earth system, is highly desirable in that context.
The most prevalent narrative about humanity’s relationship to the Earth system emphasizes the growing magnitude of our deleterious impacts on the global environment (think ozone hole, climate change, biodiversity loss). The future of humanity is then portrayed as more of the same, unless radical changes are made in fossil fuel emissions and natural resource management.
In the process of writing a book for use in Global Environmental Change courses, Ideveloped an elaborated narrative for humanity − still based on an Earth system science perspective but somewhat more upbeat. I used the designation Anthropocene Narrative to describe it because Earth system scientists have begun to broadly adopt the term Anthropocene to evoke humanity’s collective impact on the environment.
There are of course many possible narratives evoked by the Anthropocene concept (e.g. the historical role of capitalism in degrading the environment), all worthy of study. But for the purposes of integrating the wide range of material covered in global environmental change classes, I identified a six stage sequence in the relationship of humanity to the rest of the Earth system that serves to link geologic history with human history, and with a speculative vision of humanity’s future (Figure 1). The stages are essentially chapters in the story of humanity’s origin, current challenges, and future. The tone is more hopeful than dystopianbecause our emerging global society needs a positive model of the future.
Figure 1. An Earth system science inspired Anthropocene narrative with six stages. Image credits below.
The chapters in this Anthropocene narrative are as follows.
Chapter 1. The Pre-human Biosphere
The biosphere (i.e. the sum of all living organisms) self-organized relatively quickly after the coalescence of Earth as a planet. It is fueled mostly by solar energy. The biosphere drives the global biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements essential to life, and plays a significant role in regulating Earth’s climate, as well as the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans. The biosphere augments a key geochemical feedback in the Earth system (the rock weathering thermostat) that has helped keep the planet’s climate in the habitable range for 4 billion years. By way of collisions with comets or asteroids, or because of its own internal dynamics, the Earth system occasionally reverts to conditions that are harsh for many life forms (i.e. mass extinction events). Nevertheless, the biosphere has always recovered − by way of biological evolution − and a mammalian primate species recently evolved that is qualitatively different from any previous species.
Figure 2. The pre-human biosphere was a precondition for the biological evolution of humans. Image Credit: NASA image by Robert Simmon and Reto Stöckli.
Chapter 2. The Primal Separation
Nervous systems in animals have obvious adaptive significance in term of sensing the environment and coordinating behavior. The brain of a human being appears to be a rather hypertrophied organ of the nervous system that has evolved in support of a capacity for language and self-awareness. These capabilities are quite distinctive among animal species, and they set the stage for human conquest of the planet. The most recent ice age receded about 12,000 year ago and a favorable Holocene climate supported the discovery and expansion of agriculture. With agriculture, and gradual elaboration of toolmaking, humanity ceased waiting for Nature to provide it sustenance. Rather, Nature became an object to be managed. This change is captured in the Christian myth of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Figure 3). They lived like all other animals in the biosphere until they became self-aware and began to consciously organize their environment.
Figure 3. The story of Adam and Eve symbolizes the separation of early humans from the background natural world. Image Credit: Adam and Eve expelled from Eden by an angel with a flaming sword. Line engraving by R. Sadeler after M. de Vos, 1583. Wellcome Trust.
Chapter 3. The Build-out of the Technosphere
The next phase in this narrative is characterized by the gradual evolution and spread of technology. An important driving force was likely cultural group selection, especially with respect to weapons technology and hierarchical social structure. The ascent of the scientific worldview and the global establishment of the market system were key features. Human population rose to the range of billions, and the technosphere began to cloak Earth (Figure 4). The Industrial Revolution vastly increased the rate of energy flow and materials cycling by the human enterprise. Telecommunications and transportation infrastructures expanded, and humanity began to get a sense of itself as a global entity. Evidence that humans could locally overexploit natural resources (e.g. the runs of anadromous salmon in the Pacific Northwest U.S.) began to accumulate.
Figure 4. The Earth at night based on satellite imagery displays the global distribution of technology dependent humans. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Visualization Analysis Laboratory.
Chapter 4. The Great Acceleration
Between World War II and the present, the global population grew from 2.5 billion to 7.8 billion people. Scientific advances in the medical field reduced human mortality rates and technical advances in agriculture, forestry, and fish harvesting largely kept pace with the growing need for food and fiber. The extent and density of the technosphere increased rapidly. At the same time, we began to see evidence of technosphere impacts on the environment at the global scale – notably changes in atmospheric chemistry (Figure 5) and losses in global biodiversity.
Figure 5. The impacts of the global human enterprise on various indicators of Earth system function take on an exponential trajectory after World War II. Image Credit: Adapted from Steffen et al. 2015.
Chapter 5. The Great Transition
This phase is just beginning. Its dominant signal will be the bending of the exponentially rising curves for the Earth system and socio-economic indicators that define the Great Acceleration (Figure 5 above). Global population will peak and decline, along with the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Surviving the aftermath of the Great Acceleration with be challenging, but the Great Transition is envisioned to occur within the framework of a high technology infrastructure (Figure 6) and a healthy global economy. To successfully accomplish this multigenerational task, humanity must begin to function as a global scale collective, capable of self-regulating. Neither hyper-individualism nor populist tribal truth will get us there. It will take psychologically mature global citizens, visionary political leaders, and new institutions for global governance.
Human-induced global environmental change will continue for the foreseeable future. The assumption for an Equilibration phase is that humanity will gain sufficient understanding of the Earth system – including the climate subsystem and the global biogeochemical cycles – and develop sufficiently advanced technology to begin using the technosphere and managing the biosphere to purposefully shape the biophysical environment from the scale of ecosystems and landscapes (Figure 7) to the scale of the entire planet. Humanity is a part of the Earth system, meaning it must gain sufficient understanding of the social sciences to produce successive generations of global citizens who value environmental quality and will cooperate to manage and maintain it. The challenges to education will be profound.
Figure 7. An idealized landscape in which the biosphere and technosphere are sustainably integrated. Image Credit: Paul Cézanne, Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1882–1885, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
As noted, this Anthropocene Narrative is largely from the perspective of Earth system science. In the interests of coherence, humanity is viewed in aggregate form. Humanities scholars reasonably argue that in the interests of understanding climate justice, “humanity” must be disaggregated (e.g. by geographic region or socioeconomic class). This perspective helps highlight the disproportionate responsibility of the developed world for driving up concentrations of the greenhouse gases. The aggregated and disaggregated perspectives on humanity are complementary; both are needed to understand and address global environmental change issues.
The Anthropocene Narrative developed here is broadly consistent with scientific observations and theories, which gives it a chance for wide acceptance. The forward-looking part is admittedly aspirational; other more dire pathways are possible if not probable. However, this narrative provides a solid rationale for building a global community of all human beings. We are all faced with the challenge of living together on a crowded and rapidly changing planet. The unambiguous arrival of global pandemics and climate change serve as compelling reminders of that fact. A narrative of hope helps frame the process of waking up to the perils and possibilities of our times.
Recommended Video: Welcome to the Anthropocene (~ 3 minutes)
Figure 1. The biodiversity bottleneck displays the ongoing reduction in biodiversity caused by human actions. The fate of biodiversity after the bottleneck is uncertain, but some degree of recovery is possible if humanity self-regulates. Image Credit: Monica G. Whipple and David P. Turner
David P. Turner / May 29, 2020
Earth’s biodiversity is under siege by the global human enterprise (the technosphere). Most species will survive into the distant future, possibly a future in which the human population has shrunk, and the value of biodiversity is more widely appreciated. But many species will go extinct along the way.
Biologist E.O. Wilson and others have evoked the image of a bottleneck in this context (Figure 1). A bottleneck implies a tightening of constraints on flow. In the case of the biodiversity bottleneck, flow refers to the survival of species through time.
As the future unfolds and the technosphere continues to grow, the possibilities for species to pass through the biodiversity bottleneck diminish. But there is a lot of room for maneuver here. A worthy project for humanity – especially over the next few decades − is to keep that bottleneck as wide as possible. After passing through it, global biodiversity may recover to some degree as the technosphere begins to weigh less heavily on the biosphere. It all depends on us.
Background
Evidence of human impacts on biodiversity surrounds us. Comparisons of current rates of extinction and those in the fossil record indicate that vertebrate species are now going extinct at a rate 100 or more times faster than is observed in most previous geologic periods. The human-driven Sixth Extinction began perhaps 50,000 years ago when primitive humans arrived on Australia and wiped out many prey species that were unfamiliar with the new bipedal super predator. Anthropologists refer to the “Pleistocene Overkill” to describe the wave of mammal extinctions that occurred when humans first crossed from Asia to North America about 15,000 years ago.
Modern humans continue to exterminate species directly by overhunting for food (e.g. the passenger pigeon) but also by widespread trafficking in wildlife and animal parts for food, as well as for medicinal and prestige purposes. Various plant species are also endangered, notably several tropical hardwoods known as rosewood. Sustained pressure on wildlife habitat from land use change and disruptions in geographic ranges caused by climate change adds further stress on top of overexploitation. Genetic variation within many species is shrinking as their populations and geographic ranges contract, hence reducing their capacity to survive environmental change (formally termed a population bottleneck).
In essence, the expansion of technosphere capital (the mass of human made objects) is consuming biosphere capital (the biodiversity and biomass of the biosphere). This loss of biodiversity − usually defined in terms of diversity of species and ecosystems − will likely continue over the coming decades. As noted, though, the magnitude of the loss will depend heavily on human decisions.
There are pragmatic, aesthetic, and ethical rationales for conserving Earth’s biodiversity. Conservationists argue that retaining biodiversity maintains the functional integrity of ecosystems, and hence the full array of their ecosystem services. Each species has a unique niche and contributes to ecosystem processes like nutrient cycling and recovery from disturbances. With respect to aesthetics, the earlier mentioned Professor Wilson has suggested that humans have genetically determined biophilia − we get spontaneous pleasure from interacting with diverse forms of life. The ethical argument is made strongly by the Deep Ecology movement. For supporters, there is no human exceptionalism – all species have an equal right to survive and prosper on this planet.
Given the multiple rationales for wishing to widen the biodiversity bottleneck, what collective actions (besides the overriding one of limiting climate change) can help? Scientists and policy experts have identified biodiversity-friendly practices such as reducing pesticide use, buying certified products, reducing invasive species, and reducing water pollution. But here are four others that have high relevance.
1. Stop Trafficking in Wildlife and Wild Animal Parts
The global trade in wild animals and wild animal parts puts tremendous downward pressure on the populations of many species. Wild animals are commonly sold in Southeast Asian food markets despite laws against it. Tigers, rhinos, and pangolins continue to be poached for dubious medicinal purposes. Wild caught animals are sold as “bush meat” in parts of Africa and South America.
A global trade in live animals intended as pets also flourishes. Millions of songbirds are collected every year in the primary forests of Indonesia and sold as pets or trained as contestants in bird song competitions. Tropical fish are collected in the wild for marketing to aquarium owners.
Multiple international agreements aim to stem wild animal trafficking, especially the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Under its auspices, national law enforcement agencies regularly confiscate illegal shipments of wild animals, animal parts, and wood from endangered tree species. However, these efforts face deep resistance for cultural and economic reasons.
A new brake on wild animal trafficking is fear of zoonotic pathogens. The SARS-CoV-2 virus that is causing the Covid-19 global pandemic likely jumped from a wild animal host to a human in a market where wild animals are sold illegally. New legislation passed in China limits sales of wild animal meat. Unfortunately, enforcement is spotty, and the new law still allows sales of wild animal parts for medicinal purposes. Sustained international pressure on wildlife traffickers is needed.
The Covid-19 pandemic is apparently impacting wildlife protection in other ways. Conservationists fear that the loss of the tourist ‘halo’ or proximity effect, because of Covid-19 shutdowns, will increase the incidence of poaching in nature reserves. Resumption of tourism would help in that regard.
2. Expand the Size and Number of Protected Areas
A key driver of declining biodiversity is habitat loss. To bring as many species as possible through the biodiversity bottleneck will require protection of representative areas for all unique types of ecosystems.
The Rewilding Movement has argued for creating protected areas that are large enough to support the whole complement of native species characteristic of each ecosystem type, along with the entire range of abiotic processes such as floods and fires that help maintain it.
Presently, about 15% of global land plus inland waters is protected to some degree. For the oceans within national jurisdictions, the figure is about 13%. Not all ecosystem types are represented. For many types of ecosystems, the current protected area is quite small relative to its original geographic distribution (e.g. the Atlantic rain forest in Brazil).
Aspirations for expanding the protected areas of land and ocean range from 17% of land to half of Earth as a whole (the latter courtesy of the illustrious Professor Wilson).
Protected area plans can be developed over large domains, e.g. the entire United States. These plans rely on integration of different managed lands such as wilderness areas, national parks, national forests, urban areas, and private reserves.
An international scientific advisory body (IPBES, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) is dedicated to biodiversity assessment and conservation. Like the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change, IPBES produces periodic assessments and examinations of policy options. IPBES is supported by member countries, including the U.S., and sustained national contributions are warranted.
In the private sector, land trust organizations such as The Nature Conservancy have as their key strategy the purchase of lands for conservation purposes; contributions are encouraged. Public/private conservation partnerships are proliferating; participants are welcomed.
3. Design Sustainable Cities
The proportion of the global population that lives in an urban setting recently passed the 50% mark and is expected to keep climbing in the coming decades. A potential benefit to biodiversity conservation lies in the land that is abandoned as people supported by subsistence agriculture and nomadic herding move to towns and cities. The freed-up land can potentially be repurposed in part or whole for wildlife conservation. An underlying assumption is that agricultural intensification can take up any slack in food production and keep everyone fed.
Urban greenbelt areas, parks, and gardens may serve directly as another assist to biodiversity conservation. They support native and alien species and could serve as refuges for plant and animal species that are extirpated regionally by climate change and land use change. Urban rivers and streams can likewise be managed to protect and support wildlife.
4. Strategically Increase Ecotourism
In theory, the local economic benefits of nature-based tourism inspire local conservation efforts. However, high tourist demand produces pressure to increase supply. More local economic development (e.g. hotels and restaurants) plus more intensive visitor utilization of natural resources may end up degrading local ecosystems. The research literature contains ecotourism case studies of successes, as well as failures.
Ecotourism narrowly defined refers to tourism that allows visitors to experience local wildlife and landscapes, creates incentives to protect those organisms and landscapes, and supports local communities. More ecotourism is probably not appropriate in many places where it already exists because capacity is limited. Rather, it is needed where wildlife is under threat and conservation incentives might be effective.
Building socio-ecological systems is an emerging route to local sustainability. These stakeholder groups optimally self-regulate to conserve the economic health and ecological health of the local environment. Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom has developed principles for structuring and operating these groups. Monitoring the social, economic, and ecological dimensions of sustainability is a key requirement for successful ecotourism management.
Air travel is the foundation for much tourism, but it is especially difficult to decarbonize. Short hop electric airplanes and long-haul flights powered by renewable energy based liquid fuels are technically feasible. They could replace fossil fuel powered flights, but more government supported research is needed, and air travelers must be willing to pay an increased fare as these fuels are brought online. Airline-associated carbon offset programs − although varying in effectiveness and not a permanent solution − contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation. They help expand protected area and, by sequestering carbon, help slow climate change.
Conclusion
The human capacity to extinguish other species on this planet, and to pervasively alter wildlife habitat, means that we are in many ways responsible for which species and ecosystems will survive. As we move through peak human population this century and begin to more purposefully manage our impacts on Earth’s biota, let’s keep the biodiversity bottleneck of our own making as wide open as possible. Progress towards that goal would be both pragmatic and gratifying.
