“In effect, the human race has entered into a great wager. We are, so to speak, betting the planet.1“ Charles C. Mann
We are on the brink of a comprehensive environmental and social catastrophe, a planetary scale emergency that involves much more than the disastrous effects of unchecked global warming. Humanity faces a stark choice—breakdown, if we go on as we are now, or change fundamentally and breakthrough to Ecocivilization.
We are now threatening all of life. In a brief geological moment, the last 300 years, we have created Hypercivilization, a powerfully destructive way of interacting with nature that is radically altering and simplifying planetary ecosystems at an ever accelerating rate.
Hypercivilization is a supreme discontinuity. It differs from all previous civilizations by both quantitative and qualitative revolutions; producing overwhelmingly more of everything, and introducing novel kinds of substances into the biosphere for which life has no evolutionary preparation or defense. It is characterized by an unprecedented overreach in population, energy capture and dispersion, rapid urbanization, and a chemical revolution all leading to the toxification of the biosphere, massive habitat loss, extinctions, desertification, environmental diseases, food shortages and climate change. In the last 300 years, our technical reach has leapt into the stars and descended into the heart of the atom and the gene. We have changed the conditions in which life evolved and upon which it is dependent. Neither we humans nor the Earth has ever been here before.
Hypercivilization is a greatly exaggerated, globalized, and intensified form of civilization, a radical discontinuity with both the evolutionary and the cultural past. It began to emerge first in the Western mind with a revolution in beliefs and values around 1600 A.D., and then materialized in a wave of new institutions and the technologies of industrialization and the population explosion. Today, billions of hands are literally tearing at the web of life. Hypercivilization was firmly entrenched in Western Europe by 1900 A.D. and in the twentieth century it spread like a tidal wave over the rest of the Earth, adding the new technologies of nuclear fission and biogenics. Its main impact on Earth’s life support system is destructive. In Hypercivilization, the good life is defined as acquiring ever more material things by pursing endless economic growth at all costs. It depends on extreme rates of extraction of minerals and fossil fuels. All of this is called “Progress,” in spite of the fact that most negative impacts on humans and nature are externalized from its economic system to be assessed against us and our children for generations. Chemical pollution, deforestation, drought, erosion, extinctions, crowding, a deteriorating climate, and consequent social ills such as industrialized warfare and extreme poverty became normative. Seen in historical perspective, Hypercivilization burst upon the earth and trashed it in a comparatively few moments of evolutionary time.
Our species, Homo sapiens, has become a threat to the planet. Consider the definition of an invasive species: “an alien species whose introduction does or is likely to cause economic or environmental harm or harm to human health.” An invasive species spreads rapidly and out-competes indigenous species. In many cases, its population then overshoots and collapses. Are we the most dangerous threat to ourselves and thousands of other inhabitants of the planet? It does not have to be this way. I am not a misanthrope. I think we have a rightful place on this planet and have great potential, but at this historical moment we are way off course. There is still time to change course, but not much.
[From the opening chapter of The Planetary Emergency: Environmental Collapse and the Promise of Ecocivilization by Kent Shifferd and available from Amazon.com or McFarland Publishers (mcfarlandbooks.com).
Peace with each other and the earth 