Ten threats, one emergency: how to become Earth Citizens |
Humanity is facing a compounding crisis driven by population growth, consumption, pollution and power. These interconnected threats cannot be addressed one by one if civilisation is to endure.
We are now living amid the greatest emergency in humanity’s million-year tenure of the Earth.
This is a compounding catastrophe created by our relentless exploitation of the planet’s finite resources, natural systems and resilience – and the terminal overpressure of our exploding numbers. Collapse, according to Bill Rees, may prove inevitable.
Yet no government or global organisation has a systematic plan to address it – or any way to arrest the compounding damage.
World science has been warning us for over half a century that we are hurtling towards disaster, driven by ten catastrophic risks. However, these risks are rarely discussed together or even seen as part of the same process.
All ten threats are propelled by four main forces: overpopulation, overconsumption, overpollution and money.
Because they are so deeply interlinked, they cannot be resolved one at a time – but must be solved together – and by integrated solutions that make none of them worse.
1. Extinction
Our civilisation is switching off the Earth’s life support system.
Three quarters of large wild animals are already gone, in just a few decades. So are most birds, fish, reptiles and frogs.
Humans and our livestock now make up 96 per cent vertebrate life on land.
We are transforming forests into deserts and oceans into dead zones.
We are poisoning the biosphere, which threatens our own existence too.
2. Resource scarcity
Every year, in just seven months, human consumption surpasses what the Earth can renew.
Together, we use 105 billion tonnes of materials annually – 12.8 tonnes each – destroying soils, water and wildlife along the way. Our resource consumption has quadrupled since 1970. It is projected to soar to 160 billion tonnes by 2050.
Acute freshwater scarcity now affects over half the world’s people. Under humanity’s dominion, the forests are falling and the oceans are dying.
3. Global poisoning
We are poisoning every living thing, every day. Especially our children, whom we fill with plastic microparticles and other toxins even before they are born.